My question is why the NY times is still running a summit where SBF is currently still scheduled to speak.
I won't believe this guy is actually going to prison until they slam the iron bars closed behind him.
As said earlier he has bribed the right big fish. But ignoring angry medium fish can be a problem. Also those might not be bribes. It might be a way to launder money into campaign contributions. Not that you really need that in the US now.
The guy is going to jail. If you want to make a bet on it, I'm willing to do so.
Different story for the average listener, who will be listening to most interactions with an open mind and susceptible to whichever person tends to be more charming or persuasive.
His lawyers probably reckoned he was talking way too much, was too much of a liability and dropped him immediately.
The real question is he keeps receiving positive media coverage? They keep trying to frame him as, just a "dumb kid and his friends" that "accidentally misplaced billions" - when in fact, it is pretty obvious he planned most of it, by how his complex corporate structure was and the constant deleting of evidence every step of the way.
Not to mention how he gave himself over a billion of personal loans and spending millions on bribes towards the end for hopes of political protection when he knew he was running out of rope to hide his scam.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-sit-in-th...
https://www.axios.com/2022/11/16/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-incom...
I’m seeing plenty of critical coverage. Are you really not seeing that?
He got a degree from MIT, did a year at Jane Street, but is unable to keep basic financial records??? This doesn't make sense to me, and seems like obvious fraud.
I guess you're suggesting the NYT shouldn't let him speak, to protect us from ourselves? That's a startling position.
They are selecting very few people to speak and rejecting huge amounts of other people.
But the other real thing is how you introduce the speaker. What do you say about the speaker in your materials, whether you promote him as trustworthy or not.
Please don't take this personally, but I generally have no interest in watching random people speak. They know their audience.
On the other hand, if they could secure an interview with Adolf Hitler himself, I would watch. Interest does not mean endorsement.
That does depend on how you introduce him and what questions you ask. It does matter on whether when he says lies about Jews for example in that interview, you let them stand unopposed. If you use positive or euphemisms ridden introduction, then you are endorsing actually. "The next speaker is smart awesome guy who has extensive experience in leading a crypto fund".
> if they could secure an interview with Adolf Hitler himself,
His speeches are no secret. If you invite Hitler, introduce him nicely and he then go about Jewish danger, they you are in fact helping him promote genocide. And that guy would not go for interview where he be in any danger of not dominating tone (he was good at popular politics).
But seriously, why is it that nazi speech is always the most important one? I dont see anyone going "interview with Usama Bin Ladin, lets have Pol Pot speaking, lets have Stalin speaking, we should add communists/anarchists/ISIS into the mix".
And... I have watched a few of Hitler's speeches? And somehow I'm still not a Nazi. Nor have I, to my knowledge, promoted genocide.
Give humans more credit. They're not stupid.
That doesn't matter. Who cares how the public sees him? All that's going to matter is how a jury sees him shortly. And the prosecution will be able to present evidence.
In the meantime, let him keep speaking on the record and admitting to things. And providing a show for those of use who are paying attention.
Besides, I'm not sure how many "average listeners" are going to be tuning into the NYT event. I assume it's mostly people who have been following the story.
In reality, I have a hard time believing that after watching Kanye West’s recent media tour where he steamrolled his interviewers and used their platforms to repeat his claims over and over again. Even the podcasts where interviewers supposedly pushed back the most (Lex Fridman is often given as an example) barely resulted in Kanye acknowledging the pushback and didn’t stop him from repeating his points over and over on the platform.
The NYTimes event is especially weird because it’s not being held up as a “watch us grill this liar” but rather “come hear talks from this impressive lineup of accomplished people!”
You think people are going to help him make a comeback or convince people to give him more money?
His only counsel now is going to be criminal lawyers. No PR firm or conference interview could save this dude's reputation.
I mean something is gonna go down, might as well be there for the popcorn.
I'm not sure what being outraged over his interview is going to achieve Signalling you disagree with what he did? To protect people from his hearing his dangerous words? To punish him?
IMO hearing his rationale, seeing how he convinced people, the lies he tells himself, etc should all be analyzed and publicly scrutinized. It's not like he's promoting some new venture or something.
They aren't suddenly friends with the guy because he gave a virtual interview over Zoom at the same event as them.
You don't need to be constantly publicly showing your outrage to make it clear "x person bad". We get it. We know he's bad. Even without such brave moral heroics.
Netanyahu or SBF?
* TBH my only interest in the whole things is Schadenfreude, like checking out a car crash in the street. The sector is so tiny that even if FTX brings the whole thing down it'll be a largely invisible ripple on a macro scale.
Actually, I am not surprised the NYT did not de-platform him.
That NYTimes takes a stand against deplatforming? At their own summits? Or in their newspaper's opinion pieces?
The NYT having SBF speak at one of their conferences would be the paper's moment to shine?
In case anyone doesn't know what I am referring to, here is some background.
https://www.publish0x.com/making-cents/whats-wrong-with-the-...
If, through my actions, you become financially ruined, I may not have kicked, beaten, or raped you, but is the harm comparable? Is it violence?
Violence - behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
I think of violence as the use of force or implied force to limit the agency of another. I'm not sure I'd call this violence but I can see where they're coming from.
Maybe ask for clarification instead of being rude and dismissive, or simply leave your sneering judgement unsaid. You may be find this view uninteresting, but I find your snark exhausting. I could just as easily say, "oh you're snarky, good for you?" Additionally GP added to the conversation, and your snark detracts.
If you steal $10 from a local shop (sorry, $1000 in California now) you'll be in jail before the end of the week. Steal $1,000,000,000 eight times over and you.. get to speak at a NYT conference?
I don't know, I just want some consistency from the justice system. That's not too much to ask for, or expect, really.
Please tell me what reality you live in and how to get there. Hell, just look across this site to see all the advice that ethics are for those who like staying poor.
What we're seeing now is the part of the larger cycle where folks get more and more insistent that they're warped world view is correct (and it wouldn't surprise me if we get more violence than we got on Jan 6th later because of it), since they can't acknowledge that they're wrong and something bad is happening because of it, which will cause more bad things to happen.
It is imperative more people stand up and provide counter-pressure, because otherwise they will win.
Whole point of financial system is risk management, while corner shop owners should not deal with theft risk at all.
This is an extreme form of violence, not physical but definitely psychological, your whole life of work savings was wiped out and taken by this guy.
Holding the view you hold is why white-collar crimes are viewed so leniently compared to what you'd call violent crimes. Just because the effects of it are more abstracted away doesn't make them lesser, people might commit suicide over this. They might never recover the amount of money lost for the rest of their lifetime. It's a perpetual torture for those who got the shortest end of the stick. How is that non-violent?
What is the definition of violence?
> behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
You've already conceded that words can hurt people (Alex Jones), so why are you trying to backpedal that now?
Equating money losses with violence dilutes the term, and has a history of slipping into hurt feelings and blasphemy being tantamount to violence. There are crimes which may rise to the severity of violence. That doesn’t make them violence. Alex Jones incited violent. He, himself, was never violent. SBF perpetuated a massive fraud. He has not been connected with any violence.
I don't see him excusing himself by explaining that regulators aren't real, they're just actors playing a role in an evil New World Order conspiracy to take people's guns away, and if he does, I don't see the NYT Dealbook summit attendees being the sort of people that turn up on their doorsteps as a result. And FTX is far too dead for him to harm people's wallets any further by persuading them to park their money in it.
Is 1 murdered person better or worse than the long term impact of two or even one person becoming destitute enough that their movements have long term impact on another?
That's far more damaging than a delusional rant on some obscure internet radio station.
I find it amusing that there is now a call to apply the same rules for crypto exchanges. Didn't everyone hate traditional finance a few months ago?
Untangling how to charge him, and where, and digging up concrete enough evidence to file an indictment is going to take awhile of course. The post-bankruptcy CEO seems to be finding plenty.
As with a lot of non-violent crime, it takes awhile to arrest someone because there is a lot of paperwork. When the suspect has a lot of cash and lawyers, it takes longer because they need to make sure there isn't an angle they are missing that could get them off.
Bad financial controls is if someone else whoopsie accidentally steals or mishandles the funds. Which at least per a cite provided earlier, he admitted to doing it himself.
To be able to claim a lack of culpability for this requires a degree of plausible ignorance about what the left and right hands were doing. He seems to be working hard to chip away at any sort of plausibility there.
>(1) that the defendant voluntarily and intentionally devised or participated in a scheme to defraud another out of money;
>(2) that the defendant did so with the intent to defraud
https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
Thus far he hasn't admitted to either and so hasn't yet admitted to a crime.
Wire fraud != fraud, theft, or embezzlement.
It’s a specific sub-type of fraud, and your link is pointing to a specific list of elements within a certain jurisdiction.
Even then, that vox conversation cited above combined with what we already know is likely to be enough to prove at least embezzlement.
Here is a link to some elements of the crime for that if you’re interested.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/embezzlement
Based on what we’ve seen so far, unless he somehow can convince a Judge or Jury that he didn’t know what was happening, it would be very implausible someone couldn’t get a sizable conviction somewhere on one or more of those charges. But we won’t know for sure until the situation has been analyzed. But he sure isn’t helping himself.
Which is why I said what I said. He could of course have no defense and sit there mute for the entire trial, but I can’t imagine a Jury would be all that convinced by it, if the prosecution provided even the most basic set of evidence that seems to be lying around all over the place.
Yes. The investigation has to happen before the arrest. With violent crime, it's usually clear what happened; the question is who did it. With white-collar crime, sorting out what happened is complicated. With FTX, it's really complicated. Prosecutors only get one chance; if they take someone to trial on early evidence and lose, they usually can't come back later and try again.
But it doesn't all have to be figured out. Just enough for a long sentence. Known overt acts, such as buying US$300 million of Bahamas real estate with company funds and putting the real estate in a family name, are probably enough for grand theft.
He stole tremendous amounts of people's money. I hope you're as forgiving to him as you are towards to the people who caused the 2008 economic collapse. At least they weren't actively stealing people's money.
Alex Jones isn't dangerous. He's just a weird guy who likes to rant about stuff. Sam Bankman Fried is a thief.