Ask Me Help Desk - Government porn

"so we paid millions of dollars to employ guys [ SEC ], who missed billions of dollars worth of fraud [ like Madoff, fannie mae, freddie mac, aig etc. ], and it cost us trillions. ------- Because they were looking at porn all day. ---- Yeah, we need more funding [ for the SEC ]... higher taxes."

from Armstrong and Getty

So the pols are looking at "regulating" Wall Street more, when the gov agency, the SEC, that was suppose to do that cannot even regulate themselves and do the job they were suppose to do, because their employees were doing something else on time paid by the taxpayor. GREAT. This is so surreal and the timing of this story could not be better timed.

And guess who Barney Frank blames...
Frank: GOP deregulation, not porn, was SEC’s problem | Raw Story

This is so partisan that the statists are, once again, throwing up the smoke screen of "blame the other party or the prior president."

WE ARE REALLY scr... ed, by big government AND Wallstreet.

Which do you think is worse, big government incompetence or Wallstreet.

G&P

So we pay people when funding the arts, that produce porn but when called art becomes somehow more acceptable.
So perhaps they were merely reviewing ART

There is no excuse for this.

Quote:

This is so surreal and the timing of this story could not be better timed.

I am suspicious of both this revelation and the one about the SEC suit of Goldman Sachs (aka Government Sucks).A week ago the SEC filed a $1 billion civil lawsuit against GS accusing it of securities fraud.

Goldman is accused of working with hedge fund manager John Paulson to create Abacus ,a fund composed of mortgages. Paulson believed the U.S. housing bubble was about to burst and Abacus allowed him to bet against the market.
But to bet against the market you need people to bet for the market . That is a common Wall Streat transaction.
Those who betted for the housing market continued success were foreign banks, pension funds and insurance companies.
Goldman is accused of failing to notify these institutions that the Abacus investment was created to fail.
But ;again ,this is a common practice on Wall Street. There was no guarantee that Paulson was right about the housing market even though he turned out to be right.
This made Paulson very rich.He went from a 2 bit nobody to someone who Forbes describes as the 45th richest person in the world. It also made the counter betters much poorer.

The improbable case the SEC is bringing is that GS conspired with Paulson to get a bunch of suckers to purchase the fund.btw ;one of the suckers was GS which lost $90 million by investing in the fund.

This disclosure charge is lame(and I am no GS defender )
But anyone who doesn't know that for every investment made for something there is also a bet against it should not be making trades. Simply put;a trade is a buy AND a sell. When you make a purchase from a broker there is no obligation for the broker to disclose that someone is selling it to you ;and there is also no disclosure requirement for GS to reveal who that seller is . In fact ;disclosing the seller is probably in itself a breach of confidentiality .

If they are going to investigate anyone ;they should be looking at the incompetent boobs who were making risky bets with other people's pensions.

But this case serves the President's agenda .He has a ready target to demonize in the run up to financial regulation reform.I have visions of a repeat of the paid for mob they assembled to go after AIG employees.

Back to the SEC .They missed the Maddoff and Stanford's ponzi schemes .They obviously had no clue about the lead up the 2008 financial crisis . They have been charged here before of being asleep at the wheel .Now we know they were doing something else while manning the wheel .But then again . Many of the regulations they are supposed to enforce are obsecenities themselves.

Hello in:

I know it's just me, and I know you don't want me to blame Bush, or any righty, especially Reagan... But, let me ask you this...

Just how much regulating are you going to do, when you and your boss's overarching political philosophy is, government regulation IS the problem??

Now, I know you didn't want me to bring stuff like that up, but it DOES have something to do with it, no?

excon

EX

How is my personal philosophy or ideology regarding the role government, large or small, suppose to influence how I, as a highly paid professional, work or conduct myself? Nada. You an individual, are suppose to do the job that is your description; period end of discussion. There is no excuse for looking at porn, up to 8 hours a day, when you are suppose to be doing the job of REGULATING these Wallstreet companies. Those on the right and the left, as well as the POTUS should be calling out these individuals and make them accountable. If not, we will know that more "regulation" of Wallstreet is a partisan farce. Notice how Mr Frank does not do this but blames others.

G&P

Quote:

Originally Posted by inthebox

How is my personal philosophy or ideology regarding the role government, large or small, suppose to influence how I, as a highly paid professional, work or conduct myself? Nada.

Hello again, in:

We'll just have to disagree on this one. I do not believe that a person who thinks that regulation BEING the problem, is going to really and truly, REGULATE. You may think he can overcome his bias's. I do not.

You don't hire fox's to guard the chicken coop, even if they promise to do their job dutifully.

excon

All I'm saying is what these people did is just wrong, whether they were liberal or conservative is besides the point. I worked for the VA for a couple of years, what I believe about wars, past or present, is irrelevant to how I care about the veteran in front of me.

Is there an example of this in the private sector? Or would they have lost their job immediately or not even allowed access to certain websites. It is commonplace to have internet restrictions. Why not at the SEC?

G&P

Did these SEC folks run in the same circles as Spitzer ? :)

G&P

Quote:

Originally Posted by inthebox

How is my personal philosophy or ideology regarding the role government, large or small, suppose to influence how I, as a highly paid professional, work or conduct myself? Nada. You an individual, are suppose to do the job that is your description; period end of discussion. There is no excuse for looking at porn, up to 8 hours a day, when you are suppose to be doing the job of REGULATING these Wallstreet companies. Those on the right and the left, as well as the POTUS should be calling out these individuals and make them accountable. If not, we will know that more "regulation" of Wallstreet is a partisan farce. Notice how Mr Frank does not do this but blames others.

Obviously the people doing the porn surfing at work should be released from their positions but lets' put things in perspective:
There are roughly 4,000 employees in the SEC. So 0.775% of SEC employees are serious porn offenders. I can't imagine that stat is different from most large companies.

Also due to the numbers they released it is possible that there was a bot installed on their machines. From someone who works as a network admin:
"Also seriously 16,000 times in a month, that's like 800 times a day, does this not sound like a bot to you? I mean seriously how long would that take. Even if the person was looking at porn would they be spending any amount of time actually viewing the site.

The Math:
16,000 times a month = 800 times a day = 100 times an hr = 1.6666 times a minute.

Actually lets be honest cause even with a normal 8 hr day you're only getting about 6.5 hrs of time at your desk.

16,000 times a month = 800 times a day = 123.07 times an hr = 2 times a minute.

I'm not saying its possible I'm just saying that for that type of activity to go for a whole month like that would look more like a bot then a porn addict."

Maybe the porn was to take their minds off what they were really doing - Screwing the American People.

Quote:

Originally Posted by twinkiedooter

Maybe the porn was to take their minds off what they were really doing - Screwing the American People.

I'm sure most insurance companies, non-profit businesses, etc have about the same amount of employees doing the same activities.