this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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Banks hit with $549 million in fines for use of Signal, WhatsApp to evade regulators’ reach::Wells Fargo, a relatively small player on Wall Street, racked up the most fines Tuesday, with a total of $200 million in penalties.

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[–] J12@lemmy.world 188 points 1 year ago (9 children)

I break the law, I go to jail. A corporation breaks the law they get a fine the equivalent of a parking ticket.

If corporations want to be people it’s time we start treating them like people. CEOs and Execs in prison. Actual fines that hurt the bottom line. And for the really egregious: shut them down, or if they’re “too big to fail” we can let the government take over or break them up into dozens of small companies ex: Baby Bells

[–] ech0@lemmy.world 56 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Wells Fargo is worth 163 billion. That $200 million fine is literally 0.12% of their Net worth.

In comparison

The average US salary is $59,428. A parketing ticket on average is about $80

That parketing ticket is 0.13% of that Salary.

So this "fine" is in fact cheaper than a parking ticket.

[–] Frodo@startrek.website 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You can’t compare worth with income. A better comparison might be profits, which were $15B for past 12 months. So Wells Fargo’s penalty is 1.3% of their “salary.” Even if you go by revenue, it’s greater than your parking ticket example. I get that they are an evil corporation, but accuracy matters.

[–] girlfreddy@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yup. The fines should be 10-20% of profits for the time period, per charge, depending on the severity.

That would got their gd attention.

[–] Ignisnex@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Never profits, always revenue. Profits can be gobbled up by some internal bonus or "future investment in a project", thus making it $0. Revenue is all the money generated before allocations and expenses come out. Much harder to weasle out of.

[–] foggy@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Sometimes I don't feed the meter if I don't think a meter maid will get to my car before the parking hours end. I just fuckin risk it.

[–] JustAThought@lemm.ee 17 points 1 year ago

Some countries have speeding fines set to a percentage of your pre-tax income. A student is hurt as much as a CEO. This should be the same.

[–] TwoGems@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Agreed. They harm people all day with defective products and the solution is "lol here have this fine that barely hurts you"

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

I believe the federal government has the power of the corporate death penalty, they just never use it.

At this point I'd rather we be like Asian countries and start jailing the CEOs.

[–] Aux@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The whole point of a limited company is that its owners are protected against failures of the company. A lot of things will go sideways if this protection gets removed.

[–] EvilBit@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm genuinely ignorant, but is the owner's protection against the company failing due to standard bad luck/mismanagement/cursed frogurt, the company doing blatantly illegal things under their direction, or both?

[–] isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

Companies in prison. Unable to operate for whatever length their sentence is. When they come out, they will forever be considered a felon and will not be able to do business with most other companies.

[–] kaizervonmaanen@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

Of you put CEOs and Execs in prison then you are not treating corporations like people. If you do something illegal then they put you in prison. Not your CEO or Execs.