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Bill Gates Fined $800,000 Over Stock Purchases
Bronz writes "CNN Money is reporting that Bill Gates has been fined $800,000 for violating antitrust waiting period for stock purchases. The department alleged that Gates bought more than $50 million worth of stock in ICOS Corp. through his personal investment trust and failed to notify antitrust officials about the purchase, as required." It's also clarified: "The technical incident has nothing to do with the government's massive antitrust battles with Microsoft."
It's not like doesn't have the money. Fining him 800k is like fining me 5$.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Gee, isn't $800,000 kind of steep? That's almost a staggering one thirty-seven-thousandth (0.00265%) of his current net worth!
http://www.quuxuum.org/~evan/bgnw.html
$800K just for forgetting to do your paperwork? They definitely take this stuff seriously.
$50 mil stock buy and a 800k fine... lets do the math
800,000 / 50,000,000 = 1.6%
A 1.6% fine? That seems low when so many dollars are involved.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Again the fine is so low in comparison to gain to make it almost negligable and totally ineffective.
Rake Free + Mac Poker: CardCrusade
This is not tech news. This is personal news about Bill Gates with nothing to do with Microsoft. Other than to laugh at and make fun of Bill Gates, who cares about this stupid story. Post better stories or don't post anything at all. Right?!?
nothing to do with the government's massive antitrust battles
But while we were looking through all your belongings we noticed this little tidbit and jumped on it!
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
Bill gates is known for investing in non-tech companies such as John Deere.
Yes, you heard that right: MS Drugs.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
What is he doing on the board of a drug company? I didn't think it was his sort of thing.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Gates was fined, not the company itself. It looks like Gates is closely watched, isnt it ?
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
Where was Mitnick when we really needed him?
It is called investing. Something to do with making money (and being on the board of directors, which is why he ran afoul, I believe)
And it was Bill Gates investment, not Microsoft's.
There are so many ways this money could have been better spent. How about opening a nice call center for all of your customers, Mr. Gates? (note: i realize this was his personal fortune, but the point stands. MS support is a pain) How many starving children could you have fed. Doesn't pissing your cash into the wind kind of contradict having the largest charity fund on earth? This dude is seriously bipolar.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
"Gates was stymied in his efforts to pay the fine when nobody in the courtroom could give him change for $1 million." /obvious
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
$800,000 / $30,170,000,000 = .00002651640703
how's that for BG's $0.02 :-P
She loves me: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 She loves me not: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688BF
You think he's got it hard enough with every foaming-at-mouth linux zealot tracing his every step (and writing article about it *cough*), and giving knee-jerk reactions... now the government is paying extra close attention to him. You think he'd pay a stock-broker enough to handle informing the government of his purchases...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
what is Bill Gates interested in a drug making/researching company for?
For the same reason Martha Stewart was interested in ImClone. Drug companies have huge potential in share price gain as they tend to copyright everything, and sell at huge margins... provided, of course, their product gets past the FDA.
Remember, it was Bill Gates the person that bought the stock and got fined, not Micro$oft.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
Kind of makes it sound like he's a sex offender.
(Proceeding to NOT go there.)
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
It's his personal investment account. Maybe he's diversifying his portfolio (if one has uncorrelated assets, one can reduce risk w/out reducing expected return).
The Federal Trade Commission said it had warned Gates about a similar reporting infraction when his personal investment trust bought shares of Republic Services Corp. (RSG: Research, Estimates) in November 2001. The acquisition brought his stake to more than 10 percent of the outstanding shares of the waste-hauling company.
Antitrust rules require that entities must file with the government when their holdings exceed 10 percent of a company's stock.
. Anyway, when you are worth $40 billion you can afford these "luxuries."
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
How what's he going to wipe his ass with tomorrow morning? Maybe extra windows 95 licences left over or the stolen SCO code.
I like what some counrties do -- for fines, they use a percentage of that persons earnings or total wealth (i forget which) and calculate the fine based on that. You don't gouge the poor, and the rich pay a reasonable amount.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
It cost Mr. Gates $800,000 to buy $50,000,000 worth of stock. So, I guess that's 1.6% commission for the SEC?
Casual Games/Downloads
I'm almost starting to feel bad for the guy...
Ahh, nevermind.
As with other violations of anti-trust laws and agreements between MS and the DOJ, Bill and his gang really don't care because the "fine" will always amount to pennies. Billy knows that the reality is he is above the law. What needs to happen here is something more substantial like the threat of jail.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
its other peoples companies.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This is totally different. Martha's was insider trading, whereas Bill is antitrust. In the legal and financial world there is a difference.
Ah, but there's a difference. Martha didn't violate any SEC law, so far as anyone can tell and has never been charged with such.
What she did was lie about her guilt, and that's what she is facing jail time over.
No, wait, that's not right. She didn't lie about her guilt, because she was innocent. Ok, so, what she's facing jailtime over is lying about her innocence.
No, that can't be right either, because she was innocent.
Ok, so maybe your wife has a point.
KFG
Yeah! I held up a bank and got 12 years, but he drove 20mph over the limit and all he got is a fine?? Mere slap on the wrist! How unfair!
Bill Gates' "crime" is merely failing to report a perfectly proper transaction on time. Marth Stewart used inside information (not in itself a crime in US) and then conspired to cover it up. She may have been a "woman-champion", which is why your wife may sympathize, but her crime is of much bigger scale, than this one.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Maybe my wife is right...
.net care package and some servers to their IT department as well.
it's a woman thing.
Or perhaps it's a total bitch thing. Martha probably would've been let off the hook, but she probably barked at them about how to properly conduct the investigation, how to cordially approach someone with charges, what not to wear at a hearing, proper speaking skills at a press conference, etc etc etc.
More than likely, Bill just volunteered the money and told them not to spend it all in one place. He probably tossed over a large
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
...this is the same thing they were stucking to El Pres at the beginning of his term. And just like then, it's getting blown out of proportion. Not to say they both aren't slimeballs but this is just incorrectly filing paperwork. Nefarious plot to swindle bazillions from Joe Consumer? Maybe... Idiot accountant fogetting to put stamp on envelope... more likely.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Indeed. I stand corrected. And somehow offtopic even considering "rich white man" was in my post about Bill gates. Go figure.
"We need a fourth law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
Martha Stewart went to jail for OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE (lying about using inside information). Bill Gates is being fined for not reporting a purchase as he's required to. COMPLETELY different crimes, it's not a woman thing (not that I think she should be in jail but what he did is a lot less illegal)
Guess he'll have to sacrifice for once in his life...
No new golden toilet bowl seat this month.
-Imidazole2
Well Bill Gates' company does do something "helpful" for the US government (Carnivore, deliberate security back doors). I don't think the government employs Martha Stewart Living in the same light.
MY SECRET DIARIES
come on, cant we just let the guy make more money!? :)
spend money here
Although I'd love to see Bill face some jail time, comparing him to Martha isn't really fair. Martha isn't going to jail for illegal stock activity, she's going because she lied to federal investigators.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
So what exactly makes this news-worthy? Is it possible that this sort of thing happens frequently? Judging by the miniscule amount of the fine in comparison to the dollar amount spent, I can't imagine why this is a significant fine (as someone else has posted, a 'disclosure oversight').
For all the griping we do about the duplicitous nature of certain 'fair and balanced' news outlets (and their ilk), it would seem we'd hold Slashdot to some sort of standard.
P.S. Yes, I know this has been hashed, rehashed, and then many times again. hash_count++
Moo
Oh, wait. I know. Ads. More page views, more ads, mo' money. "Microsoft. Headline. Bad." Ka-chin!
What other reason could one possibly have to post this. None. None whatsoever.
Just when you think Bashdork has reached new, unexplored lows, one of these comes along and surprises you.
This was a fine on Gates personal investments, so why is this even /. news worthy? Yes, it is peripherally related to anti-trust matters, but it is still pointless.
I love all the conspiracy theory that pops up right away how MS is going to be selling drugs and other bs. A common investing strategy is to have a diverse portfolio and this is clearly part of that for Bill.
My guess is that he'll pull the $800K from under his couch cushions.
You are incorrect. Martha Stewart didn't get busted for insider trading. she got busted for lying about it to the feds. As far as insider trading goes, there were several people who, through the same stock broker, sold more ImCLone stock on the same advice. She was chosen as the sacrificial lamb (if i recall, her friend's (who testified against her) ex husband sold considerably more stock on the insider knowledge. check out reason.com 's archives for martha stewart - the article i recall is pre-trial, and they're blatantly pro martha, but most of their points remain salient.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
to Extremely Slow Day On Slashdot
Stay tuned for exciting stories on
-Steve Balmers traffic ticket for not Yielding
-Steve Jobs buys a house plant
-Carly Fiorina reboots the reproductive system
More late breaking events as they occur....
Let's see if Bill Gates will make a matching donation to charity, just like his billionaire pal Mark Cuban does.
"Prefer loss to the wealth of dishonest gain; the former vexes you for a time; the latter will bring you lasting remorse."
Ruby on Rails Screencast
This is probably something that's merely an oversight on behalf of his broker. Someone with as much money as Bill Gates will have a wide and varied stock portfolio, and I doubt he is able to personally oversee all of it. You see this same sort of thing happen all of the time with celebrities. Too much money and not enough time to track down where every cent goes.
Aside from that, its really sad the level that slashdot has sunk down to in its anti-microsoft smear campaign. I think in the interest of fair journalism, they should go ahead and report to us how much money they, and OSDN as their parent company, have vested in linux, and how much they stand to gain from its success. Notice how they're the first in line to bash SCO for spreading its FUD, when they're just as bad about it? Oh well, they'll just keep going about alienating everyone who isn't a frothing linux zealot and end up digging their own grave.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
good point. it's called a diverse portfolio, and typically a good thing, for all those who havn't mastered the obvious yet.
800k is 0.002% of $40B, so a $5 fine is equal if have a net worth of $250k.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
How about seizing all the stock that you purchased, for starters? If it happens more than once, you get barred from owning any more stock? If I get caught speeding too many times, my license gets taken away...
Billy's just doing what his corporation does- paying fines as a cost of doing business, because they're so trivial.
Please help metamoderate.
If you were a government that was supported entirely by taxes, wouldn't you want to audit the hell out of your richest citizen?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
martha stewart hasn't gone to jail yet, nor has she even been sentenced to jail time.
mod parent up +3, misinformative
Follow the link, and see what drug they're showcasing. Brings new meaning to "Although a rare occurrence, men (sysadmins) who experience an erection (server lasting) for more than 4 hours (priapism) (miracle) should seek immediate medical attention.
Individual contributions are legally limited, but it is a common practice for employees of a company to be rewarded for making political donations.
The whole purpose for these filings is to keep investors informed so that those who control the company can't cash out and leave the average investor holding the bag.
Given that, the real question is: if Billy Boy had filed as required, how much more would it have cost him to buy the same number of shares. If that value is more than $800k, he made money on the deal. If not, the fine was justified.
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...
Of course if they could prove that she lied they could have proved that she broke FTC rules. She was told that if she didn't admit to breaking the law they would charge her with lying. No real way out of that one.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
, that's peanuts to Gates. It is probably 1 week's income for the guy.
That's the point. It's simply a matter of forgetting one piece of paperwork in an otherwise completely legal stock purchase. There's no sign of any criminal intent or conspiracy, and therefore no need for a massive fine for something relatively trivial.
I agree with what you say, but you are wrong about the facts of Martha Stewart.
Insider trading is a crime. This is what Sam Waskal from ImClone went to jail for.
Martha Stewart was convicted for lying to federal prosecutors and obstruction of justice.
Insider trading is a crime. Trading on rumor is not a crime. Since all that her broker did was tell her that Waskal was selling his shares, it's probably tough to convict on insider trading based on that.
Much less than that, I figure. Bill is currently worth about 40 billion; $800,000/$40,000,000,000 is 2.0e-5. Take your net worth and multiply it by 2.0e-5: it'll be less than a dollar if you are worth less than $50,000 (net--that means subtract liabilities from assets).
Martha Stewart has in fact been charged by the SEC with committing securities fraud by engaging in illegal insider trading. This is a civil case file last June in the Southern District of New York. Peter Bacanovic, Martha'a broker at Merrill Lynch, was also charged.
Boss: "So we have an oversight on this account that cost our company just shy of one million dollars." ... Uh, lets try to be more careful in the future"
Lazy Ass: "Oh, my bad. I forgot the change order was under my candy jar."
Boss: "Uh,
That's probably the greatest lesson for Martha Stewart - disarm them by saying it's your fault, and you messed up. They'll forgive you. Tell them you didn't do it, they hunt you down like a dog (in this case, a female dog).
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
So, $800K does seem to be a bit much.
Well, there's 30 seconds worth of work gone down the tubes....
For at least four hours, too ;-)
If you don't get it, too bad.
All she had to do was: nothing.
If she would have just kept her mouth closed, she'd be watering her garden right now.
you mean his net worth decreased from 46.6$ billion to... 46.6$ billion. hrm...
Long before ICOS had the Cialis molecule in the pipeline they were working on a lot of other drugs. Gates was a big biotech investor in the late 80s and early 90s. He's still a big investor. Probably has to do more about longevitity than erectile dysfunction.
Of course a lot of you here probably weren't even reading the newspapers 10 years ago.
Yes, well... Um... Yes. HEY! There's a, iPod story in the queue!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
You confuse "innocent" with "not convicted".
If you want to argue about "in the eyes of the law" then the term you are looking to use with Martha Stewart is "felon".
Had she just come forward and admitted there was an improper trade she'd have paid a fine and everyone would have moved along.
Bill Gates position is more like filling out your taxes wrong. It is common and just owning up to it means you pay your fees/penalties and everyone gets back to business. For those people screaming that he's worth more so he should be fined more, get a life. This is a financial problem and the fine is in direct proportion to business being conducted.
t
Funny that's about the same time this investment took place, and (incidentally) when he joined their board of directors.
Do I smell an errie resemblance to truth???
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Patent. They tend to patent everything. Patents are for inventions and processes, copyrights are for intellectual property. Drug patents are *KIND* of a good thing, as they encourage drug companies to pump money into R&D. The patents keep other companies from being parasitic and producing drugs based off other people's research.
And drug margins are only high if they appeal to a lot of people or are significantly helpful to justify a high up front cost. If you make a drug which only works some of the time for some of the people, you may not even recoup your R&D budger. It's a crapshoot...but the potential is huge.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Gates bought shares in trash-hauling company Republic Services in November 2001. The transaction put his holdings over a 10 percent threshold that required antitrust notification, the FTC said.
But Gates failed to notify antitrust authorities, believing he was exempt from the requirement because the acquisition was only for investment purposes.
Gates later made a corrected filing in the case, and the FTC declined to seek any penalties.
But six months later, Gates violated the rules again when he bought shares in ICOS, co-maker of the new impotence treatment Cialis, according to the FTC. Once again, Gates thought he was exempt from the regulation.
The FTC said it sought substantial penalties for the second mistake.
Aha! Now things are starting to make sense!
Um, take off that fin foil hat :) Icos is the massively succesful biotech who invented "weekend viagra" (celdenafil). Not to burst other peoples bubbles too.. Also if he held the stock across the time that celdenafil got approval a $1M fine would probly be insignificant.
This sounds alot like the "it was just a blowjob" argument around clinton and his scandles. You will probally end up beating you head into the wall before convinceing certain people of the facts.
It is funny with Microsoft, bill gates, martha stewart, bill clinton or any one else is in trouble, their popularity always seems to get in the way of the facts. Bill broke a minor law and didn't cover it up or lie about it (in this case any ways) the others seemed to do stuff even more shady by covering thier tracts and that doesn't seem to mean anything.
I guess it is like someone was speeding and got a ticket, the other person was fleeing and eluding the police tryign to give them the ticket and in turn got another penalty because they didn't stop.
I stand partially corrected. There is an outstanding complaint for redress of grievence against her. A suit brought forth by the SEC. Not a charge.
One of the obvious reasons for taking this approach in pursuing a civil penalty, but not a criminal, is because they don't have enough evidence for a conviction of criminal wrong doing.
KFG
Peter, his rich father in law, Michael Eisner, and Bill Gates in the car. They come to a toll booth and goes "Oh no...does anyone have a quarter?" and Bill Gates goes "What's a quarter?"
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
in a ridiculously complicated system and all of a sudden "Bill Gates Fined $800,000". This isn't a story about Bill Gates. I'd be surprised if the overall $50 million investment was more than a blip on his radar. What's 1/600th or so of your worth to you?
Some $30K/year secretary is probably on the street for making a simple mistake. And the witchhunting mob on this and other sites is part of the reason.
From Marge vs. the Monorail
Second, Yes, and the wedding and the wedding joke (if my memory serves) was a couple of years ago, and it's not long after that, this purchase, and seat on the board of directors occurred. ...So, you have to wonder if Cialis was influenced by Bill's own needs? It certainly seems plausible that Bill bought into the company because he saw the potential cure to his "intimacy issues". :-)
Yeah, I hate Microsoft - but even if you love Microsoft, and respect Gates, you've gotta admit that it's plausible.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Hmm... the stock price has been dropping, has a PE of -15.96! Wonder if Bill knows something?
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Hopefully since reporting his personal stock buys is newsworthy here, maybe next we can cover what kind of ketchup he uses, or what his wife's bra size is. I mean, that's obviously quite worthy of being a story here now, right?
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
If you're going to re-trample this same ground, at least think about it a bit more. It's pathetic that there are so many posts modded up which are one or two lines saying "Gates is really rich, so 800k doesn't mean much to him." and a few more posts saying how we should fine him in proportion to his net worth, so it'll actually discourage him.
This is idiotic. 90% of the posts don't even refer to what rule he violated, simply to the quantity of the fine. You don't give 10 years in prison for a parking ticket, regardless of how much you dislike the offender. His "crime" here wasn't that he launched some anti-competitive hostile takeover of some open-source small-business, it's that he bought some stock (some, not a controlling interest) and didn't officially notify the government about it. This is a mistake, but not an offense that warrants docking someone a week's pay, regardless of what their salary is.
Of course, those complaining about the size of the fine aren't at all interested in the law, they're simply happy to see someone they hate getting penalized and wish it was more.
I can't tell if this is just a problem of the rich and clueless, or if Bill really doesn't think that he has to abide by the rules that everyone else does.
Thank you for correcting the parent. I was about to go frickin' nuts.
By my estimate, if MS stock inflated by even a cent on the share, Bill Gates would have enough gain to wipe out the fine and have enough spare change to buy several additional homes.
This is before you consider the rest of his amazing wealth, the interest that is gaining, or any other aspect of this.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No the huge injustice here is the fact people don't look the crime and realize what she did was wrong. Misrepresenting the fact purposley and trying to get other to do the same is a serious problem, especially when someone is wealthy and popular.
As it turns out she wasn't even charged with breaking the laws she was trying to cover up so the simple truth would have been fine. Instead, the tactics of leading investigators down the wrong path, costing the public more money, and taking valuable resources away from going after real criminals were employed. As far as we know Bill Gates didn't do any of this so he get off easier. I don't see how some one would be pressed to not see the difference or resoning behind it.
I guess after the clinton thing, it is alrite for this type of activity to happen. Then the prosecutors are wrong for going after it. I would like to see people with children tolorate this same behavior when they did somethign wrong..lol Or have the same reaction if thier wife didn't come home for a day and tried to tell you everythign but the truth about why she did it.
This diversification along with his philanthropy through his foundation (though sometimes self-serving) is a relatively new thing. For many many years, what always shocked me was his decidedly undiversified portfolio. He kept an extremely high percentage of his total wealth in Microsoft stock for a very long time. While it could certainly have backfired and any financial advisor would say it was foolish and overly risky, it is the single biggest reason he is the richest man in the world and not 2 or 3. Paul Allen diversified very early on and had a much more balanced portfolio but also got blown away by Gates and his MSFT only holdings.
Vote Quimby.
No copyright notice needs to be given. No explicit copyright need to be posted.
Educate yourself.
What this artist did was to post copyright licensing terms after the use. Without such licensing terms, then one must request permission before making any reproduction of that material.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Bill Fucking Gates has to swing by the fucking ATM on his way home.
I think, relative to net worth, I put more in the parking meter this morning.
Just out of curiosity, what if he did want to cash in? What would happen?
I don't know, but I imagine he'd have to file all sorts of paper work to let everyone know he was selling all his MSFT shares. That would probably freak out the market and the price would drop.
So now his $30 Billion in MSFT is now something less... say $20 Billion for the sake of argument.
There is no way to shelter that, so now he has $20 in cash - What are the taxes on that? Is that a 15% capital gain? Pay the Feds $3Billion. Man, I'd be crying to write that check, no matter how much I had. Next, cue up the State of Washington...
Just idle mind games. I am sure that wealth will get distributed into various trusts, etc. Before Bill passes away, and never be taxed much. [BTW I see this as a good thing, even if you don't like this particular guy. It is hard to accumulate that much wealth, and it is far more interesting to see what will be done with it, rather than governments pissing it away, IMHO]
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
He loses more money when he leaves chunk change in his pockets and puts the pants through the wash!
If you were Bill Gates would you be filling out these forms yourself? He undoubtedly has investment counselors whose job it is to scout good opportunities, get approval from Gates, and take care of the paperwork. Somebody needs to lose his job.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Had she just come forward and admitted there was an improper trade she'd have paid a fine and everyone would have moved along.
Actually, it's exactly the other way around. She has been convicted for what she said.
If she had simply remained silent there would have been no crime.
Nor do I at all confuse "innocent" with "found guilty," and have posted previously on the difference between the two.
O.J. is not "Innocent". He is also "Not Guilty."
One is a statement of fact, the other a statement of legal finding.
Martha Stewart is still, in the legal sense, 100% innocent of violating law with regards to insider trading (notwithstanding the above mentioned civil action by the SEC, where the worst penalty she faces is being found "Liable," which finding has nothing to do with guilt or innocence, thus the lowered level on burden of proof in such cases).
She has been convicted of lying. For speaking up. Which she was under no compulsion to do.
Bill Gates, et all, in the meantime, falsified evidence during trial and presented it as sworn testimony, over a charge they were found guilty of, and the end result was censure of the judge for getting publicly pissed off about it after trial and the slap on the wrist given to Microsoft reduced to being flailed once with a wet noodle.
Not a very hard wet noodle either.
No one was disbarred, no one went to jail, no one was even charged with perjury.
I'm no fan of Ms. Stewart. So far as I can tell she's an arrogant prick who thinks rules only apply to other people. I am biased by not knowing her, but knowing people who know her, who think she's an arrogant prick who thinks rules only apply to other people. In the Hamptons she had created more social discord than everyone else put together. If someone is making a fuss about someone not obeying some zoning law or other, it's likely to be Martha. If someone is making a fuss because she's being asked to obey some zoning law or other, it's Martha.
I don't care for people like that.
Especially when it's the government.
KFG
--
Evan "But you can't lie to a lawman, no... he's better than you and I"
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Because everyone always tells the truth to the police: ... you musta clocked that other car.."
"Yes sir, officer, I was thought I was doing 55mph
It doesn't excuse her, of course, but the hypocrisy of everyone flaming her for lying is getting to me.
Trying to cover up a stupidity is something not many people can honestly claim to never have done.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Perhaps he got a slap on the wrist because the transaction had little or no relevence to antitrust.
Maybe if he was buying stock in red hat or adobe the fine would of been greater??
love is just extroverted narcissism
Of course I guess this is all probably the wrong way to look at it--it's not about risking so much for so little for these people--it's the whole mindset that the rules are for other people, it's not really wrong unless you get caught, and "hey it's me, what are they gonna do about it?"
Vote Quimby.
Diminishing marginal utility.
Basic concept from microeconomic theory: the more you have of something, say for example money, the less each additional unit is worth to you. The marginal utility a person who makes $1 a day gets from a $1 is absolutely massive (life changing experience) compared to the marginal utility a billionare gets (almost nothing).
Adjusting fines and taxes to higher income is not discrimination, it's recognition of the fact that not every dollar is equal.
I'm not a crook!
Ironically, if she had held onto the stock, she would haev earned a profit in the past few months.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
With as much money as Gates' has, and as diverse as his holdings probably are, it seems like it would be *trivial* to oversee some detail or other, particularly when the amounts being traded are almost always at the level where all the most nitpicky SEC rules apply.
With the Powerball lottery getting way up there again, we were talking about what would happen if you won it, and whether we'd quit our jobs or not. I said I'd be inclined to keep my job, just to be bothersome to management ("Sorry I'm late, those Ferrari's just suck in the snow"), but we all kind of agreed that just keeping track of a diversified portfolio of 90-some million dollars would become a full-time job.
You could always hire an accountant, a broker and a lawyer, and then another accountant, lawyer and broker to audit the other three, but even that would be a big job.
At Gates' level of wealth, he almost needs to retain Deloitte or Ernst just to keep his checkbook balanced.
I hear ya,
;-). It seems like the same kinda thing here, except Gates has already been under the microscope for anti-trust violations and I wish they be a little more vigilant in his case.
It's just frustrating that Gates can "forget" this kind of stuff and walk away relatively unscathed. The tin foil hat in me says he (or his staff of attorneys and advisors) knew darn well what paper work is to be filed, and simply decided to skip it in an attempt to avoid any additional attention.
Here at the VA, conventional wisdom says not to ask for permission cause its a lot easier to apologize than it is to get permission in the first place
jeff
Yes. I was not clear. I meant to say, Martha was not an insider. Merely acting on insider's information by a non-insider is not in itself a crime in US (it is in some other countries).
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Dr. FTC: We will fine him almost...[holds pinky to corner of mouth] one million dollars!
Copyright isn't for "intellectual property," it's for creative works, e.g. novels, poetry, short stories, movies, comics, music, artwork, etc. Copyrights, trademarks, patents, and trade secrets are all forms of intellectual property.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
From my stand point, I am starting to see some surprising resemblences here between the OS's.
Computer OS & Human OS.
MS is aiming to have our world as a total 1 stop conglomerate-([n] a group of diverse companies run as a single organization). And if you think big enough, you can take that beyond the computational operating system and apply the same business practices to the Human Race operating system.
I ask you to ponder about this for 30 seconds. And in 30 seconds, can you even vaguely see it?
I sure as Hell hope that what I am seeing is not true and that I am say a full load of Sh*t.
But the problem is , that if I a, single man can vision this all by myself, What do you think the worlds richest most influential man is visioning?
DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!
No. Matha Stewart used illegal insider trading to make money.
Bill Gates bought a stock (probably on recommendation from his broker) and failed to notify the govt of his purchase...in fact, his broker probably failed to notify the govt. of the purchase, but Gates is untimatly responsible for this.
This is totally different.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
You deserve a "+1 cool" for having a Clutch song lyric in your sig. Now pass that mic....
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Well, that's not exactly what the original poster was claming. He said Gates invested in the drug company for the same reason Martha invested in Imclone. The interesting thing about the Imclone deal is that if Martha had simply followed standard investor practice and ridden through the rough period, she would have not only never been charged with any crime, she would be even richer than she was before. The cancer drug that Imclone was testing has now been approved by the FDA and will be on the market in a matter of weeks. It is common practice to halt clinical trials at the halfway point and anlayze the data to see if the drug can be proven to already be overwhelmingly effective in treating the disease for which it was developed. If it does, the clinical trial is ended early and the drug immediately goes into the licensure procedure. If it doesn't, the clinical trial continues to its conclusion. The Imclone drug did not meet this criteria at the halfway point, and the stock fell when the FDA ordered the clinical trial continued. Two days before the announcement, Waksall and his family dumped their shares and Martha sold hers the next day.
Once the clinical trial concluded, however, the drug proved to actually work quite well at reducing specific tumors, and the FDA approved it for licensure. Imclone's stock has now risen much higher than it was when Martha dumped her shares. Had she just had faith in the company and its product and held onto her stocks, she could have avoided all this trouble, and made much more money in the bargain.
If you believe in the company, you buy and hold the investment to realize a profit in the long run. Martha used to work on Wall Street, and should have practiced whaat most investment advisors have been preaching for decades. Greed, and perhaps panic, clouded her judgment.
My bad. I corrected an inaccurate post with more innaccuracy. Thanks for being gentle with the clue stick!
Hey freaks: now you're ju
The % of the fine relative to the purchase was too low, not the % relative to his income as most people here will claim...
Compared to the purchase, it was somewhere less then 2%, which i bet will be nothing compared to the % of return he gets during sale. This is what i see as the problem, not that he has a bizzilion in the bank.
At least as far as I'm concerned thats how it should work.... But i dont make the rules.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I fell kind of sorry for Bill. This is unfair for him. WHOA! Don't hit that Flamebait button, hear me out.
Let's adjust his approximate net worth of $40B for a middle class person with a new worth of $1M (Someone who might purchase stock regularly). A $50M investment for Bill is equivalent to $1,250. How would you like to report to the SEC everytime you bought $1,250 worth of stock?
...I was fined 3 cents for peeing on the sidewalk.
Boy, I won't do that again.
FLR
Gates' revenge is that he's going to pay the fine by donating $800M worth of MS software to the US government.
It is -- when done while under oath. Just ask Bill Clinton.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
yeah yeah, .00002 is 2 thousandths of a percent, or 2 hundred-thousandths of the original value.
;-)
Symantic this.
love to beat the trolls
Bill Gates is not Mr Burns. He doesn't sit around calling the shots on his investment account like some daytrader. Furthermore, this is probably a blind trust due to the fact that information of a *personal* investment in any technology stock, by Mr Gates, is likely material news in and of itself and influence the price.
There is no news here. The guys running his trust fucked up, and they're probably the ones paying. Why? Because otherwise Bill can just take his business elsewhere.
Other than to laugh at and make fun of Bill Gates, who - I don't think anyone is making fun of BG here, I think we are making fun of the US guvm't in this case who are applying such a ridiculously miniscule fine to this case.
You can't handle the truth.
ICOS company profile: "The Group applies its integrated approach to erectile dysfunction" I can't help but wonder how he's going to balance his anti-spam stance with his pro-Viagra II investment.
Open Standards Portal
...confiscate all the stock? The government doesn't seem to have any problem confiscating poor and middle class peoples tangible possessions when they "break" some law. In fact, in many places now, cops just steal your cash if you are carrying it and it's the "officers" opinion you shouldn't have "that much" on you, and even if you can PROVE you got it legally, in a lot of cases they still don't give it back to you. The law theory is personal property is a legal fiction and has no rights. Once it is confiscated by the police, it is "guilty" by default, opposite if you get arrested. Theory anyway.
That just do NOT happen to billionaires. Not too often anyway..
As to Gates, no one can tell me his accountants didn't know what they were doing was illegal. I mean, I never owned one share of anything in my life and I know you're supposed to report major deals like that. The only obvious conclusion then is they thought the potential fine was worth the risk and profits, and/or Gates himself ordered it to go down that way.
I personally *despise* the man, he represents a lot of what is wrong with corporate america, and it usually starts at thetop. He's a pirate, always been a pirate, a thief and bully. He just robs other corporations and entire groups of people, that's the only difference between him and some street mugger, IMO.
SO let me get this straight. If a prosecutor comes up to you and says you comitted a crime and you say that you didn't you should go to jail?
There is a constitutional amendment against self incrimination. You should look into it.
evil is as evil does
It's really simple.
Behind Door Number One there is $50 billion dollars in cash.
Behind Door Number Two there is also $50 billion dollars in cash, but there are also fifty thousand full-time employees who make and sell hundreds of different products in dozens of different countries, producing $30+ billion in sales revenues, every year. In addition there's God alone knows how many buildings, computers, vehicles, and for all we know maybe secret alien technology borrowed from the Grays. The collective opinion of Wall Street - which doesn't even know about the UFOs - is that the whole thing is worth maybe $250 billion.
Bill Gates doesn't own 10% of what's behind Door Number One, he owns 10% of what's behind Door Number Two. And he also owns a bunch of other less spectacular stuff. Put it all together and it sort of makes sense, although his personal net worth is still frequently overstated.
One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of his net worth is in unrealized gains. It's taken him many years and a great deal of regulatory effort to get his holdings down from 20% to 10%, and it was probably only possible because he was doing it to fund charitable efforts and other investments. The difference between Bill's net worth and Microsoft's cash is that Bill can't buy a Nimitz-class carrier task group and invade Panama, but Microsoft (at least in theory) could.
-Graham
I was thinking the other day that when it comes to the law, fines should always be calculated as a percentage of your income. Being rich comes with all sorts of great advantages, but being able to ignore criminal penalties because the fee is so small shouldn't really be one of them.
I thought of this mainly in the fact that when I was poor, a speeding ticket could ruin my budget for months, whereas now I am pretty well off and couldn't give a damn about a $100 ticket. I'm not much of a speeder anyways, but it just doesn't make sense that the penalty is less meaningful to me just because I make more money.
I know there are punative damages in civil cases (which are great, but shouldn't go to the plaintiff as they do now). Is there any similar system in criminal cases? Certainly not in most fines that I see -- they're flat.
Just a wondering...
Hell, there's a whole cross-section of people who will never, ever get past "It was just a breast!" before you ever convince them that it wasn't the breast that was the problem, it was the out-of-context exposure with no warning to parents who dared not want to raise children whose idea of a good time is ripping the shirts off of women during oversexualized dance routines.
I mean, if you did that to a woman on the street, it'd be sexual assault. Do it in front of millions of people during a publicly televised Superbowl broadcast, and it's "just a breast." Same with "It's just a blowjob," like you said.
As someone that actually worked on an investigation of an extremely wealthy person(Bill Griffin, CEO of Riscorp)IMHO virtually _any_ wealthy person can be convicted of _something_ if there is sufficient motivation to open an investigation. I personally support the conviction of Ms. Stewart--but I think the reason why that investigatino proceeded was the motivation and political ineptness of Ms. Stewart rather than the degree of the actual wrongdoing. Likewise, Mr. Gates' anti-trust problems went away when he and lots of his employees made the "right" donations. In the present climate, I don't think there is motivation to mount an appropriate investigation.
The act of buying and selling stock does not by itself create wealth. If trader A gains $N, some set of other traders must therefore lose a corresponding $N to make everything even out. The fact that the way the market works makes it hard to point at a specific set of people who lost that particular money does not mean that those individuals do not exist- they must, as that capital did not miraculously come into existance from the ether.
The existance of (and to a greater extent the perception of the existance of) insider traders strongly discourages non-insider potential investors from becoming investors. If a potential investor suspects that the person wishing to sell stock is acting on insider information (and thus knows that the price of that stock will go down after it is sold) the potential investor is discouraged from investing. The more insider trading prodominates the stock market the more it would resemble a poker game where if you don't know who the sucker at the table is, it's you.
A major purpose of the SEC is to encourage investment, and an important tool in this is maintaining at least the appearance that trading is 'fair' and that non-insider traders aren't merely suckers for the insider traders to unload bad stock on.
Look at who owns Slashdot. It's in VA Linux's best interests to own a "tech news" site that, instead of posting real tech news, just posts version number upgrades of Linux software intermingled with bogus anti-"M$" rants that always twists the facts to sport their propaganda.
But really, people. This guy's got a ton of money that gets invested for him by his mob of finance monkeys. Ultimately, he pays the price when one of them screw up, but do you really think that he called his broker and insisted on this deal?
Okay, so he screwed up by hiring some folks that didn't do their research prior to making an investment in his name, but let's not harrangue the guy for it. There are much better reason for which to lambast Bill Gates!
P.S. - If we spent as much time focusing on what we could do to make Open Source superior to Microsoft's crap as we do on on poking fun at Microsoft's crap, we might actually have had fully superior products by now...
It's a freaking borg. This may have been "funny" back in 1998, but it's just dumb and silly now.
What are YOU doing for starving children, then? Have you sponsored one overseas? Donating to charities? Funded any research?
Or are you like everyone else, just making a living, and helping out when you can?
What does that mean? That you're declared a monopoly? That's not illegal.
If you said "abusive monopoly," that would be another thing. But "convicted monopolist" doesn't really mean anything.
But this is Slashdot! Didn't you read the headline? "BILL GATES FINED $800,000 OVER STOCK PURCHASES!!"
This is clearly News for Nerds and Stuff That Matters. I'd definitely rather read about this than, say, a controversial paper on Linux security, or some Diebold news. Or hell, even NES-themed Gameboy Advance, complete with classic NES game releases to coincide, all coming out in June.
After all, those wouldn't be interesting at all and certainly aren't newsworthy...
"CNN Money is reporting that Bill Gates has been fined $800,000 for violating antitrust waiting period for stock purchases. The department alleged that Gates bought more than $50 million worth of stock in ICOS Corp."
So they fine him less than 2% of the value of the stock he purchased? Most states have a sales tax higher than that!
If you want to punish him, take away all of the stock he bought illegally, all $50 million of it. Done and done.
No you shouldn't goto jail if you didn't do the crime you being acused of.
But if the prosecuter after asking if you did the crime, asks "where were you on the night of may 3rd 2004 at 06:04pm (heh,.it's what the post says..)and were you anywere near a computer" then you answer "I was at my underwater basket weaving class" then add " The closest computer that I was aware of at that time was 200 miles away so there was no way I was anywere near a computer" when in fact you posted the responce I am replying to, then yes you should goto jail.
This is what happened in with martha, bill and several other that had different outcomes. saying no I didn't do the crime is a defence. saying you were somewere totaly different then were you were or that you were doing somethign else and therefore didn't do whatever there is proof (or suspicion)of you doing is obsturcting justice/an investigation or whatever. When in doubt the best reply is the reagan reply "I don't remeber" or I need to confer with my atourney before answering a question like that.
A police interrogation is not under oath. You are under no obligation to tell the truth to the police. You are free to lie to them as much as you want to. The best thing is to say nothing but lying to cops is not a crime.
Sorry.
evil is as evil does
They need to invent treble punitive damages. In other words, the court figures out what amount of damage award will hurt the defendant (punitive), and then triple that amount (treble) to come up with the final answer.
Oh, and did I mention that all treble punitive damages would be paid directly to the free software foundation?
Well your partly right. As far as I know on a federal level you need to be involved in certian types of investigations/crimes before any statment you make to anyone empowered by the government at any time can be consider a violation if it is false.
On the other hand most states have laws that deal with lieing to police when they are cunducting an official investigation. In Ohio (were i'm close to) among other things 2921.32. Obstructing justice. of the criminal code makes it ileagle to
It is also interesting that it provides for situation were the person being protected was actually inocent.
So yes you can lie to a policman in certain situations but not when he is acting in an official investigation. Also seeing how this became a discussion over martha as well as bill the federal laws relating to it is somewhat interesting too.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1505.html holds some penalties that could be related to what martha stewart was doing. Something else that is interesting is because the original investigation was into the finacial instatution (her stock broker) then this may also apply or be the basis of thier complaint.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/1517.html
this is worthy of a direct quote,
If the original investigation wasn't into her broker giving out insider trading information that was a misdemeanor, I don't think she could have been prosecuted.
This didn't start out as a witch hunt about martha doing somethign wrong. It was about her acounts of her broker doing something wrong and she could have been implemented in it. What she done after that went from a possible misdemeanor to a felony.
--spell checkign is for the smarter race. all quotes are from eother other posts or laws that were display when referencing them. i only made up this sig and my part of the comment
On one side Bill Gates has over the years demonstrated contempt twords anything or anyone who dosen't do things his way.
On the other hand this is a minnor mistake and IMAO the SEC is being overly strict.
So basicly it's a tyrent (Bill Gates) getting a tast of his own medicen (SEC).
I don't like it when anyone tells me how to live my life. Be it my government or my products.
The diffrence is I can't uninstall US government and boot Utopia instead.
I don't actually exist.
That's what i find most disturbing: There's a deal over $50 million and the fine is such a small percentage that it's really neglible.
The big numbers look impressive, but if you made a wrongful $50,000 deal and got fined $800 or if you made a $50 deal and got fined $0.80, wouldn't you laugh it off and gleefully hand over that "fine"? This fine is totally out of proportion, BG probably just considers it a small tax he has to figure in in future transactions of that kind.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
That's one of those home-made "rules" that really annoys me, like the one about not being allowed to buy anything until you've been around the board 3 (or 5) times. Foo. I have the rules somewhere. And those people that throw the dice when in jail, don't get a double and then pay their 50. You're supposed to pay the 50 then go, or try for a double. And don't get me started on the cretins who try to put 4 houses on one space and none of the others in a set...."Oh look, I've got Mayfair, I'll put a hotel on it." But you haven't got Park Lane!!!! And you have to pay for 4 houses on each of them first. That'll cost you 1600+200 for the hotel. Make that a round 2k for hotels on both. Oh, you've only got 352? Bad luck.
Stick Men
Drug companies make Viagra-like drugs (Cialis in this case, I think). Bill makes security-lax Windows PCs that get trojaned - which creates significant sales for this kind of product through spam distribution. It's clearly a match made in heaven.
/it's only paranoia if it's not true
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
For example, if Joe of Joe's roofing is a child molester who likes to kill bunnies and burn down buildings, I don't think I'll have him working on my roof, no matter how competent a roofer he is.
Because everyone always tells the truth to the police: ... you musta clocked that other car.."
"Yes sir, officer, I was thought I was doing 55mph
Depends on the cop. There's a couple of national parks where the rangers give out speeding tickets. Lying to them is a federal felony. I don't care how much the speeding ticket is going to be for, I don't care if it's going to cost me my license: It will cost me more and be longer before I can legally drive if I go to prison for five years over lying to a fed. Smile, admit you were stupid, take the ticket, and chalk up the experience. If you hire a good lawyer and get a freindly judge, you may even avoid the reckless driving conviction.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
you can actually register after a violation and still gain some benefits.
There is no reason to register most copyrights until there is a violation. If you are going to distribute it, have the work notarized to prove when it existed. Notary publics are inexpensive compared to registration. The registration is only desirable if you are going to sue. Registration allows triple damages and recovery of legal fees, which is a good investment and threat if going to court. The notarized copy serves as evidence as well as the registration does.
You can have songs notarized for a couple of dollars. Registering a song (and most other works) is $30. ($100 if you use my IP lawyer.) You may attempt to register songs yourself, but do not do it unless there is a chance for court or profits (when your lawyers are already involved so $30 is insignificant.) $30 per song aggregates into much money if you are a prolific artist and registering all your work.
You can have software notarized for tens of dollars. Registering a software program is $300. ($650 if you use my IP lawyer. I forget what additional charges beyond the basic $30 registration are required, but that is why I have a lawyer.) You really want a lawyer before registering software to make certain that the registration is defensible, and that you are not providing more than is necessary. There is a maximum of 50 pages for a software registration; it is usually the first and last 25 pages, but you can mask and/or delete enough to make the code unusable and still have a valid registration. My lawyer recommends deleting every 20th line, then masking anything critical like hardcoded keys. (IANAL, and I highly recommend you get one if you are filing registrations.)
I spend my life entertaining my brain.