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Yeah, the old "it was just a handful of wrongdoers, while most of us were playing by the rules, now we're being punished" bit. I've been around long enough to know better. Sorry. Heck, playing by the rules isn't good enough, especially when companies write their own rules through their paid off politicians.
28 million companies all have the politicians on the payroll? Damn I guess I missed my payment and payoff from my representatives.
so you want to be realistic, how many mortgage companies actually had people convicted of committing a crime in origination? How many energy companies were caught cooking the books? How many telecom companies? How many accounting firms were found to be complicit in the whole thing.
Let me put it this way, let's say 2 restaurants in your area were caught using a faulty refrigerator and were making people sick, while the health inspector for 1 was caught taking bribes, and the other health inspector was going home and playing video games as opposed to doing inspections. Now who is at fault? Personally I say both the restaurants and the health inspectors.
Now in this scenario lets say the owners of the restaurants had multiple problems with their food handling process and their kitchen systems, and so the got a nice large fine which shut down their business. Fair enough right? I would not have a problem with that, but that is not where it ended.
Now lets say a politician representing that area of your state heard about it, and needed something to get elected on since he had done basically nothing in his 2 years at the state house, and he wanted to make a name for himself. So he passes a new law that every restaurant in the state has to purchase a brand new refrigeration system, new stove tops, and hire consultants to come in every 2 months to make sure everything was clean and working properly, and to top it off instead of having quarterly inspections they now have inspections every month. So in other words every restaurant in the state is paying a huge cost due to 2 places having bad standards.
Of course some restaurants cannot afford these new upgrades and fees for consultants so they are forced to shut down, the chain/corporate stores though can afford the costs and immediately upgrade, the restaurants that could not afford to operate any longer have just laid off all their staff, so now their are trained chefs/cooks, waitstaff, managers, bartenders, and even dishwashers floating all around the state, and the remaining restaurants know it, so they lower their pay a little bit knowing there is staff waiting to take the job if it opens up.
Now of course to add to it, everybody blames those small restaurants, and stop eating at those places, only going to large chain corporate restaurants, causing even more restaurants to close, and allowing those corporate restaurants to hire their pick of employees for even cheaper and causing the mid and lower level to struggle to get jobs. Now who is to blame? The corporate restaurants for doing what they promise their shareholders? All the restaurants who had additional costs and are now forced to cut pay and costs as they struggle to cover the new regulations? the politician who overreacted and got votes from it? The general public who believe the politician that all the restaurants were bad? The media who got behind the politician? Tell me who do you blame?
Now you sitting there saying that nothing like that could happen? You may be right with restaurants, but did you know that in the state of Colorado 42,000 people were employed by mortgage brokers in 2006? Out of those less then 150 of those people were convicted of wrong doing in the mortgage business. Thats right less then 0.35% not even 1 half of 1 percent did anything illegal despite the witch hunt and hundreds of thousands of audited files of mortgage brokers, and it was that way across the country. yet now mortgage brokers employ less then 10% of what they did just 7 years ago, their costs of staying in compliance have climbed through the roof, going from what used to cost me a $2400 a year retainer for a lawyer and an errors and omissions policy for $500 total for my company up to what is now my company paying $7200 for a lawyer, $700 for insurance per loan officer, licensing costs of about $300 per loan officer, continuing education of about $200 a year per loan officer, in other words the total cost to keep my office and the loan officers that once worked for me employed today would be right around $28,500 a year for what once cost me $2900 a year. even still with all the new regulations, many in the public will still not do business with those small mortgage brokers, instead insisting on only using large national lenders, as they were not to blame according to the media who were gathering advertising dollars from them and the politicians who were taking their donations.
Now you want to ***** about greedy corporations, yet ignore the fact that it was less then 1/2 of 1 percent that knew anything about what was happening in the corporations that committed horrible acts. A handful of people in Enron, Worldcom, TYCO and all the other huge scandalous corporations even had an idea of what was going on, and their competition had no idea either and did nothing to compete with those who were doing wrong. Yet those people who did wrong ended up in jail or committing suicide in most cases, why? Was it because they were breaking the laws? So if the laws on the books would have been enforced by those overseeing these companies at the SEC, what would have been the result? So why do we need more laws if the SEC employees would have done their jobs?
Yet blame it on all the companies who have never been shown to have done anything wrong, after all 1/2 of 1% is enough to show how evil all those mean corporations are.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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You're defining "wrong" as doing things that are illegal. Sorry, that is missing the point entirely.
You're also mixing up people that were convicted of doing things illegally and using that as evidence that only that percent were doing things illegally. Again, missing the point.
Just because a company is doing things legally, that IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. That is a minimal standard.
The reason we have so many regulations is companies consistently behaved in a manner so short-sighted that it nearly destroyed the country and in a manner so sickeningly amoral it disgraces themselves and the entire country leading to an uproar to legislatively put a stop to it. If companies don't like regulations stop acting like abject scum.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
41,938 posts, read 36,940,305 times
Reputation: 40635
Quote:
Originally Posted by MSchemist80
The reason we have so many regulations is companies consistently behaved in a manner so short-sighted that it nearly destroyed the country and in a manner so sickeningly amoral it disgraces themselves and the entire country leading to an uproar to legislatively put a stop to it. If companies don't like regulations stop acting like abject scum.
bingo
I have never once, when reviewing the require site restoration of coal fields in KY found a company doing things the right way. The legal way? Yes, they acted legally (the majority of the time). The ethically correct way? No. Never saw it. It wasn't economically advantageous of them. Things were better after some of the Carter era mining reforms, but still not what would be considered ethically acceptable. Why did they improve then? More regulations. They wouldn't have done so otherwise.
You're defining "wrong" as doing things that are illegal. Sorry, that is missing the point entirely.
You're also mixing up people that were convicted of doing things illegally and using that as evidence that only that percent were doing things illegally. Again, missing the point.
Just because a company is doing things legally, that IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. That is a minimal standard.
Who is decided what is right and wrong? You? Me? 10 years ago the majority of the public thought it was terrible idea to let gay people marry, is that right or wrong today?
Quote:
Originally Posted by MSchemist80
The reason we have so many regulations is companies consistently behaved in a manner so short-sighted that it nearly destroyed the country and in a manner so sickeningly amoral it disgraces themselves and the entire country leading to an uproar to legislatively put a stop to it. If companies don't like regulations stop acting like abject scum.
More regulations? Once again why did all those who were behind the breaking of the rules and acting amorally end up in jail? Could it be because they broke the regulations that were already in place? You cannot go to jail because some of the public do not agree with your actions if you could we would all be in jail. You have to break the laws, yet the fact that those who broke the law ended up in jail for breaking those laws is ignored, those who were in power to enforce the rules did not end up in jail, and in fact just added more regulations and they are praised.
So answer me this, why is it okay for those who were in charge of overseeing the old laws allowed to add more rules, without having to answer for not enforcing the rules that were already in place? Why are the new rules they added being praised, when they have already shown they will not enforce the rules for everybody?
I have never once, when reviewing the require site restoration of coal fields in KY found a company doing things the right way. The legal way? Yes, they acted legally (the majority of the time). The ethically correct way? No. Never saw it. It wasn't economically advantageous of them. Things were better after some of the Carter era mining reforms, but still not what would be considered ethically acceptable. Why did they improve then? More regulations. They wouldn't have done so otherwise.
Once again who is to decide ethics? The fact is the public benefited from cheap coal, the governments benefited from tax revenue, companies benefited from cheap supplies, and everybody found it perfectly acceptable at the time. You can choose to have a problem with it now, but you are sitting in a house heated by oil & gas, using electricity that may very well be powered by coal pulled from the coal fields, and complaining how the companies are immoral. If you do not like the way they do business, then quit buying their product, quit using the services their taxes pay for, and then you can tell us all how immoral we all are for supporting their company.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
41,938 posts, read 36,940,305 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jwiley
Once again who is to decide ethics? The fact is the public benefited from cheap coal, the governments benefited from tax revenue, companies benefited from cheap supplies, and everybody found it perfectly acceptable at the time. You can choose to have a problem with it now, but you are sitting in a house heated by oil & gas, using electricity that may very well be powered by coal pulled from the coal fields, and complaining how the companies are immoral. If you do not like the way they do business, then quit buying their product, quit using the services their taxes pay for, and then you can tell us all how immoral we all are for supporting their company.
In fact that isn't my situation at all in regards to my energy use. But way to make more incorrect assumptions.
And no, not everyone found it perfectly acceptable at the time. Not at all true. But go on keep believing that. The powers that be, the government, big business, and the people that care about the economic bottom line more than anything else found it acceptable. That wasn't and isn't everyone.
Yeah, the old "it was just a handful of wrongdoers, while most of us were playing by the rules, now we're being punished" bit. I've been around long enough to know better. Sorry. Heck, playing by the rules isn't good enough, especially when companies write their own rules through their paid off politicians. Rules and laws are MINIMUM ethical standards, good corporate citizens should be holding themselves to a higher standard if they don't want more regulations. But how often do we see banks, natural resource companies, etc do that? No, its about profit and just keeping on the legal side of the rules they write for themselves. Not good enough.
I've had to listen that to that tripe before, too. "Oh, the Housing Bubble was caused by just a few bad apples..." right... which explains why nearly every bank was involved in it and you couldn't throw a stone without hitting a crooked loan company, a crooked banker, or a crooked borrower - and they all happily enjoyed their liar loans with everything rated "AAA" by the worthless, paid-off rating companies. Then, everything crashes, they walk away rich, and the mess is swept under the rug with no justice. If it was only caused by "a few bad apples" we wouldn't have shelled out trillions of dollars to prop up the entire banking industry - and keep their executives well paid, of course!
Even a child could have figured out that something was wrong with houses doubling in price in a few years while incomes remained flat to declining, and then toss in the crazy liar loans that everyone was making and it's obvious that nearly everyone was in on it. But, who cares - as long as somebody makes money!
Of course, the fall-back excuse is, "Well, nothing they did was technically illegal." Not only is that itself questionable - given how little investigation has been done, I seriously doubt the law was followed in many cases - more importantly, when crooks write the laws and then exploit them to bleed an economy dry, what type of suckers stand around clucking about how okay it all is because "it was technically legal." Yes, let's let criminally minded sociopaths write our laws so they can steal legally... that'll work out just fine.
But who are we to decide what's right or wrong? Clearly, it's okay to steal trillions of dollars from the economy, right? Oh, wait - stealing is universally agreed upon to be wrong, and We The People have not only the right but the obligation to reign in lunatics at the top who think it's okay to bleed our nation dry.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
41,938 posts, read 36,940,305 times
Reputation: 40635
Quote:
Originally Posted by jwiley
Who is decided what is right and wrong? You? Me? 10 years ago the majority of the public thought it was terrible idea to let gay people marry, is that right or wrong today?
Majorities should never be allowed to vote on civil rights. It was wrong to deny marriage to gays then as it is now. I've never known anyone that a thoughtful, educated person to think otherwise.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jwiley
More regulations? Once again why did all those who were behind the breaking of the rules and acting amorally end up in jail? Could it be because they broke the regulations that were already in place? You cannot go to jail because some of the public do not agree with your actions if you could we would all be in jail. You have to break the laws, yet the fact that those who broke the law ended up in jail for breaking those laws is ignored, those who were in power to enforce the rules did not end up in jail, and in fact just added more regulations and they are praised.
So answer me this, why is it okay for those who were in charge of overseeing the old laws allowed to add more rules, without having to answer for not enforcing the rules that were already in place? Why are the new rules they added being praised, when they have already shown they will not enforce the rules for everybody?
Of course they didn't end up in jail. The politicians won't touch their corporate masters.
Regarding your second statement, I have mixed feelings. At least perhaps if the threat of larger fines are in place (even if their not sufficiently enforced) corporates might pretend to do the right thing. Lord knows the only thing corporations seem to understand is the almighty dollar. They will simply do their cost benefit analysis of their policies with the larger fine structure being in the cost side of the equation. (And why tort reform is such a horrid idea, we need more threats of lawsuits against big business, not less).
But you're correct, the more regulations don't do enough, especially the water downed regulations we get from the big business owned politicians. We're screwed as a society as long as Citizens United and other such insane premises are in effect.
More regulations? Once again why did all those who were behind the breaking of the rules and acting amorally end up in jail? Could it be because they broke the regulations that were already in place?
What they did was disgusting but not illegal. They cannot go to jail because ex-post facto laws are against the constitution. But in response to their actions we can pass more laws for the future. Companies have legal department to tell them where the loopholes are and how sleazy they can act without getting arrested. All the same it hurts the country and puts a shame on us. It is a shame as I usually don't like excess regulation but so much of the stuff I've seen from companies has to be put a stop to.
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