Banker gets prison .... 14 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by BBC News
...
Former City trader Tom Hayes has been found guilty at a London court of rigging global Libor interest rates.
He was sentenced to 14 years in prison for conspiracy to defraud.
...
Well, I rather suspect the public reaction to a banker, ANY banker, actually getting a serious jail sentence for some of their disgraceful antics, is not only richly deserved, but well overdue. Mine certainly is.
On the overdue bit, he was charged in 2013 and it's taken until now for the slowly grinding wheels of justice to turn through investigation, charge, trial, verdict and sentence.
Hopefully, first of many, 'cos he WASN'T the only one.
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
Would be nice to know exactly what the effect of his manipulation was.
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by
shaithis
Would be nice to know exactly what the effect of his manipulation was.
And who actually benefited the most on an individual basis...
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by
shaithis
Would be nice to know exactly what the effect of his manipulation was.
Manipulating LIBOR, apparently, would arguably would make very small differences to millions, or hundreds of millions of people, by potentially micro-changing your loan rates, mortgage payments, etc.
I remember an account, about 30 years ago, of a US Army payroll programmer making a small change to software that rounded the pay for about a million troops down by a cent, instead of up by a cent. The individual damage, per person, was therefore at most one cent per paycheck. Who'd notice, or really care? But it netted him millions .... until a surprise audit caught him, at which point it netted him, IIRC, several years in Leavenworth for fraud.
This was likely to have much the same result. Individually, the effect was proably tiny, but collectively, when exposed, it msssively undermines the whole system. How do we judge the cost of that?
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
The issue I have with this type of punishment is yes, what he did was incorrect but this cannot be an isolated incident, a rogue trader who's bosses didn't know what was happening.
Perhaps im just naive in thinking he has been made to be a scape goat and those that really caused most of the crash ie the rich and powerful have gotten off scot free..... for now.
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
This isn't about the crash, though. It's mainly post-crash. Sadly, what many bankers did to cause the crash wasn't illegal, though with hindsight, it was certainly irresponsible. Some measures have been put in place so that if bankers repeat some of what they did, it'll now be illegal but it wasn't back then. And, indeed, various governments encouraged many of the actions that caused the crash because banks were, short-term at least, government's golden-egg-laying geese.
The biggest single problem was that while some of what went wrong was forseeable, and indeed, foreseen, other bits weren't. And even the bits that were foreseeable, no politician wanted to be the one responsible for those miracle geese being strangled on their watch.
They'd all been playing a game of financial musical chairs for about 20 years, all hoping they wouldn't be the ones left standing when the music stopped. While Gordon Brown was especially incompetent in that regard, notice the Tories (now) blaming Labour yet, while Labour were in power, most Tories weren't calling them on it. Brown happened to be the one still standing when the music stopped. ;)
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
I may be the only one thinking it, but this strikes me as a MASSIVE waste of money. What's the point in putting him in jail? It will cost the tax payer tens of thousands more. I personally reckon that only people who are a danger to themselves or others should be locked up.
Surely it's far better to asset strip him and then impose a humongous penalty on anything he earns in the future? I would have thought that a far better deterrent than the possibility of being locked up in a minimum security prison? If we're that bothered about restricting his freedom, put him under house arrest at his own expense.
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
My guess is that a clear message is being sent to the broader financial community that those commiting 'white collar' crime that undermines the whole industry ARE going to get very unpleasant consequences if caught.
Remember that, even now, the finance industry is crucially important for this country, and it raises huge revenues for the Exchequer, and underpins core services provision, and undermining that could have disastrous results for the whole country.
To be honest, for threatening that, for his own ego and greed, I think he, and others hopefully still to go to trial, deserve every day of that. The millions of people adversely affected by the actions of greedy, self-centred and self-styled "masters of the universe" are finally seeing some cold, hard justice for at least some of their actions.
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Saracen
I remember an account, about 30 years ago, of a US Army payroll programmer making a small change to software that rounded the pay for about a million troops down by a cent, instead of up by a cent. The individual damage, per person, was therefore at most one cent per paycheck. Who'd notice, or really care? But it netted him millions .... until a surprise audit caught him, at which point it netted him, IIRC, several years in Leavenworth for fraud.
I'm pretty sure that was the plot of Superman II
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by
b0redom
...and Office Space
exactly what saracens post reminded me of
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by
GreenPiggy
I'm pretty sure that was the plot of Superman II
I don't think so, but I heard the story about it before that. And WAY before Office Space.
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
Wasn't the sub-plot in Superman 2 where he took all the fractions of a cent beyond 2-decimal places ?
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jackvdbuk
exactly what saracens post reminded me of
Maybe Office Space got the idea from the same incident I'm referring to? But I got it from hacking stories before most people knew what computers were.
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
You're thinking of Superman III (Richard Pryor, and that crazy supercomputer end of level "boss" at the end). Superman II had the three Kryptonian baddies - General Zod played by Terence Stamp, and two others I can't name, though the lady in the tight black outfit left a strong impression on me *ahem* moving on...
Back in the real world I find this bit the most interesting :-
Quote:
Hayes ... said while giving evidence that "everything I did was with complete transparency. Everything I did my managers knew about...sometimes going up all the way to the CEO."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/f...ing-rates.html
After all the recorded interviews with this guy and existing evidence in emails and trading systems, I'd be amazed if they don't have enough to convict several other more senior people. I just don't believe it'll happen though :( Teflon coated.
I don\'t think his sentence is harsh. He\'ll be out in 6-7 years on parole/licence, and I guess he\'ll not be put in with a bunch of murderers and rapists, and might be moved to an open prison. His crimes might sound small compared to said murderers and rapists who sometimes get only slightly harsher sentences, but he probably caused financial problems that affected millions of people. Perhaps someone couldn\'t re-mortgage and lost their home, or borrowed a huge mortgage at an artificially low rate and will be in trouble if rates rise later this year. It\'s almost impossible to know exactly, but if the banks were profiting then I\'m sure the rest of us were losing. Based on their profits, I\'d say he\'s guilty of a greater theft than the Hatton Garden safety deposit box break-in.
Re: Banker gets prison .... 14 years
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Peter Parker
I don't think his sentence is harsh. He'll be out in 6-7 years on parole/licence, and I guess he'll not be put in with a bunch of murderers and rapists, and might be moved to an open prison. His crimes might sound small compared to said murderers and rapists who sometimes get only slightly harsher sentences, but he probably caused financial problems that affected millions of people. Perhaps someone couldn't re-mortgage and lost their home, or borrowed a huge mortgage at an artificially low rate and will be in trouble if rates rise later this year. It's almost impossible to know exactly, but if the banks were profiting then I'm sure the rest of us were losing. Based on their profits, I'd say he's guilty of a greater theft than the Hatton Garden safety deposit box break-in.
No, it really couldn't have effected something that much.
These crimes can be very low impact, so long as only one or two people are doing it. Imagine that someone just stole 1p from everyones bank account that had more than £500.01 credit, just before the interest payment of 3p was to be applied. It wouldn't create an issue for anyone really. No one would loose their homes, no transactions would likely bounce.
But if 100,000 people had the same idea.... Then suddenly it would.
As a result the sentence is high as a deterrent, not because of the impact on the victims.