And a lot more competition for finance jobs.
And massive trading/sales/commission revenue losses for wall street.
And more layoffs on wall street.
Plumbing school?
IT is basically information plumbing, and you don’t need quite as much detergent at the end of the day.
The amount of crawling around on the floor is probably greater as a regular plumber, but not by as much as you’d think.
Much of IT can still be outsourced (not necessarily successfully, but it can be) to third world places. The physical plumbing of places to go to the bathroom must always remain a local trade. 
More detergent, sure.
Does anyone else here think that the punishment is too small? Pay 1.2B and turn yourself from a public fund to a family office? Shouldn’t he be forced to fold? I don’t know how I feel about this, but my general logic is:
Step 1) Make good money legally
Step 2) Invest legal money in shady ways
Step 3) Hire people to invest your shady money in more shady ways
Step 4) Get uber rich
Step 5) Pay 11% of your shady money and walk away with the other 89% and no jail
Compare and contrast Bernie Madoff to this and Bernie got a sentence that doesn’t fit the crime. The only difference is he took for people who have sway with people. SAC just takes it from retail investors, your 401k, etc and gives it to the same people Bernie stole it from.
“Staying out of jail is all that really matters” to Cohen, said Kotz. “He’ll have money left over.”
http://nypost.com/2013/10/29/sac-to-plead-guilty-to-fraud-as-part-of-insider-trading-deal/
Good question lxwarr – the whole issue is that there are probably just a handful of people who are REALLY responsible for the shady stuff, but now everyone has to suffer because of them. Hard to know whether the fine was too little, but it certainly wasn’t too much. It’s a bit scary though to think it could have been bigger; I’m sure there was some sensitivity paid to the fact towards despite SAC’s transgressions, totally running them into the ground with have a really nasty trickle-down effect on the rest of the capital markets since there are some trading days when they account for like 50% of the volume. No joke.
Anyway, here is a joke – Anthony Scarmucci from Skybridge defending Steve Cohen. Come on man. You can’t be serious. http://www.businessinsider.com/scaramucci-defends-sac-capital-2013-10
Is Stephen Cohen going to jail? I’m sure he just paid the SEC a ton of money, and let them buttf*ck his company in exchange for protecting himself and selected individuals. Mr. Cohen himself has not admitted to any wrongdoing. All these settlement negotiations happen behind closed doors, and both sides probably just signed this deal to limit liability and/or avoid a long legal process. One day, we will read about this in some insider written book.
Hacksaw to that SAC!
I’m pretty sure Cohen gets off with no jail. His punishment (besides the big $$ fine) is that he probably cannot manage money at all for some period of time, or forever. But since SAC is pleading guilty, that kills off outside investment. We’ll see where this goes…
And keep in mind this is only at the criminal court. He still has that civil case against him, which this settlement won’t do anything about.
Very different. Madoff point blank said “yes I’m literally a ponzi scam” His investments were faked, reports were faked. etc.
SAC actually had real investments and real gains, but insider trading is tougher to prove. If a doctor smiles a certain way, what’s the body language breaking point to determine that’s inside info? If I say I feel good about earnings from the conversation with the CEO, does that guarantee I got the inside info? Cohen sends an email, “good call on Dell” after selling before it crashes. Does that scream out insider trading?
You can argue that 10 criminal cases against SAC employees and 5 guilt admissions (much higher than normal) could mean the culture of cheating appears to be more prevalent…
Finance will be contracting for at least a generation.
I’m simplying trying to point out that they both took money from people. I understand why you guys don’t like the comparison after reading Itera’s post, because SAC actually invested and insider trading is hard to prove. My point is taking large wins on trades (after market manipulation, insider trading, etc) at the expense of other investors is stealing - just as much as taking it out of someone’s pocket. The only difference I see is that while Madoff took money from tangible people (The Mets, Celebrities, Socialites), SAC takes money from “the market” which trickles down to many different people and firms.
Not arguing with you, lxwarr, as both SAC and Madoff broke the law (or allegedly did). However, as food for thought - consider that many societal institutions are built on the rationale that a big loss for a few people is worse than the same loss spread over many people. Take health insurance for instance. Health insurance prevents individual people from being financially destroyed in the event of a medical incident. However, the cost is that everyone pays taxes or premiums. Ultimately, due to administrative costs, the taxes and premiums will be less than the amount actually paid out to sick people. However, this is still considered to be better than a world with no insurance. Under the same logic, Madoff would indeed be worse than insider traders who only take money from “the market”.
At the same time if Celebrity X’s net worth goes from 50m to 35m it’s not really bad for anyone except the celebrity. They still have enough money to buy ferraris, go to monaco, etc. If SAC takes money from the average investor’s 401k or portfolio and they are now using less money to live (read spending higher % investment than higher networth individuals) they’re not spending it in the local business or major chains. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but the idea that SAC is comparable to a societal institution is a little too much.
I think that it’s just a shame there are no consequences for breaking the law if it turns out that you didn’t harm powerful people and just stole enough money from enough average people. However, I do also agree there are a lot of innocents at that firm that get caught in the crossfire. However, you could position your arguement that these allegations had been around for a while and like the CFA would say you should dissociate from unethical activity. If they could get hired at SAC I’m sure there are other funds who would have taken them. Oh well, the only real victor is the one who gets the best of both worlds because those guys are still going to get fired.
Y’all need to be like me and personally run diligence on the TEAM of people running yo money. My FI PM personally knows me on a number of fronts. We have a business understanding yes, but we also have partied together, I friended his wife on fbook, and I discovered where his daughter attends grade school. Overall it’s a great fiduciary relationship built on trust.
Should anything smelly come out of his compliance office, his kneecaps will be shattered in a hurry, which I’ve jokingly told him over a few drinks (I wasn’t joking though).
Like I said before, you fck with my money, it’s like you fcking with my emotions.
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what up g
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