this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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As corporations are people, I advocate jail time for companies.
Jail time for a company? How would that work?
Stock price is immediately frozen and placed on a restricted trades list.
No sells, no buys for the duration of the sentence (maybe a period of time for retail traders to exit gracefully at the locked price).
A member of the IRS is now on the accounting team for the length of the sentence + 5 years.
For "safety" this IRS auditor is cycled every 6 months.
During that time, quarterly audits, and any profits go directly to the aggrieved parties and/or Fed coffers.
The plan would pay for itself on the first sentence passed down.
What if the company closes shop instead of compliance?
Easy, IRS performs a Civil Forfeiture and immediately gains control of all aspects of the business. All stock options are cancelled, C-Level and higher immediately lose all stock and bonuses. Liquidate the remains and again provide for the aggrieved and bank the rest.
That's... not how stocks work. Retail traders can't sell without a counterparty to buy from them, and the last thing I would want to do is to set up some kind of government entity buying stocks of criminal companies at artificially-high prices just to bail out investors.
Besides, even retail investors should've done their due diligence and known they were signing up for the possibility of losing their money. If they don't like being held accountable for their investments, maybe they should call up their legislator and support piercing the corporate veil more often.
If the only complaint about the premise was an attempt to help out non-insiders, with personal assets under 100k, then scratch that MAYBE off and let's write some legislature.
Very few people with personal assets under 100k are buying individual stocks to begin with. Normal working-class people, if they're saving at all, are very likely just buying mutual funds inside their retirement accounts.
Frankly, you'd have to really be trying in order to be in the tiny Venn diagram intersection of people who would (a) be screwed by the above commenter's proposal and (b) deserve sympathy for it. IMO it's not worth carving out an exception for.
Companies issue stock grants in lieu of additional salary to incentivise employees to stay. any impact to stocks would also take away money from labor.
would also open up corporate warfare to who can fund corporate espionage or politicians to close down competitors.
Messing with the stocks directly even if they did work like that would do nothing. Pausing the stock would cause the price to immediately return the market rate the moment it gets relisted. Not to mention that only punishes publicly traded companies. I'd be willing to say wage theft happens more frequently with private companies who wouldn't be effected in any significant way if you paused their stocks.
A way better punishment would be to suspend their business license temporarily. The effects would be almost identical to sending someone to jail as it prevents them from earning any income for that period of time while still being on the financial hook for any debts.
sure, the price would change when it gets relisted, BUT that doesn't matter, fucking stock valuation is a reflection just on the popularity of the company, but they can't trade the stock, making it a dead fish in portfolios for years
You're acting like stocks are some sort of magic thing you can just mess with to punish the company.
But in fact what would happen this would immediately ruin most pension funds for example.