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Re:FTX’s balance sheet was bad by tedunangst on Monday November 14, 2022 @03:45PM (#33600755)
Did they work in the risk management back office at JS?
Re:FTX’s balance sheet was bad by paganel on Monday November 14, 2022 @03:53PM (#33600851)
The Societe Generale guy that managed to lose 5 billion euros for the bank through "breach of trust and forgery" (to quote wikipedia [1]) didn't work in the risk management department. I don't think that was any consolation for the bank's stakeholders.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A9r%C3%B4me_Kerviel

Re:FTX’s balance sheet was bad by tedunangst on Monday November 14, 2022 @05:09PM (#33601976)
Actually he had worked in compliance, and then they moved him to front office. Extremely dangerous. Not recommended.

But the point is you can't infer anything about Jane Street risk controls from people who didn't have that role.

Re:FTX’s balance sheet was bad by paganel on Monday November 14, 2022 @06:11PM (#33602725)
> Jane Street risk controls from people who didn't have that role.

I'm talking about the Jane Street risk control people not being able to filter out two of the biggest fraudsters of this century. Yes, I know that, technically, the Jane Street risk control people most probably only focus on the risky stuff that might bring their house down, and, as such, they most probably wash their hands when it comes to the deeds of their former employees, but I was under the impression that when those sort of shops hire someone there's also a general screening for "is this a guy/lady that is going to swindle billions of dollars in the near future"?

And, to be honest, I guess that's what the cachet of people like SBF was, especially in a very deregulated and wild market like crypto is. More exactly "normal" people would have thought along the lines of: "this guy has worked for Jane Street -> I've read Jane Street are cool, honest people, so they must have done some vetting of their employees -> SBF most probably won't run with my money".

More generally speaking, as you most probably well know, the whole house of finance is built on trust and trust alone. That goes for crypto, that goes for traders like JS, that goes for boring money market funds, that goes for the FED itself (probably with trust decreasing from Fed -> to MMFs -> to traders -> to crypto).

When such swindlers like SBF and Caroline Ellison both happen to have worked at any one entity that's part of that chain of trust that I mentioned, then said entity can't just wash its hand saying "well, we checked out on them, they were fine when they used to work for us", it doesn't work like that. People will start asking themselves: "Are there other swindlers now working for JS that JS has failed to catch during its vetting process? If yes, do they risk bringing the whole JS house down?".

Re:FTX’s balance sheet was bad by tedunangst on Monday November 14, 2022 @09:07PM (#33604383)
Not sure what you think risk control does, but they don't strap traders into the brainwave reader to filter out people with evil souls.
Re:FTX’s balance sheet was bad by whimsicalism on Monday November 14, 2022 @09:18PM (#33604445)
GP is living in minority report world
Re:FTX’s balance sheet was bad by paganel on Tuesday November 15, 2022 @03:12PM (#33614352)
Well, then we're going to have SBFs and Kervels going well into the future. Kervel was 5 billion, SBF is, what, 10 to 15 billion, going by the same progression in 5 years' or 10 years' time the next guy is going to swindle 30 billion or so.

All the while the IBs and the algo traders and all those fancy financial shops will keep saying: "how could we have known? We're not mind-readers! These are not our people!". Madness.

Also, by "JS risk control" people I was not only thinking about the spreadsheet guys. I hope to the gods of Mammon that there still is some sense of "is this guy trustful? Does he belong in this trust-based industry?" active inside of those firms, and, no, I don't expect the spreadsheet guys from credit risk to be in charge of it.

If you're telling me that "no, there's no such department in any of those institutions! Any crook can get hired as long as he passes the technical interview" then I think the industry has a whole has a big f.ing problem.