Political Randomness

[pr0ner]

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/stat ... U9jbw&s=19

[malchior]

NY Times

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday after U.S. prosecutors filed criminal charges, according to a statement by the government of the Bahamas.

“S.B.F.’s arrest followed receipt of formal notification from the United States that it has filed criminal charges against S.B.F. and is likely to request his extradition,” the statement said.

Mr. Bankman-Fried has been under investigation by the Justice Department over the sudden implosion of FTX, a $32 billion company that filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11.

Prosecutors for the Southern District of New York confirmed that Mr. Bankman-Fried had been charged and said an indictment would be unsealed on Tuesday. The charges included wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

[Alefroth]

Look how quickly they can act.

[malchior]

Look how quickly they can act.

That was my first thought but perhaps there was an investigation already underway and they decided to act now. But very possible it could just be the usual act. The DOJ swooping in immediately because rich people lost money.

[Kurth]

Look how quickly they can act.

That was my first thought but perhaps there was an investigation already underway and they decided to act now. But very possible it could just be the usual act. The DOJ swooping in immediately because rich people lost money.

Lots of not rich people also lost money to SBF and his crypto fraud. In fact, I’d be interested to see some numbers in terms of median holding size. The half dozen or so folks I heard interviewed about the FTX collapse lost between $5-40K each.

[malchior]

Look how quickly they can act.

That was my first thought but perhaps there was an investigation already underway and they decided to act now. But very possible it could just be the usual act. The DOJ swooping in immediately because rich people lost money.

Lots of not rich people also lost money to SBF and his crypto fraud. In fact, I’d be interested to see some numbers in terms of median holding size. The half dozen or so folks I heard interviewed about the FTX collapse lost between $5-40K each.

Sure. Still it is remarkable how quickly they moved on what is sure to be a complicated case.

[Alefroth]

I know practically zero about financial crime and crypto exchanges. What has SBF allegedly done wrong, and why is he responsible for the loss of investor's assets?

[Zarathud]

If FTX was diverting customer funds, that’s the #1 prohibition of an exchange. They pledged those assets to back margin trades and speculative trading positions. You can’t take other people’s money to gamble. If true, Sam Bankman-Feid is going to jail for a long long time.

[Unagi]

Educate me.


What is the difference between "take other people’s money to gamble." and someone that "pledged those assets to back margin trades and speculative trading positions."

[Kurth]

If FTX was diverting customer funds, that’s the #1 prohibition of an exchange. They pledged those assets to back margin trades and speculative trading positions. You can’t take other people’s money to gamble. If true, Sam Bankman-Feid is going to jail for a long long time.

As I understand it, this is exactly what he’s accused of doing. Except, there’s another layer: He was using his depositors’ money to prop up Alameda Trading, another company he was connected to and that had substantial ties to FTX.

Total fraud. He is going to jail.

[Alefroth]

Was he only found out because of the collapse, or was the collapse due to what he was doing?

[LordMortis]

If FTX was diverting customer funds, that’s the #1 prohibition of an exchange. They pledged those assets to back margin trades and speculative trading positions. You can’t take other people’s money to gamble. If true, Sam Bankman-Feid is going to jail for a long long time.

As I understand it, this is exactly what he’s accused of doing. Except, there’s another layer: He was using his depositors’ money to prop up Alameda Trading, another company he was connected to and that had substantial ties to FTX.

Total fraud. He is going to jail.

That is what Congress grilled on today and what CNBC has hammering on for the last week. From the sound of it, Alameda and its funding will be his destruction.

[LawBeefaroni]

Was he only found out because of the collapse, or was the collapse due to what he was doing?

A little of both. It started to unravel because of a decline in pricing which accelerated as the unraveling became apparent. Alameda was a hedge fund. Sound familiar?

[Isgrimnur]

Because people know what a “Ponzi” scheme is.

[stessier]

Was he only found out because of the collapse, or was the collapse due to what he was doing?

A little of both. It started to unravel because of a decline in pricing which accelerated as the unraveling became apparent. Alameda was a hedge fund. Sound familiar?

Didn't FTX buy a small piece of Alameda and then Alameda claimed a huge market cap while it invested funds in FTX? Or maybe it was the other way around. A commentor described it as saying you create a billion shares in your house and you sell one share to your wife for $1 and claim your house is worth a billion $ and get credit based on that.

Either way, they were propping each other up and FTX was using people's money to invest in Alameda when it wasn't allowed to.

[Jaymon]

Here is a fairly non crypto bro and non finance bro explanation

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/crypto/sam ... -rcna57582


But, in terms even a crypto bro could understand. He opened a crypto currency "bank". Customers put their money in. He took some of the customers money and spent it on crap. Some of the customers started taking their money out, and suddenly he didn't have money in the bank any more, and the rest of the customers and now screwed.

[LawBeefaroni]

Here is a fairly non crypto bro and non finance bro explanation

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/crypto/sam ... -rcna57582


But, in terms even a crypto bro could understand. He opened a crypto currency "bank". Customers put their money in. He took some of the customers money and spent it on crap. Some of the customers started taking their money out, and suddenly he didn't have money in the bank any more, and the rest of the customers and now screwed.

Madoff, MF Global, etc.

[malchior]

Here is a fairly non crypto bro and non finance bro explanation

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/crypto/sam ... -rcna57582


But, in terms even a crypto bro could understand. He opened a crypto currency "bank". Customers put their money in. He took some of the customers money and spent it on crap. Some of the customers started taking their money out, and suddenly he didn't have money in the bank any more, and the rest of the customers and now screwed.

Madoff, MF Global, etc.

The oldest scam in the banking biz. Gamble with customer money. In his case, I think it's important to note his verbal diarrhea has been a preview of his defense potentially. He is trying to peddle a sad tale about loose financial controls and it simply was that customer money was actually being accidentally deposited in Alameda's coffers. They were the ones who gambled and lost the money. We're supposed to put aside that something like 90% of the profits from Alameda go to...him or that his weirdo (ex-?)girlfriend who lives with him runs Alameda.

[Kraken]

Can politics kill you? Yes, it can.

In one study, researchers concluded that people living in more-conservative parts of the United States disproportionately bore the burden of illness and death linked to COVID-19. The other, which looked at health outcomes more broadly, found that the more conservative a state’s policies, the shorter the lives of working-age people.

The reasons are many, but, increasingly, it is state — and not just federal — policies that have begun to shape the economic, family, environmental, and behavioral circumstances that affect people’s well-being. Some states have expanded their social safety nets, raising minimum wages and offering earned income tax credits while using excise taxes to discourage behaviors — such as smoking — that have deleterious health consequences. Other states have moved in the opposite direction.

No surprise there. But is it really politics, or demographics? Red states tend to be the poorest and least educated, with rudimentary safety nets.

Harvard researchers analyzed data on COVID-19 mortality rates and the stress on hospital intensive care units across all 435 congressional districts from April 2021 to March 2022. They also examined congressional members’ overall voting records, how they voted on four coronavirus relief bills, and whether the governor’s office and legislature of a state were controlled by one party.

The study, published this month in the Lancet Regional Health-Americas, found that the more conservative the voting records of members of Congress and state legislators, the higher the age-adjusted COVID mortality rates — even after taking into account the racial, education, and income characteristics of each congressional district along with vaccination rates.

COVID death rates were 11 percent higher in states with Republican-controlled governments and 26 percent higher in areas where voters lean conservative. Similar results emerged about hospital ICU capacity when the concentration of political power in a state was conservative.

The findings cannot be explained away as features of the economic and social conditions of the people who live in various congressional districts, Krieger said. This is “somehow above and beyond the demographics of the district [that members] represent. It’s suggesting that there is something going on through political processes associated with the political voting patterns of elected officials,” she said.

And you may ask yourself, Well, how did we get here?

From the 1930s to the 1970s, there were major investments to improve the lives of vulnerable people nationwide. The Social Security Act of 1935, Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. Before these federal programs, the nation was a hodgepodge of state programs that varied widely, said University of Washington political scientist Jake Grumbach, a co-author of a study on the effects of state policy on the mortality of working-age adults published in October in the journal PLOS One.

Everyone saw benefits, but the federal legislation from earlier decades “pulled the poorer states up faster,” Grumbach said, adding that “you saw a convergence between states” in terms of health outcomes.

Then came the breakdown of the New Deal coalition. The nationalization of media. Increased money in politics. And the social upheaval of the 1960s and ‘70s —- the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the sexual revolution, environmentalism.

“All of those things contributed to polarization,” Grumbach said, adding that the rupture began “kicking up in the ‘90s” and has really taken hold since 2010, an era that “saw the real radicalization of the Republican Party . . . that culminated with Trump.”

[dbt1949]

What does a congressional censure do?

[Jaymann]

What does a congressional censure do?

They revoke your key to the executive restroom.

[Daehawk]

And you may ask yourself, Well, how did we get here?

[Brian]

Not sure where to put this so, into Random it goes.
Or perhaps, "Let's Go Random!"

The wife and I are currently vacationing at a resort in Puerto Moreles, Mexico. It's a very upscale resort and for those that know my history, yes, it is clothing optional.

Anyway, I shouldn't be, but am kinda surprised at the number of guests at this resort sporting "Let's Go Brandon" gear. Shirts, hats, beer koozies...
The irony is completely lost on them.

Or maybe they see it as the staff, almost entirely Mexican, is subservient to them and that's the way things should be.

I dunno, maybe the staff doesn't care but it just seems rude to me.

[hepcat]

Do you still have that "Dump Trump" sequined loin cloth I made you?

[Brian]

Loin cloth?

Oh shit, I've been using it as a yarmulke.

[hepcat]

[AWS260]

You will be shocked to learn that an incoming member of the House of Representatives is a super-shady grifter. No points for guessing which party.

A New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the United States and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters.

Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the marquee Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. Officials at Baruch College, which Mr. Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year.

Evicted from his rental apartment twice in the past decade, but he recently received a $750,000 salary from his company, which does not appear to exist.

[malchior]

I don't even know how to categorize this story. If you haven't seen it, one of the freshmen GOP House members elected out on Long Island, NY has been exposed as a fraud. Things that would get flagged in a routine background check for any job such as faking a degree and his job history didn't come out until months after the election somehow.

The Democrat and whatever Democratic organizations involved are incompetent. Every seat mattered in the House. How the heck did this get past them? The papers in a major media market didn't do their jobs either. I want to say I don't get it but this is the sort of rot and decline we have to get used to.

NY Times

George Santos, whose election to Congress on Long Island last month helped Republicans clinch a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, built his candidacy on the notion that he was the “full embodiment of the American dream” and was running to safeguard it for others.

His campaign biography amplified his storybook journey: He is the son of Brazilian immigrants, and the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent. By his account, he catapulted himself from a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved more than 2,500 dogs and cats.

But a New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the United States and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters.

Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the marquee Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. Officials at Baruch College, which Mr. Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year.

It only gets worse from there. He has open criminal indictments back in Brazil. He has unknown sources of money. It's a shit show.

[El Guapo]

Man, really the whole state Democratic leadership in NY ought to be replaced.

[malchior]

Man, really the whole state Democratic leadership in NY ought to be replaced.

Considering how badly they screwed up redistricting and how they acted during the NYC mayoral race...yes. The NY State Democratic party is a huge mess.

[Alefroth]

This was still a thing?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... e-garland/

U.S. attorney general moves to end sentencing disparities on crack, powder cocaine
Justice Dept. aims to reverse decades of policy that critics say disproportionately targeted Black and Brown communities by treating crack users more punitively

[Isgrimnur]

I don't even know how to categorize this story. If you haven't seen it, one of the freshmen GOP House members elected out on Long Island, NY has been exposed as a fraud. Things that would get flagged in a routine background check for any job such as faking a degree and his job history didn't come out until months after the election somehow.

The Democrat and whatever Democratic organizations involved are incompetent. Every seat mattered in the House. How the heck did this get past them? The papers in a major media market didn't do their jobs either. I want to say I don't get it but this is the sort of rot and decline we have to get used to.

CNN

GOP Rep.-elect George Santos of New York admitted in two separate interviews on Monday to lying about parts of his resume but claimed that he hasn’t committed any crimes and intends to serve in Congress.
...
“I am not a criminal. Not here, not abroad, in any jurisdiction in the world have I ever committed any crimes,” Santos said in an interview with WABC radio host John Catsimatidis.

“To get down to the nit and gritty, I’m not a fraud. I’m not a criminal who defrauded the entire country and made up this fictional character and ran for Congress. I’ve been around a long time. I mean, a lot of people know me. They know who I am. They’ve done business dealings with me,” he added.

“I’m not going to make excuses for this, but a lot of people overstate in their resumes, or twist a little bit. … I’m not saying I’m not guilty of that,” he said.

Santos also admitted that he never worked directly for the financial firms Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, as he has previously suggested, but claimed that he did do work for them through his company, telling the New York Post it was a “poor choice of words” to say he worked for them.

He also told the Post that he didn’t graduate from any college or university, despite claiming he had degrees from Baruch College and New York University.

“I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume,” he told the Post, adding that he owns up to that and that “we do stupid things in life.”
...
CNN’s KFile also reported last week that claims by Santos that his grandparents “survived the Holocaust” as Ukrainian Jewish refugees from Belgium who changed their surname are contradicted by sources including family trees compiled by genealogy websites, records on Jewish refugees and interviews with multiple genealogists. A lawyer for Santos had declined to comment to CNN.

“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos told the Post. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”

[Defiant]

“I never claimed to be Jewish,[..] I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”

[Holman]

“I never claimed to be Jewish,[..] I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”

And of course various statements have already come forward where Santos describes himself as "a proud American Jew," etc.

But the lying is one thing; the money is another. A guy with no record of business success or pedigree was suddenly in a position to donate more than half a million dollars to his own campaign. He claims the money was his salary from a very shady company he privately owns.

[Max Peck]

He's a serial/habitual/pathological liar. Going out of his way to say “I am not a criminal. Not here, not abroad, in any jurisdiction in the world have I ever committed any crimes” is a red flag signalling that he is, in fact, a criminal.

[Unagi]

He's a serial/habitual/pathological liar. Going out of his way to say “I am not a criminal. Not here, not abroad, in any jurisdiction in the world have I ever committed any crimes” is a red flag signalling that he is, in fact, a criminal.

Yeah, that stood out like a huge red flag to me too. Not even that one night in Barbados!

[hepcat]

Man, really the whole state Democratic leadership in NY ought to be replaced.

I’m surprised they didn’t lose to Deez Nuts as well.

[Daehawk]

Are they sure he's not from the Jersey shore area? Cause I can hear an accent in just the text of his talking.

[hepcat]

You can’t hear accents in the written word, guv’nor!

[Alefroth]

Greta Thunberg burns down misogynist influencer Andrew Tate in a tweet, who then goes on to inadvertently dox himself in a pathetic clapback video and gets picked up by Romanian authorities on human trafficking and rape charges. What a great storyline to end the year.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64122628

edit: The claim that he gave himself away in the video doesn't seem to have merit.