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Comment by BizarroLand | Hacker News Reader

If any of us had the opportunity to make $1 billion dollars and pay a $920 million dollar "naughty boy" fine after the fact, who here would say no?

The fine should be ALL of the ill-gotten gains and then a naughty boy fine on top of it. To do otherwise means that you did not do justice.

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That's exactly what they did. The article says $172m disgorgement (how much the CFTC thinks they profited from this), $311m restitution (the amount the CFTC thinks JPM harmed others but didn't capture), and $436m civil penalty ("naughty boy" fine).

I read that also, but it wasn't clear to me that the disgorgement was the profit, I assumed it was just what they had on hand from their takings, like if you rob a bank and get caught with $5k left then they would disgorge you of the $5k and then deal with the rest later.

I feel like both you and parent are ignoring operational + reputation costs of being naughty boys. If we are saying the bad behavior should not be profitable the fine should be above (ill gotten gains - operational costs it took to acquire them + whatever interest those ill gotten gains received before the culprit got caught).

Reputational losses are also a thing, agencies and whistleblowers will be paying a lot more attention to this sort of thing from JPMorgan from now on. Maybe a lesser effect would be morally conscious people (in finance haha) choosing not to work there.

Of course it is also possible that Chase PR machine greases the right hands to negate all of the downsides, and then you have a point that current political/regulatory climate is allowing this is be a profitable business model.

I'm being dismissive but I doubt JP Morgan Chase is going to suffer any real backlash other than the direct financial punishment they are receiving here. There's also a good chance that they will file suit over it as it's worth spending a few million in lawyer fees to try to reduce or save the $920m entirely, so it's not even over yet.

If you are caught one time out of 10, this is still profitable and those people, being professional risk manager, will take the chance. Not to mention they can then invest the benefits in a difference venue, and make money from that, which will not be part of the fine.

Jail time however, is not something everyone will want to gamble on.

So, it should be what you said + jail.

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