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Comment by andirk | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this collapse didn't happen, which happened exclusively by being found out, that once his books were eventually audited that the criminal handling of deposits would have caughth up to him eventually.

I tell my gambling friends that if they bet the farm and win big, their wives will be horrified at the risk they tool even though it worked out. It's a moral loss regardless of the outcome.

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The thing is, if you bet big and win people get over it real f-ing quick.

I used to work in risk management at an investment bank. When things went wrong, and the result was a gain, we incorporated it into our models as if it was a loss of the same magnitude.

Who only gambles once?

If you be once and win you then can roll the money into lower return legitimate enterprises and sail off into the sunset.

I'd wager that most businesses that start as a single person doing something (be it investing money or detailing cars) start as off the books, under the table, zero regard for regulatory compliance type businesses. It's only when they've made enough on that initial investment outside the rules that they turn around and incur the cost of compliance.

> their wives will be horrified at the risk they tool even though it worked out.

Whenever we participated in auctions for housing sites, my wife would stop me at a certain number. The number of times we were the second highest bidder ...

The sellers thank you!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner's_curse

Well, I never bought the sites, but one of the winners did give very dirty looks for jacking up his purchase price.

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