In China, the rich and powerful can hire body doubles to do their prison time
slate.com
slate.com
It would be naïve to think that the USA (I'm picking on the USA because I am an American citizen) is the perfect country. I haven't lived in other countries long enough to be able to compare, but I /can/ compare the experience between China and the US and it makes me grateful to be a US citizen.
The truth is, there is no real comparison between China and the US: I get questions about corruption in the US all the time and I always answer that there /is/ corruption in the US but not in the endemic/pervasive way that we see it in China. The media is more open than in China, the government process is more transparent.
My business partner and I are in the middle of doing a training/internship (simple LAMP application development) for students at a local university. This isn't a top tier university: it's a third-tier university in the capital of one of the poorest regions in the country. There's a lot of potential here but when we asked people if they had any aspirations to entrepreneurship, we mostly get a 'no'. The lack of mobility for the common person is evident here.
No matter what the US's failures are what it has that the Chinese system (note that I didn't say government, because some of the issues here are cultural) doesn't have is "opportunity". There's a lot of unrealistic optimism here amongst college-age students (i.e. "I can do it if I try.") but there is a dark understanding that this is severely limited by what is available to them after they graduate. It's actually really sad: people here are in love with pieces of paper that 'qualify' you for a job. But with an overabundance of college graduates (in a system where cheating is normal), the value of a college degree is lessened. So you have a huge population of mid-20's that paid large sums of money for degrees that are largely worthless (i.e. the degrees didn't fulfill the better life that they promised).
China has aspirations to be the world's best, but it won't be until it can find a way to empower its own people.
It also ignores most colloquial usage of the terms America and American in English. While technically correct, it is unlikely to occur. Americans are citizens of the United States of America. Just as Mexicans are citizens of Estados Unidos Mexicanos. But we shorten them to Mexicans as well.
Its more useful in either case to just list your nationality in either case. Unless people seem to want to identify with an Italian name for both continents I don't see where getting all up in arms over Americans referring to a citizen of the US. USian is an alternative, but lets be honest, it rolls off the tongue horridly and is unlikely to catch on.
Also, it's an unsolvable problem, because there is no part of "United States of America" that is technically unique. It's not the only nation on the American continents, and it's not the only nation whose official name includes "United States" (Mexico does as well).
People seem to make a number of wrong assumptions on that, including 1) it can't also be the demonym for anyone else and 2) other countries can decide another countries demonym in their native language. Both of these things are patently false. If someone wants to use American to refer to a member of the Americas (continents) then they certainly can, but they should include enough context to disambiguate. Moreover, other nations don't decide what a nation gets to call itself in its native language. We call ourselves Americans -- so we are Americans. If other countries don't like that, well, tough for them.
Besides, http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/facts-figures-an...
Entrepreneurial attitudes in Europe compared to the US and Asia // Chinese people have the strongest preference for self-employment (71%), Japanese people the weakest (39%). Similarly, Chinese think it is quite possible to become one’s own boss (49%). In Japan only 12% consider this career option possible. // A higher ratio of Chinese (40%) than Americans (38%) declare that they have first-hand experiences in starting a business. In Europe and Japan these figures are rather low (22% and 20%), even lower than in South Korea (31%). In the US, entrepreneurs enjoy a good reputation. 73% of US citizens questioned in this survey said that they have a favourable image of entrepreneurs. In Europe, at least about half of the population (49%) has a favourable image of entrepreneurs. In China the ratio is only 40%, in Japan (32%) and Korea (30%) even lower.
The richest person in China did get sent to prison: 14 years for stock market manipulation (cant imagine how many hedge fund PMs will be there if people enforce this in every country. personally I think the punishment is severe). Nothing to brag about, but he went there himself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang_Guangyu The "body double"-stuff is rare and can likely happen in those poor undeveloped regions in China, where money can buy you anything. In better developed regions, the officers won't risk it, unless you are exceptionally "connected" I guess. Medias and Internet are quite good at revealing such scandals in China nowadays, which is why the Chinese government is so afraid of them.
1) The survey was taken amongst urban inhabitants: "...this sample covered 115,000,000 of the 615,000,000 urban inhabitants..." Which of course leaves the roughly 704 million rural residents unsampled. I don't fault the survey process; it's clear what they're after and they were transparent with the process. But it's difficult for me to say that this is representative of a whole country when clearly the sample was taken of the urban side only. (Of course, urbanization is expanding in China but my point still stands). Also, note that the actual survey has a question asking about locality (metro/urban/rural)). I'm assuming this was skipped for the Chinese respondents. Rural respondents might have been even more enthusiastic in their response to these questions, but I doubt it; most folks that I meet from rural areas don't have that kind of mentality.
2) "Trying asking about it in a better Chinese university." This underlines my point. Many well known (i.e. "successful") startups in the US are founded by people that have went to Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, etc. but this isn't a pre-req for being a tech entrepreneur (or any type of entrepreneur for that matter). There's a number of notable entrepreneurs that didn't go to college or finish that have found success. Why should it matter that I go to a better Chinese university? Further, the better the Chinese university the less representative that individual is of the overall population; those individuals are highly selected based on their Gaokao test scores (and possibly their family connections).
I was overly optimistic with the assessment of my university (Ningda). It's not even in the third tier according to this standard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_985
(Edited for grammar.)
Most common rural guys I know want to be a boss deep in their hearts, but they are less likely to reveal that to a foreigner. Chinese people are quite shy about their dreams. On the other hand, it is probably better to ask this question in urban regions. If someone goes to a Texas farm and ask their opinions on founding Internet Startups, probably the answers won't be very encouraging as well.
One thing I like about the Gaokao (University Entrance Exam) system: it is good for one thing - the family connections matter less than in US for this matter. As long as your score is impressive enough, you are in Tsinghua / Peking.
And that's why I have some faith in China. China has this "Exam to Win" system for 1400 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination which explains why the Chinese are so good at it.
Take a look at the President of China (Hu Jintao). He has no family background at all (surprise), and got into the best university by his own efforts. But we only heard media fussing about Obama being the American Dream.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu_Jintao
"Though his father owned a small tea trading business in Taizhou, the family was relatively poor. His mother was a teacher and died when he was seven, and he was raised by an aunt. Hu's father was later denounced during the Cultural Revolution, an event that (together with his relatively humble origins) apparently had a deep effect upon Hu, who diligently tried to clear his father's name.[6]"
People who studied Chinese Politics 101 knows the de facto ruling authority of China is a group of 9 persons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo_Standing_Committee_of...
and after Mao and Deng, no one has such power to overwhelm the other eight. Talk to a Chinese about Hu being a dictator and he wil laugh. (Yes, the Communist Party is dictating, but there are ~80 million people in it. No, I am not one of them. Actually I find it a bit scary that almost all of the smartest young people I know are now in it, and they are not naive teens - most of them are i-bankers / phds in top WallSt firms and US universities. Think about what will happen in 20 years).
Interesting enough, all of the 9 persons has no connections as well (except for the newly elected and soon-to-be-president Xi, who is the son of a former Vice-Premier. China is following the same path as every other developed country). What's more interesting: they are all Engineers. Shocking fact: China is a country running as a machine (at least at the highest level). Engineers couldn't care less about the people, but you can bet the country surely "move fast and break things". China = Crazy Startup (and yes, employees do suffer. No talk of democracy in companies). Consider this: if China is really so deeply corrupted, how come it is also developing so fast?
Eventually the lawyers and businessmen will take over and people will talk about China being the "largest democracy". Good thing for the people. I am not sure whether it will be good for the country. Aren't the people more important than the country? Or not? Tough question. I think it depends on the development stage.
TL;DR: The Chinese system is bad for the people. But it works well for the country. China is very corrupted in some sense, and highly effective in another sense.
I'm reminded of the Soviet counterpart to this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes)
Speaking of China, they do have their problems (of course), but to have a moral right to criticize, other fellow countries should at least stop their oil-for-bombs and occupation-based-on-rumors politics (and we will see, how that will change the quality of life and corruption level).
But the resemblance is there, yeah ;)
Seems to be some evidence against that, such as: http://books.google.com/books/about/Poverty_in_the_Soviet_Un...
Speaking short and plain, everyone had at least enough to live a healthy life, and quite many had somewhat more.
Tier 1: Get caught. Go to jail.
Tier 2: Get caught. "Fix" the legal progress in your favor. Don't go to jail.
Tier 3: Bribe the people doing the enforcement. Don't get caught, because there is no one to catch you.
Tier 4: Bribe the people doing the law writing. Don't get caught, because you aren't doing anything "wrong" (technically speaking).
Tier 5: Buy out the mass media, so that no one thinks there is anything wrong about what you are doing any more. The clueless voter who lives from the juices of the media mogul is the tier 5 criminal's best friend.
IMO, most of the global financial system is somewhere between tier 4 and 5, with a bit of 3 (recruiting away the SEC regulators to big iBanks). Thankfully we still have a relatively free press in the US, so even if there is some lockdown there is a lot of ability to get alternative information.
Thankfully we have the ability to operate presses fairly freely, but these little presses don't seem to matter all that much when it comes to fending off the thieves. I'm not quite sure what the solution is, but I suspect it involves a large number of people working together to build a system that is better than the current one.
SEC and FTC violations are civil offenses. The punishment for civil offenses are fines. Plenty of firms and higher-ups have paid fines.
Jail time only applies in cases where deliberate fraud is proven to have occurred. We all know that the finance guys were too reckless in their pursuit of profits. But recklessness is not a crime (and indeed, the only crime in the U.S. system for which "recklessness" is relevant is manslaughter/murder).
Perhaps this is a facet of law that people should lobby to get changed. The kind of wanton disregard shown by the finanical sector during the recent meltdown damn well should be a crime, if it isn't already.
Risky investments guised as Safe should very well be illegal - it's fraud.
Recklessness changing the world: Charles Lindberg
But of course he didn't sell tickets to his first voyage
And sure, branding something it's barely valued more than the paper it's printed on is fraud.
There are plenty of other examples, but many of these people went well past recklessness into fraud. EX1: If you setup a deal, know it's terrible and bet your own money that it will fail while advising your clients to do the deal with their money then your committing fraud. EX2: If your training documents tell people to commit fraud then your directly culpable.
I also submit it was reckless to provide mass government guarantee for subprime loans - after all, they are subprime for a reason, due to very high default risk, and when this risk materialized - and it had to materialize sometime unless whoever evaluated these loans as subprime was wildly mistaken - taxpayers were on the hook for these loans. Should people who supported FNM and FMA operations go to jail for that?
I'm afraid we'd end up jailing a real lot of people, including a lot of politicians, if we go this road. And if it would produce any negative consequences, we'd also have to jail whoever proposed such laws - as it would be deemed reckless to propose it...
Usually those are disguised as arguments that there are not actually any self-made men, but people who rode on their society.
Hmm, isn't there a specific offense of "reckless endangerment of a child"?
Quoting from a recent post[1] on a law professor blog regarding the relationship between the states and the federal government on criminal matters:
"...[T]he states and the federal government are not exactly co-equals in the criminal law sphere. The states have general police powers while the federal government has limited powers; the states inherited the common law while the federal government must enact statutory offenses."
[1] http://www.volokh.com/2012/08/03/can-federal-border-patrol-a...
Which can make things interesting when the governments don't agree on whether something should be illegal or not...
There are some standards that are widely applied across the states (like the MPC, some model jury instructions), and obviously the legal issues are very similar, but there are definitely major important differences between the states; for instance, groping a 17 year old in Alabama might be an aggravated sexual battery crime, but doing the same thing in Oregon might be a basic sexual assault.
Here's the ex-CEO of Countrywide getting his criminal investigation dropped after settling with the SEC for $67.5 million: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/criminal-investigatio...
I'm seeing a pattern here.
The article says he paid 67.5 million in fines to settle a securities fraud lawsuit brought by the SEC. It was a civil lawsuit, so the penalty if he lost (instead of settled) would have been a fine.
The criminal case was dropped because a grand jury would not indict after 2 years debating the issue.
The settlement has nothing to do with the criminal case.
And in the other case of the "low-level countrywide loan officer".. the level of fraud detailed in your link goes far and beyond the fraud occurring in the mortgage industry at the time. He had countrywide issue 38million in fraudulent loans, of which 8.7million went into his own bank account.
I've been following foreclosure stories for a while. The DAs are willfully asleep - hundreds of thousands of perjuries have been committed and documented, tens of thousands have been confirmed by the perjuring entity (as in this case), but the legal system is not interested in pursuing justice. Read Deninger's "The Market Ticker" or ZeroHedge for (almost daily) specific details.
Usually the DA's office goes tooth and nail after offenders, so there must be a reason, I presume.
In other news, I amended my tax return a few years ago. I do not generally refer to that event as the time I committed perjury.
Foreclosures are different, and for a good reason. One of the statements you make (similarly to DMCA takedowns) is something along the lines of "I have done my due diligence, and I assert under risk of perjury that the info contained below is correct."
If your bad foreclosure (or DMCA takedown) is taken to court, you should be able to prove that a mistake happened in spite of your due diligence.
Unlike amended taxes, or patent infringement, the results of an unjustified foreclosure might be fatal and essentially irrecoverable for the foreclosed party.
> Also, it's rare to prosecute for perjury when the defendant volunteers the new version, as that would discourage past liars from ever coming forward with the truth.
No truth was volunteered willingly here. They are challenged in court every day, and often shown to be fraudulent! After a lot of these, they went back to revise.
It is rare to prosecute when someone corrects themselves with a good excuse.
It is not rare to prosecute when someone admits perjury with no good explanation (and really, you should look into it, e.g. on Deninger's market ticker - the only explanation here is greed, which is not good enough). Unless you are a big bank.
> In other news, I amended my tax return a few years ago. I do not generally refer to that event as the time I committed perjury.
Perjury requires, as you stated, making a knowingly wrong statement. (Will does not enter the equation, only knowledge). If you knowingly filed a fraudulent tax return - then, yes, you have possibly committed perjury - but unless you are already on the IRS' sight, not much is likely to happen.
Reckless endangerment in Nevada occurs when someone allegedly "neglects any duty imposed by law in willful or wanton disregard of the safety of persons or property." So if a police officer believes that you were deliberately jaywalking in a careless way that could hurt someone else, you may face reckless endangerment charges.
If no death or substantial bodily harm results from an alleged act of reckless endangerment in Nevada, the charge will be a gross misdemeanor carrying up to $2,000 in fines and/or up to one year in jail.
One broad statute is honest services fraud. Basically, if you have a fiduciary duty to someone and commit an act that could reasonably be expected cause economic harm, you've committed a felony.
There are many other laws that could be used to lock up many bankers, assuming the will existed to do so.
You can read more here:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/permalink/did_ken_...
Maybe, just maybe, watching your life crumble and dealing with the guilt and shame of a conviction was a huge source of stress and caused a heart attack?
Nah, you're right, he's probably drinking Mojitos on a beach in South America and chuckling over all the suckers he fooled.
Stating these kind of absolute, unproven, personal statements as absolute facts is (was?) frowned upon around here.
Calm down.
Do you have a list of "candidates" that are willing to go to jail for a certain price? Or would you get a client first, then try to find someone who looks like them, and then offer the person some amount of money to go to jail?
Both seems tricky, the 2nd one if the body double is not reliable they can go to the cops and everything falls apart.
These body doubles have no such justifications.
Simply put, In the case of a car accident, The family of the victim can demand a fee, which would void any prosecution against the perp.
It's not ideal, but seems better than the chinese system. At least the victim's family gets something out of it.
Once the verdict is out, the people are happy.
Give a few months to a year give or take, the people will forget what happen (temper goes down), the rich is out but not necessary in plain sight everyday (semi-hiding), and the body double is in the prison.