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Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by nateburke on Sunday March 12, 2023 @07:06PM (#35127766)
They should claw back SVB CEO pay and televise the moment the funds move. Show the CEOs number going down and some other public number going up. Bonus points if his face is televised at that moment at well

That's all that's really necessary in terms of handling moral hazard and public perception that this is yet another bailout. Let ppl see the CEO suffer and they will be fine with having taxes foot the bailout bill. It's sad but a spectacle is necessary here.

Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by mgraczyk on Sunday March 12, 2023 @07:12PM (#35127850)
Do you think software engineers who write bugs should also be publicly humiliated? Should your bonus be clawed back if you tech lead a project that ends up failing because of bugs?
Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by cowl on Sunday March 12, 2023 @07:32PM (#35128145)
If your bug ends up risking the economy of the country definitly yes. But Public Humiliation is not the solution because if it worked we ould not have the same executives who failed LB fail yet another Bank. There should be Legal conseguences for this type of mismanagement.
Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by tome on Sunday March 12, 2023 @07:26PM (#35128064)
If I put at risk the financial stability of the United States, then yes.
Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by pishpash on Sunday March 12, 2023 @07:29PM (#35128093)
It's a plausible position to take.
Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by ClumsyPilot on Sunday March 12, 2023 @08:50PM (#35129004)
Do you think doctors should be responsible for patient deaths?

What of they killed the patient out of negligence, and they were drunk on the job?

These people can be high, drunk and negligent simultaneouslyHl, and they are still untouchable.

Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by cjbprime on Sunday March 12, 2023 @08:52PM (#35129019)
In the other professions which use the title "engineer", all of these are commonplace.
Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by acdha on Sunday March 12, 2023 @08:57PM (#35129081)
Potentially, yes. Something with real-world catastrophic consequences should require you to prove you weren’t being negligent. In this case, it feels like the equivalent of running for a while knowing that your QA team was empty and ignoring failing tests for a year.
Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by mgraczyk on Sunday March 12, 2023 @09:01PM (#35129130)
Fortunately our criminal justice systems presumes innocence
Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by arrosenberg on Sunday March 12, 2023 @10:29PM (#35130121)
Whether or not he committed fraud, I think most people are tired of seeing bank (and tech) executives cause real-world harm and make out like bandits. Civil forfeiture is used against poor people all the time for far, far less obvious issues than this one.
Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by mgraczyk on Sunday March 12, 2023 @10:38PM (#35130230)
As someone who has been on the other side of many of these controversies, I know from experience that the popular narrative is generally wrong and fueled by anger and vengeance rather than sense or justice. I don't have any insider knowledge in this case but the discourse reminds me a lot of times I've seen well intentioned people make good decisions that anyone else would have made in the same position, then the mob viciously demands blood when something goes wrong.

Civil forfeiture isn't a means to punish people for wrongdoing, and neither should we try to retroactively change the rules to try to punish people who you believe wronged you.

Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by arrosenberg on Sunday March 12, 2023 @11:05PM (#35130459)
> Civil forfeiture isn't a means to punish people for wrongdoing

Could have fooled me.

Thing is, when you are the CEO and you make the big paycheck, being a target for the mob is part of the job. 1,000 years ago if the crops failed, and the peasants started going hungry, either the priest or the lord was blamed. They can't control the weather, but it was someone's responsibility to make sure there was enough food stored.

The common sentiment is that the people who caused the failure should not be allowed to keep the money they made driving the ship ashore. Nobody is forced to be a CEO with million-dollar comp. It isn't some travesty of justice when they are held accountable.

Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by mgraczyk on Sunday March 12, 2023 @11:10PM (#35130495)
Well I'm hopeful we can move beyond medieval practice and that the presumption of innocence will prevail. Fortunately things seem to be going well for team rule-of-law.
Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by arrosenberg on Sunday March 12, 2023 @11:19PM (#35130559)
Again, what presumption of innocence? The bank failed, they should have to give up the bonuses and stock gains. It should be statutory to prevent a moral hazard.

> medieval practice

Calm down, no one said we should hang, draw and quarter them, exile them, or do anything untoward. It's a capitalist system, and this is a capitalist penalty.

Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by mgraczyk on Sunday March 12, 2023 @11:30PM (#35130634)
You said "1,000 years ago if the crops failed, and the peasants started going hungry, either the priest or the lord was blamed."

I'm saying we should not look to the distant past for guidance on how to handle situations like this.

The presumption of innocence applies here because we shouldn't punish individual bank employees unless we demonstrate to a jury of their peers that they broke a law that existed at the time they broke the law. The default should be they keep their bonus and if they broke the law, they pay a fine. Fortunately they are protected by the constitution, there is no possible way the government can take their money without a trial.

Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by arrosenberg on Monday March 13, 2023 @12:20AM (#35131013)
It's an analogy about leadership? I didn't suggest a medieval punishment and I obviously recognize we don't do bills of attainder in America. I'm speaking for what the average person is feeling. Literally started off with saying "the average person is sick of seeing rich people get away with it".

But again, what presumption of innocence? I'm saying that if you are a bank CEO and your bank fails, it doesn't actually matter whether a reasonable choice was made or not. Bank failures affect all Americans, so there should be a penalty for causing that disruption. Most people would call that fair.

Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by acdha on Monday March 13, 2023 @07:03AM (#35133985)
For criminal charges, yes, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other consequences. For example, a professional engineer can lose their license if they are found to be negligent or deceitful even if it doesn’t rise to the level of criminal charges. This is one of the reasons why most other fields using the term “engineer” don’t think software meets the same level, and having known a couple of people who completed PE qualifications I can understand why.

I don’t think that would make sense for all software development but it certainly doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that, say, the FSD team at Tesla or the accounting team at a bank should be held to a higher level of expectations (and presumably pay) than the ad click optimization team at some retailer.

Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by Mistletoe on Sunday March 12, 2023 @07:16PM (#35127926)
The CEO cashed out $3.6 million in stock two weeks ago.
Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by suddenclarity on Monday March 13, 2023 @09:21AM (#35135338)
A planned sale that was filed and broadcasted back in January.
Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by batmaniam on Monday March 13, 2023 @01:58AM (#35131696)
Executives are shameless. They'll lie to your face, backstab you to get more funds for their department over yours, and whatever else to get ahead for themselves. And they'll do it smiling all the way because they know they still win with their bags of cash payouts despite being "humiliated".

The only way people like that will learn is by sending them to prison. Their actions were so egregious, so completely in disregard for our financial system, that it's impossible to not have done any of that without intent. I'm sure if they turned over all electronic and paper documentation, there's gonna be a written strategy somewhere directing all this.

Re:Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federa... by nateburke on Monday March 13, 2023 @09:44AM (#35135621)
I think that there are two types of trust at stake here:

1. Trust that bank deposits won't disappear.

2. Trust that the financial system is fair.

A bailout sacrifices 2 for 1.

Letting SVB fail sacrifices 1 for 2.

My proposal is for a bailout, while doing the bare minimum necessary to prevent a backlash. Remember that the death penalty still gets the thumbs-up from voters in many places in America. It's foolish to think that the people who distrust Silicon Valley will be able to "move past this" in a mature, dispassionate way, given the namesake of the bank.