Quote:
Originally Posted by x622
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FTX_17Nov22.pdf (Nov 17, 2022) (PDF - 30 pages):
"I, John J. Ray III, hereby declare under penalty of perjury as follows:
1. - 3. (...)
4. I have over 40 years of legal and restructuring experience. I have been the Chief Restructuring Officer or Chief Executive Officer in several of the largest corporate failures in history. I have supervised situations involving allegations of criminal activity and malfeasance (Enron). I have supervised situations involving novel financial structures (Enron and Residential Capital) and cross-border asset recovery and maximization (Nortel and Overseas Shipholding). Nearly every situation in which I have been involved has been characterized by defects of some sort in internal controls, regulatory compliance, human resources and systems integrity.
5. Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.
From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented."
"Sam Bankman-Fried vs. The Match King" (Nov 13, 2022)
(interesting read about also the greatest swindler of the 1920s, whose massive fraud partially contributed to the creation of the SEC in 1933-1934):
https://awealthofcommonsense.com/202...he-match-king/
"One of the hardest things to do as a human being is to keep your wits about you when everyone else is seemingly going mad.
This is especially true when there’s an enigmatic figurehead overseeing the operation. (...)
FTX seems to have started out as a legitimate crypto exchange. And when losses started piling up at his trading arm the misallocation of resources went to ludicrous speed.
This is a classic example of too much, too soon.
Too much money. Too much control. Too much leverage. Too much attention. Too much power. Too much everything.
The way I see it, there are two types of charlatans.
Type I charlatans are the visionaries who are more or less sincere but wind up ruining their followers anyway because they take their ideas to the extreme or fail to account for the unintended consequences of their actions.
These false-positive charlatans are so passionate that it becomes difficult for their victims to see any downside. When you combine intellect, passion, and people in search of money and/or power, it’s easy to become blinded by the potential risks.
Once a Type I charlatan gets a taste of success, it’s tough to pull in the reins when things go wrong.
Type II charlatans are the out-and-out fraudsters who blatantly set out to take people for all they’re worth. These hucksters are only interested in making as much money as possible and don’t care who gets hurt in the process.
These charlatans are false negatives because they lie to persuade you to part with your money. It’s difficult to see through this type of charlatan because they know exactly how to sell you. They understand human behavior and tell you exactly what you want to hear.
The strange thing about both Kreuger and Bankman-Fried is it seems they each started out as Type I charlatans and ended up Type II once they got in too deep.
When technology moves forward by leaps and bounds, as it did in the first part of the 20th century, people prefer betting on the future more than betting on the past.
It appears the same thing happened with crypto."
"Sam Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes And 9 Other Epic Billionaire Blowups":
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimam...naire-blowups/