[email protected] (Thomas Kern) writes: > They did not get quite the best thief that money could buy. Maybe if > they were more concerned with quality rather than sheer profit, they > might have gotten a more honest reliable programmer. > > If they still have that opening, I can come up with a team of > programmers for that amount, all considered very trustworthy by > certain government agencies.
considering lots of the other stuff going on ... absolutely honesty might not be a top requirement ... there was fair amount of obfuscation and misdirection in the financial mess about computer software being involved ... until the stories about business people were directing the risk & computer people to fiddle the inputs until the business people got the desired outputs (GIGO). there is past folklore about large financial institution in manhatten outsourcing y2k remediation to lowest bidder ... they didn't find out until later that it was front for a criminal organization there has been some amount about high-frequency trading with huge amounts of other peoples money (available at zero or near zero cost) ... being able to rack up fraction of percent profit every day ... resulting in enormous annual profits. some of it may have also involved illegal naked short selling (could almost be considered a form of pump&dump ... but sort of in reverse). some of related discussion in linkedin fraud groups: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#43 WikiLeaks' Wall Street Bombshell http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010p.html#48 WikiLeaks' Wall Street Bombshell http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#24 Ernst & Young sued for fraud over Lehman I mentioned in the above that prior to NSCC & DTC merging, I had been asked by NSCC to look at improving integrity of trading transactions. After putting some amount of effort into the project, it was called off with some comment that a side-effect of the integrity work would have been significantly improved transparency and visibility (apparently not a highly desired quality in the industry). The DTCC wiki page mentions fight over making transaction details public ... which could possibly be used to show illegal naked short selling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Trust_&_Clearing_Corporation one of referenced posts includes quote from 2008 KPMG survey that found 60% of employees in banking and finance industry personally observed misconduct that "could cause a significant loss of public trust if discovered" (a rate possibly twice that of other industries). misc. other posts in the discussions http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#28 Ernst & Young sued for fraud over Lehman http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#29 Ernst & Young sued for fraud over Lehman http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010q.html#31 Ernst & Young sued for fraud over Lehman -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
