[HN Gopher] JPMorgan Admits to Widespread Recordkeeping Failures...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       JPMorgan Admits to Widespread Recordkeeping Failures, Agrees to Pay
       $125M
        
       Author : DocFeind
       Score  : 167 points
       Date   : 2021-12-17 18:01 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.sec.gov)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.sec.gov)
        
       | VWWHFSfQ wrote:
       | So the question is how much money they concealed by those
       | widespread recordkeeping failures. I'm assuming it's more than
       | 125 mil
        
         | onemoresoop wrote:
         | You bet, 125 mil is just cost of doing business.
        
         | alexfromapex wrote:
         | I'd like to know why they get these small slaps on the wrist
         | too. $125 million for them is like a person with average wealth
         | being fined $20.
        
           | AlexTWithBeard wrote:
           | JPMorgan's annual net income is about $30bn. $125 million is
           | roughly 0.5%, which is equivalent to $500 fine for a person
           | making $100k per year.
           | 
           | It's probably still a slap, but I'd say a pretty significant
           | one.
        
             | munk-a wrote:
             | Proportion of revenue is a bad measure for this reason -
             | costs don't scale proportionally. The rent, food and
             | utilities you're siphoning out of that 100k along with all
             | the incidental costs on top of it don't really apply evenly
             | as revenue increases. As someone making right around 100k
             | I'd say that 500$ is a big enough penalty that I'll notice
             | it but if it was a one-off (like this one was) then I'll
             | shrug and eat it. For instance if I were getting my
             | bathroom remodeled and wanted to install some nifty
             | european shower head that's against code... I'd probably be
             | alright with the 500$ surcharge.
        
               | AlexTWithBeard wrote:
               | Applying human measures to corporations is a bit of a
               | stretch in any case.
               | 
               | That being said, as a government you want to milk this
               | cow, not slaughter it.
        
         | AlexTWithBeard wrote:
         | I cannot say exactly for this one, but with the LIBOR scandal
         | numbers were probably not that high.
         | 
         | LIBOR was probably manipulated by 1 basis point (0.01%), give
         | or take. Even with $1bn notional deal, which is a very large
         | one, the difference would be $25k for 3 month payment.
         | 
         | I mean, well, it's still pretty good money, but it's not like
         | they made a couple of trillions and only paid a mere half-a-
         | billion in fine.
        
           | lordnacho wrote:
           | I traded swaps during the period that this was happening.
           | Keep in mind there's a LIBOR settlement every day. Also,
           | there would be non-linear products on it, too. I'm not sure
           | about 1B being a very large amount either. I've heard of
           | individual traders who swung a dv01 of $20M.
        
             | cm2187 wrote:
             | And actually what matters isn't the daily libor fixing, it
             | is the fixings used for the future expiries, 4 times a
             | year. I believe that's the ones that were heavily
             | manipulated (by some faction of a basis point but on huge
             | notionals), because you hedge with a single future
             | exposures over a number of dates.
             | 
             | It is rather the impact on every day borrowers that was
             | tiny. First they would have to be unlucky enough to have
             | their libor fixing falling on one of these 4 dates, even if
             | it did, the impact would likely be a rounding error.
        
               | lordnacho wrote:
               | I'm not so sure. I sat on both futures and swaps desks.
               | Certainly a lot went through the futures on those 4
               | dates, but the swaps business was OTC, settling every
               | day. I could easily see someone with varying settlements
               | pushing it conveniently their way every day. Each
               | customer would lose a little bit but put it down to
               | noise.
               | 
               | Interestingly I also did FX and people got done on that
               | as well. There's this daily fixing that's used for a
               | variety of products, and a big player like a bank would
               | have a daily delta that would be very nice to nudge the
               | right way each day. You could actually see at 1630 each
               | day that something odd was going on, and there'd be a
               | rumor to go along with it on the squawk box.
        
           | delaaxe wrote:
           | I can't believe for one second that LIBOR was only
           | manipulated for one bip at a time.
        
             | bidirectional wrote:
             | Well that was the case. Multi-bp LIBOR moves are pretty
             | rare outside of exigent circumstances and the mechanics of
             | doing so would be pretty tricky given that outlier
             | submissions are thrown out. Wilmott had a good article
             | recently on the mechanics of the manipulation [1].
             | 
             | [1]: https://wilmott.com/the-libor-fix/
        
             | cm2187 wrote:
             | There was two distinct manipulations.
             | 
             | The first one occured before the crisis. Swap traders
             | asking money market traders to round their libor submission
             | "the right way". That number got averaged across multiple
             | banks, and the impact on the final fixing was likely of the
             | order of a basis point or perhaps a fraction (per the
             | regulator's report). 1 basis point may be small, but is a
             | lot of money to an individual swap trader given the sort of
             | position they must have had on libor futures (and that's
             | money to the trader, not necessary to the rest of the bank
             | who may have a net position the other way).
             | 
             | The second manipulation occured at the height of the
             | financial crisis and is of a different nature. Because
             | banks contributions to libor fixing were public, investors
             | were infering from the submissions whether a bank was
             | struggling to fund itself. At the height of the post-lehman
             | panic, some banks decided to lower their submission to not
             | look weak. In this case the order of magnitude would be
             | much higher, in the 10s of basis points. You could argue
             | the banks had a financial gain, but not from the direct
             | impact on libor (it wasn't clear what their position was,
             | though banks tend to be typically net receiver of libor),
             | rather from the perception of not being in distress to
             | investors.
        
           | mcguire wrote:
           | How many $1B deals did JPMorgan have?
        
             | AlexTWithBeard wrote:
             | My guess would be that their USD rates book is about
             | $10trn.
             | 
             | That being said, pretty much by nature of the deal the book
             | is hedged - precisely to limit the exposure to LIBOR
             | movements.
        
         | bidirectional wrote:
         | The problem is that it's basically impossible to know. I'd
         | imagine the vast majority of infractions were just employees
         | improperly communicating privileged information via Whatsapp or
         | whatever, without gaining any real advantage by doing so.
        
           | munk-a wrote:
           | The government decided that these record keeping failures
           | were serious enough to warrant a hundred million dollar fine.
           | We've all seen how fines lean toward slaps on the wrist so I
           | would be pretty hesitant to assume the multi-million dollar
           | one here was just because someone was DMing something that
           | needed to be sent over a secure channel.
        
             | nickff wrote:
             | > _" The government decided that these record keeping
             | failures were serious enough to warrant a hundred million
             | dollar fine."_
             | 
             | The SEC likes to go after these sorts of settlements, as
             | they can post large dollar values without having to prove
             | any actual harm. On the other side, these settlements are
             | so common that they're just a cost of doing business,
             | basically a tax.
        
       | paulpauper wrote:
       | $125m is a like parking ticket for them
        
       | mcguire wrote:
       | In Sep. 2021, JPMorgan had $738.57B cash on hand.
        
         | hammeiam wrote:
         | Well now they've only got $738.45B on hand, that'll show 'em!
        
       | xyst wrote:
       | $125M can be found in-between the couch cushions at JPM offices
        
       | vamega wrote:
       | I think this practice is widespread in finance. I'll not be
       | surprised if other firms get fined next!
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | samaman wrote:
       | You'd have thought that that Quorum blockchain would prevent such
       | things..
        
       | evanpw wrote:
       | A company being fined for failing to surveil employees' personal
       | email and text messages would get very different comments here if
       | it wasn't a bank.
        
         | AlexandrB wrote:
         | I read the below more as the company failing to enforce a
         | policy of employees using business accounts/devices for
         | business communication rather than the company failing to
         | surveil private accounts. Basically, employees should be using
         | "official" communication channels that can be audited for
         | business communication and save WhatsApp for friends and
         | family.
         | 
         | > As described in the SEC's order, JPMS admitted that from at
         | least January 2018 through November 2020, its employees often
         | communicated about securities business matters on their
         | personal devices, using text messages, WhatsApp, and personal
         | email accounts. None of these records were preserved by the
         | firm as required by the federal securities laws. JPMS further
         | admitted that these failures were firm-wide and that practices
         | were not hidden within the firm. Indeed, supervisors, including
         | managing directors and other senior supervisors - the very
         | people responsible for implementing and ensuring compliance
         | with JPMS's policies and procedures - used their personal
         | devices to communicate about the firm's securities business.
        
         | nerdponx wrote:
         | False equivalence.
         | 
         | > its employees often communicated about securities business
         | matters on their personal devices, using text messages,
         | WhatsApp, and personal email accounts. None of these records
         | were preserved by the firm as required by the federal
         | securities laws. JPMS further admitted that these failures were
         | firm-wide and that practices were not hidden within the firm.
         | Indeed, supervisors, including managing directors and other
         | senior supervisors - the very people responsible for
         | implementing and ensuring compliance with JPMS's policies and
         | procedures - used their personal devices to communicate about
         | the firm's securities business.
        
         | mathattack wrote:
         | They have to do this by las. Part is to "run the tapes" is
         | there is a customer disagreement, and part is records keeping
         | for compliance purposes. (Anti-Money Laundering, making sure
         | transactions have economic substance, etc) In the aftershock of
         | 2008 it came to light that much of the illegal behavior
         | happened when people switched to personal devices.
        
       | odiroot wrote:
       | I would also like to pay just, let's say, 10EUR whenever I break
       | the law.
        
         | kahrl wrote:
         | ...by stealing 20EUR.
        
       | ushakov wrote:
       | i bet they're still in profit
        
       | dgs_sgd wrote:
       | So as per the article "JPMS further admitted that these failures
       | were firm-wide and that practices were not hidden within the
       | firm". This is a failure that goes all the way to the top. Yet no
       | one in leadership is held accountable? Can individuals not be
       | charged for knowingly enabling this?
        
         | p0wn wrote:
         | We're not living in a democracy. We're living in an oligarchy.
         | Of course those at the top won't get punished. That class never
         | gets punished. Who else is gonna fund all those old decrepit
         | bickerers in Washington?
        
           | CoastalCoder wrote:
           | If we're being serious, I'd say we're living in a hybrid
           | system with competing sources of power: oligarchy, indirect
           | democracy, direct democracy, guild system, etc.
        
             | meheleventyone wrote:
             | To be fair you can describe most governments that way, even
             | the totalitarian. It's always a mix but the interesting
             | question is the current distribution which is what I
             | believe the OP was trying to voice.
        
             | emodendroket wrote:
             | I agree, though the relative strength of these factions
             | seems different from a few decades ago.
        
               | triactual wrote:
               | So oligarchy-dominant?
        
               | datavirtue wrote:
               | I saw a documentary on Putin's rise to power that
               | included (others do not) coverage of how the oligarchs in
               | Russia (seven of them) basically set or determined how
               | Putin would govern. They wanted a democracy friendly to
               | their interests (capitalism) as the post-Yelstin era was
               | beginning. It was quite revealing how Putin was subject
               | to them and it reminded me a lot of America and our
               | leaders and how they cowar to business leaders (and
               | Trump's association with Russians). They agreed to stay
               | out of politics if Putin stayed out of commerce. The
               | oligarchs then divided up various industries among
               | themselves.
               | 
               | In the end, it left the impression on me that Putin is
               | just a player or a puppet who owes a lot of people.
        
             | tigerlily wrote:
             | Sounds much like a plutocracy.
        
             | jimmyearlcarter wrote:
             | I think thats fair. I mean we live in a system of systems,
             | and there are various forms of organization at each and
             | every level. However, if we're being serious, the most
             | important systems (health care, military, mass media,
             | telecom,...) that effect each and every one of us are
             | obviously oligarchic, formed in part by massive
             | authoritarian constructs (modern corporations).
        
           | bush-bby wrote:
           | Please don't take this personally, but fuck I hate this
           | painfully common assertion. We most absolutely live in a
           | democracy. However sometimes it's easy to get confused as to
           | what that means. Democrats (as opposed to autocrats or
           | oligarchs) must behave in ways that will get them the votes
           | they need to stay in power. Is there anyone in particular
           | enabling this? No. If there was, they either would not get
           | re-elected, or constituents have decided that this is not
           | enough a transgression to vote for someone else. Maybe a case
           | could be made for lack of knowledge or high ignorance amongst
           | the common voter contributing to poor outcome of democratic
           | processes, but to say we don't have a democracy is
           | irrational. No one forces you to vote for anyone. You don't
           | like someone in power? Get rid of them! You can do that
           | here...but unfortunately one of the benefits of democracy, is
           | you need a group to enact change and policy, not an
           | autocratic individual.
        
             | Guest42 wrote:
             | By singling out Democrats, are you claiming that the Koch
             | brothers and Sheldon Adelson haven't influenced the
             | government in ways that are beyond the scope of what
             | citizens should be capable of?
        
               | TchoBeer wrote:
               | GP didn't mean Democrats as in the party, but rather
               | Democrats as in the people in charge under a democracy,
               | i.e. Democrats as opposed to Oligarchs
        
               | netizen-936824 wrote:
               | They mean "democrat" as the people who practice
               | democracy, not the US political party
        
               | KiranRao0 wrote:
               | While I can't be sure, I believe the commenter is
               | referring to "democrats" (an actor in a democratic
               | government) and not "Democrats" (actors within a
               | political party in the US). Correct me if I'm wrong.
        
               | nlittlepoole wrote:
               | Their influence largely comes from their ability to buy
               | media timethrough PACs. Direct contributions to
               | politicians is still highly regulated. You could argue
               | that they can wield influence by threatning current
               | politicans to fund the campaigns of competitors but at
               | the end of the day this still happens through PACs buying
               | media campaigns.
               | 
               | The influence of the Koch's or Adelson is largely hinged
               | on the fact that Americans don't use critical thinking
               | when consuming their media. Rather than trying to find a
               | way to wiggle around the first ammendment when it comes
               | to spending on speech, why not try to build an electorate
               | capable of critical thinking? If you don't think that's
               | possible, then what's the point of any of this?
        
             | newbie789 wrote:
             | > Is there anyone in particular enabling this? No.
             | 
             | I'm curious as to what exactly this sentence refers to.
             | 
             | If (for example) Jamie Dimon isn't an oligarch, why is he
             | essentially immune to real consequences? His ability to
             | break the law with impunity is... an emergent behavior of a
             | healthy democracy?
        
             | sumedh wrote:
             | > I hate this painfully common assertion. We most
             | absolutely live in a democracy.
             | 
             | > Get rid of them! You can do that here
             | 
             | No you cannot, the US has gerrymandering which makes it
             | very difficult to get rid of politicians in local/state
             | races.
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | xwolfi wrote:
         | Chances are, the people you're thinking of, the very top, may
         | very well have proof in writing they require employees not to
         | talk abt the business on whatsapp.
         | 
         | I work in the same kind of company and Im baffled, I wouldnt
         | dare say the name of a client on whatsapp and sometimes the
         | regulated chat system is so inconvenient I have to use some
         | personal device but we usually do it to "ping" people so they
         | then go to the recorded system.
         | 
         | And that they seem to have used it for decision taking, not
         | just random discussion at the bar, means every low level
         | employee who ever gave a formal report or raised a formal
         | question without resending by email is wrong.
         | Every.low.level.employee, yes.
         | 
         | Burn the top all you want, but at this point maybe the SEC
         | should directly go to our companies fucking explain people that
         | we must record all steps in decision making, not just for
         | discovering fraud but to protect ourselves and our clients from
         | suspicion in the first place.
         | 
         | Shocked that it happened at JPM. The SEC is also wrong to say:
         | "Indeed, supervisors, including managing directors and other
         | senior supervisors - the very people responsible for
         | implementing and ensuring compliance with JPMS's policies and
         | procedures "!! No, EVEYONE is responsible, from the dimwit
         | intern making coffee to the ferrari driving MD, record keeping
         | is bank 101, this makes me boil for some reason. I d be such a
         | pain in the ass of a big boss if I saw that where I work.
        
           | Talanes wrote:
           | > The SEC is also wrong to say: "Indeed, supervisors,
           | including managing directors and other senior supervisors -
           | the very people responsible for implementing and ensuring
           | compliance with JPMS's policies and procedures "!! No,
           | EVEYONE is responsible,
           | 
           | And you were born knowing this, or did someone have to model
           | the proper behavior for you first?
        
           | marcellus23 wrote:
           | > Chances are, the people you're thinking of, the very top,
           | may very well have proof in writing they require employees
           | not to talk abt the business on whatsapp.
           | 
           | So because the bosses have a rule written down somewhere,
           | that absolves them of the responsibility to make sure their
           | employees are actually following it?
        
         | nus07 wrote:
         | What are the odds that the profits from these recordkeeping
         | failures exceeded $125M? If you did this as an individual you
         | would be in prison. As a corporation like JPMorgan a fine as a
         | slap on the wrist.
        
           | datavirtue wrote:
           | Yeah, they'll just pay it and head to the Christmas party.
           | Quick email to someone in accounting to do a wire transfer.
        
       | teawrecks wrote:
       | Everyone's complaining that they only had to pay $125m, but what
       | about the part where they had to "implement robust improvements
       | to its compliance policies and procedures"?! The amount of
       | "recordkeeping failures" this will prevent in the future is
       | priceless!
        
         | JaimeThompson wrote:
         | They should put their enhanced record keeping on the
         | blockchain!
        
       | davesque wrote:
       | When the government imposes such pitiful fines, it really comes
       | across more as seeming like they just want an extra cut every
       | once in a while. It doesn't feel at all like they care if JP
       | Morgan ends up doing things any differently.
        
         | bshipp wrote:
         | I'm glad this point has been made. $125 million is pretty much
         | the bonus allotment for the janitorial staff at JC Morgan.
        
           | lars-b2018 wrote:
           | I agree. These types of fines are relatively small potatoes
           | on the earnings that occurred during this time. Having worked
           | for a large US bank for a large portion of my career,
           | everyone is typically trained yearly in an online course that
           | covers records management practices and what to do. I know
           | this because I was accountable for records management
           | practices at the bank. The other question is, what happened
           | internally? How come internal audit didn't catch this back in
           | 2018-2019 time period?
           | 
           | At the end of the day, it's often more profitable, and in the
           | shareholder's best interest to say I am sorry, vs. actually
           | follow policy. At the end of the day, regardless if the
           | C-level knew about it or not, they are accountable. And even
           | if one of the largest banks in the US has to pay a relatively
           | paltry fine like this, the CEO and the management chains that
           | were participatory in this behavior should forgo bonuses.
           | That will change things. Otherwise, this behavior will
           | continue.
        
         | datavirtue wrote:
         | Agreed. There is never a whiff of mention about revoking a
         | banking charter.
        
       | lmg643 wrote:
       | am i the only person looking at this as - where is the business
       | opportunity here?
       | 
       | silicon valley created all these amazing tools for communication,
       | people want to use them, and they don't play nicely with business
       | requirements
       | 
       | almost like the only safe tool is email because it is so old they
       | know how to handle it.
       | 
       | seems like an opportunity for better solutions?
        
       | mensetmanusman wrote:
       | Wups, sorry about that, here is a week's earnings.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | kyruzic wrote:
         | Its not even a single day's earnings. They had a net income of
         | 11.6 Billion in Q3 2021 which averages out 127 million a day
         | (including weekends).
         | 
         | https://www.jpmorganchase.com/content/dam/jpmc/jpmorgan-chas...
        
       | goopthink wrote:
       | One of the recurring themes in comment sections around fines for
       | banks and large businesses is that "the fine is not in proportion
       | to the size of the business".
       | 
       | I guess it makes sense to ask then, do we want to have fines that
       | are proportional to the revenue/profit/"X"-value of a business
       | (and how might that get gamed)? Where if a small business is sued
       | for something like this, it will only pay $100 while a larger
       | business for the same infraction will pay $100,000,000? And if
       | we're ok with that, are we ok then also acknowledging that we
       | completely disincentive any sort of legal enforcement of small
       | businesses, from a cost/benefit perspective?
       | 
       | I actually think the inverse is true: if the SEC has decided that
       | the correct penalty for recordkeeping failures is $125M, it is
       | likely a balance of proportionality to the crime, cost of
       | enforcement, and proportion to victimhood of the crime. The
       | question I always wonder around this is, how much of this $125M
       | goes back towards victims (if any) and how much goes towards
       | further agency enablement to pursue criminal activity? Is $125M
       | enough for the SEC to open X more cases (knowing how overcapacity
       | they and every other government agency are)?
        
         | 0_____0 wrote:
         | What are we calling a small business? For a 1-4 person outfit,
         | $100, combined with the administrative hassle, may just be
         | enough to get the business to amend some process. Even the
         | moderately wealthy usually don't intentionally leave their cars
         | parked where they'll get a ticket, because it's annoying to
         | have to deal with it.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | wand3r wrote:
         | I think it comes back to Fight Club:
         | 
         | > Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere
         | traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car
         | crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we
         | initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A,
         | multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the
         | average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X.
         | If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
         | 
         | If the cost of the fine is less than the profit that can be
         | made by ignoring it, it will get ignored. Especially because
         | banks seem to have privatized profits and socialized losses. So
         | I don't think it should be necessarily proportional to a
         | companies size but certainly a multiple of the cost of the
         | externality. For example, if an oil company gets caught
         | polluting, they should pay a big multiple of the damages so
         | that it is ALWAYS cheaper ti invest in doing the right thing.
         | 
         | Also, the SEC is not a particularly popular organization and I
         | think they have lost a lot of trust (if they ever really had
         | any)
        
           | goopthink wrote:
           | I think that's absolutely and cynically correct. For example:
           | there is a concept of parking tickets with fines. The fines
           | are set to discourage certain behaviors while also not being
           | cruel and unusual. Some people will never park "illegally"
           | while others consider parking tickets to be the unfortunate
           | risk or consequence of how they live their lives and do their
           | jobs. The same is true for all penalties, period.
           | 
           | This cynical calculus should be separated from how we feel
           | about the organizations that commit things that result in
           | fines. It's really easy to hate on banks and believe that
           | every fine is justified and should actually be way bigger.
           | Pitchforks and burning down the barn, ya know? But someone
           | somewhere decided that calculus of appropriateness based on a
           | variety of factors, and it is the lowercase-p political
           | process to push for changes based on outcomes we see. But the
           | pendulum swings both ways. China is an example of a country
           | where if a company goes against government rules it can be
           | dissolved, its leaders arrested and thrown in prison, based
           | on criteria they have calibrated politically. Or in some
           | other countries, you may be beheaded for social infractions.
           | Not trying to reduce this to absurd (but real) logical
           | extremes, but highlighting that this is precisely the
           | difficult balance folks try to find, and our sense of
           | proportionality is often affected by the current popular
           | conception of them as an industry or as an individual
           | company/person. I.e., just as many people hate on banks and
           | think they should be punished higher, they turn around
           | express complete disbelief at "unfair" fines and laws that
           | are broken by innovators that run faster than regulations
           | allow (read: tesla, uber, airbnb, etc). Sometimes we
           | collectively feel fines are justified, sometimes not,
           | sometimes too high, sometimes too low. Your calibration may
           | vary.
        
             | luckylion wrote:
             | > But someone somewhere decided that calculus of
             | appropriateness based on a variety of factors, and it is
             | the lowercase-p political process to push for changes based
             | on outcomes we see.
             | 
             | Isn't it likely that this someone now works for a large
             | bank and directly profits from their previous generous
             | decisions?
        
         | dwater wrote:
         | I think the layperson wants the fine to be big enough that it
         | disincentivizes the bad behavior that resulted in the fine and
         | behavior like it. JP Morgan recorded $12.1 Billion profit in
         | 2020, so a fine of $125 Million is about 1% of their annual
         | profit. I doubt Jamie Dimon is sweating too much about that.
        
           | goopthink wrote:
           | For the record here, in addition to the fines, there is an
           | additional unreported price of legal costs to fight this and
           | compliance costs to fulfill obligations as per settlement.
           | It's not quite an iceberg costs, but I guarantee they hired
           | expensive lawyers to fight this beyond usual retainers.
        
         | notreallyserio wrote:
         | I'd rather see the board and executives indicted (when it can
         | be shown they are culpable) and then have the government seize
         | the corporation. I mean, if we're doing civil asset forfeiture,
         | let's take it all the way, eh?
         | 
         | In my view mere dollar fines are insufficient when it comes to
         | fraud.
        
           | Karunamon wrote:
           | Administrative dissolution, aka corporate death penalty. I
           | get this would be satisfying, but I'd really rather not
           | provide more incentive for kleptocracy.
        
           | sumedh wrote:
           | > then have the government seize the corporation.
           | 
           | Then people lose jobs and that does not look good on TV.
        
         | gorbachev wrote:
         | The real problem is that the big banks break laws and
         | regulations continuously.
         | 
         | If you look at how many times have they been caught, the list
         | is very, very long.
         | 
         | Yet every time there are no real consequences. A fine here and
         | there and settlement agreements written in a way that nobody
         | gets any trouble for anything. I'm actually surprised the bank
         | admitted to anything this time. Usually they just pay a fine,
         | and admit to nothing.
         | 
         | For heaven's sake, even HSBC drug cartel money laundering
         | scandal results in not a single person going to prison or
         | getting fired. HSBC even violated the additional rules they
         | were supposed to be subjected to during a probation period
         | after settling, and yet again nothing happened, except they
         | paid a small(ish) fine.
         | 
         | The entire industry is completely lawless.
        
           | conductr wrote:
           | It's true for all heavily regulated companies. The
           | regulations can be difficult to interpret, exceedingly
           | onerous, or overly verbose.
           | 
           | I've worked in banking and healthcare and it's not unusual
           | for the regulators to fine you for something you didn't know
           | about (not even your army of attorneys or compliance
           | department), or fine you because you interpreted things
           | differently and now they disagree. Sometimes you change your
           | internal operations and technologies, spending big $$$, only
           | to find you to find out about some new case law that opposes
           | your original interpretation. Then, your faces with the
           | question of do we go through a massive re-
           | implementation/disruption, or do we just take the risk.
           | 
           | Usually, in my experience, the cost of fixing things
           | internally far exceeds the cost of fines and so the business
           | decisions often boil down to that simple ROI math.
        
         | blacksmith_tb wrote:
         | So this isn't a fine but a settlement, so I suppose you could
         | argue that JPM wouldn't have agreed to pay it if they couldn't
         | afford it. Otherwise, the kind of structure you're describing
         | is similar to punitive damages[1], which strike me as good in
         | theory, if not practice.
         | 
         | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_damages#United_States
        
         | darkwizard42 wrote:
         | Why is it black and white about proportionality?
         | 
         | Fines should have a minimum amount which should be designed to
         | seriously cripple repeated bad actors and induce enough
         | financial pain to force amending the fine-causing behavior.
         | 
         | From a cost-benefit perspective... yes it makes sense to go
         | after bigger companies creating larger more impactful
         | violations. No one reasonably expects a small business to be
         | fined $125M...
        
         | gostsamo wrote:
         | A big business can make much more damage than a small one.
         | Also, even relatively small fine can shake heavily a small
         | business. So, yes, I'm totally for fines that communicate to
         | the doer that the done is not good.
        
         | spaetzleesser wrote:
         | Fines should be a deterrent and not just cost of business. It
         | seems we have reached a point where large companies can do
         | shady stuff, make lots of money, pay a fraction of that as fine
         | and nothing else happens. So they will keep doing it.
        
       | throwaway837282 wrote:
       | Using throwaway account. I work at a broker-dealer. This is part
       | of a huge ongoing battle with the SEC. Broker-dealers under SEC
       | rules must constantly monitor all employee communications,
       | flagging for keywords and reviewing a large subset. These
       | communications go to WORM storage and in practice are
       | periodically dumped to the SEC. If an employee talks about work
       | on a personal device that isn't being actively monitored- huge
       | fines like this one. You can beg your employees not to do it all
       | you want, but ultimately there are only two ways for a company to
       | respond to this enforcement: do all work over phone calls and not
       | text, which the SEC is fine with, or start monitoring personal
       | communications.
       | 
       | I'll leave it to you all to decide which course of action you
       | think JP Morgan should take.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | Interesting/implications because of the nightmare of BYOD and
       | general user laziness/UX hurdles that many of you are all too
       | familiar with I'm sure.
        
         | Nzen wrote:
         | I have a friend who works for an insurance firm. This company
         | enforces HIPPA requirements of not saving any personally
         | identifiable information by prohibiting any means of saving
         | information. They aren't allowed their phones, nor paper, and
         | the computers they use are basically kiosks without access to
         | text editors. That made for difficulties in staving boredom and
         | in helping people across different days (given they'd need to
         | remember the context). That's an extreme example, but not
         | impossible if the requirement is to be able to reproduce _all_
         | communications relating to some investment instrument.
         | 
         | I don't doubt that some high value employees probably already
         | have company phones. For the others, I wonder if they will have
         | to surrender their phones to not use them during the day or to
         | have the chat history, forfend, exported.
        
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