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Comment by wallace_f | Hacker News Reader

The 2008 financial crisis destroyed millions of hard workings people's retirement savings, jobs, and recent college graduates hopes of finding a job. No one went to jail over that. This is clearly a case of someone not having the right lawyers and political connections as engineers are people who actually create value as is often the case they can be successful without those two.

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Neoliberal ideology makes the claim that prison is necessary to dissuade working class people from committing crimes. Whereas embarrassment and the tort system is sufficient for dissuading the management classes. Since we live in a neoliberal system it stands that this guy will go to jail and his bosses will perhaps pay fines.

You can't be serious? Are you!? please tell me that you have a source.

That's an entirely reasonable summary of the prevailing economic ideology in the US. Res ipsa loquitur.

Don't you see the news?? Check for any scandal, there is your source.

I'm serious actually. Some references to Richard Posner (Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit)

https://books.google.com/books?id=A7IRDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA186&lpg=...

http://www.masonlec.org/site/rte_uploads/files/Hylton_crimec...

Just a note to say your second link gives me a "Oops! That page can’t be found." page.

#$%$!

http://www.masonlec.org/site/rte_uploads/files/ Hylton_crimecon.pdf

If you take a look at the second link URL, it is just doubly concatenated -- just delete the second copy, and it works just fine.

The work cited appears to be http://ius.bg.ac.rs/prof/Materijali/jovmio/DS_PrimeriMetodol...

Are YOU serious? Have you been paying attention?

If an individual is found guilty of money laundering for a drug cartel they go to jail forever. When a bank does it they get fined (HSBC).

I think his incredulity was that anyone openly holds this opinion (I was surprised myself), not that this is how things work in practice.

Very well put mister.

How is that surprising? I don't understand. Prison sentences work as dissuasion. How else can you send a message to people to not commit those crimes?

Not saying it's a good solution, but it's one way to prevent crime.

I think you only read the first sentence in the comment (which really ought to end with a comma rather than a period).

Who exactly should've gone to jail over the 2008 financial crisis? Something bad having happened does not automatically mean that someone did something wrong.

And "something wrong" and "something illegal" are not always the same.

People don't like to hear it, but some of the biggest perpetrators were lower level employees at mortgage mills that were lying on mortgage applications and putting false information on them to get them approved. While in some cases it may be that the executives were specifically instructing employees to lie on this way, most likely they were just being far too overzealous and putting too much pressure on the employees.

Additionally, people who lied on their mortgage applications were also to blame.

Then of course at the top on the securities side, there were those that knew about these shady practices but went ahead anyway. So ya, some execs should be on jail probably, but even more low level sales guys and sub prime borrowers should as well.

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