Re: [A-List] Operation Restoring Investor Confidence: Merrill-Spitzer Settlement

["Anne Williamson" <annewilliamson@xxxxxxx>]

Sabri,

I am not arguing that the govt interceded and caused ML's fraud.  I
am arguing that restitution should be paid.  What on earth is the sense
of putting non-violent offenders in prisons, which taxpayers must build
and maintain?  Far better to leave those people free to work and earn
restitution payments to their victims.  (I am speaking of nonviolent crime
only.)  So the SEC gets a $100M for ML having defrauded investors?
The penalty for the crime is a joke, a $100M for a license to go on
stealing is nothing.  As far as whose govt this is, it ain't mine, and I
don't
believe its yours either.  It's theirs, they make this clear to us daily
with
their unending anti-Constitutional violations and special privileges.  Want
to fix social security?  Then throw the congressional crowd back into the
pool with the rest of the plebs....as is they have a super-exclusive,
richly-
rewarded pension program that is totally sequestered from social security.
And that's just one example.

Anne

----- Original Message -----
From: Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: ALIST <a-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2002 6:24 PM
Subject: [A-List] Operation Restoring Investor Confidence: Merrill-Spitzer
Settlement


> Anne writes:
>
> > Here's an excellent example of state-supplied
> > justice; the state will take in $100M in fines,
> > the perpetrators will have suffered a slap on the
> > wrist and have been set free to steal again, and
> > the victims?  Zip, nada, nichevo, zero, absolutely
> > nothing!  -A.
>
> Don't you think your conclusion from this information is flawed
> Anne? What we are observing here is a market failure, as our
> neoclassical economists call it, where the pursuit of
> self-interest led to a socially undesirable outcome: outright
> fraud and lies to the so-called investors. This did not happen
> because the US government placed heavy restrictions on the free
> operation of markets. On the contrary, most of the previously
> existing restrictions were removed and this is the outcome.
>
> Whose government is this, after all?
>
> Sabri
>
>
>
>