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Infineon Execs Plead Guilty to Price-Fixing
An anonymous reader writes "Executives at Infineon Technologies plead guilty to an international conspiracy to fix prices in the DRAM market. Heinrich Florian, Günter Hefner, Peter Schaefer and T. Rudd Corwin, executives for Infineon Technologies, had a felony filed against them yesterday in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Each executive could spend up to six months in prison and will have to pay a $250,000 fine. Under the plea agreement, they must also assist the government in its DRAM investigation. Infineon agreed in October to pay a $160 million fine for its role in the conspiracy, according to the Justice Department."
Is this surprising?
The rest of the world is getting obese just like Americans... everyone is greedy to a point. Some are just able to carry their greed to the point of complete selfishness and totally ignore the high percentage of people who have a hard time just keeping a roof over their heads.
What the heck will it take? Evolution of the human species? I always think back to those old Star Trek episodes where they land on some planet where the inhabitants laugh kindly at Earth's culture because they have learned to live without greed, take care of everyone, and actually enjoy sex rather than codify it.
I don't know why I want to write this... mod at your leisure.
applied a similar punishment to Microsoft for having violated the Sherman Act??? That's just as serious and the consequences for the customers were just as severe. Artificially raised prices as a result of the monopoly and a lack of choice.
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Just interesting to where and how the money gets distributed.
Ahahahahaha! Sure, if you're one of the lawyers who filed the suit... Otherwise, the gov't gets the money. Did you think the lawyers really filed suit on OUR behalf? Come, now... :-)
Plus, I'm sure the $160 million fine the company paid paled in comparison to how much extra they charged consumers, and the execs surely made a lot more than the $250,000 fine they have to pay. In essense, pleading guilty and paying the fines is just good business, in the same way that paying a $35 parking ticket in NYC while on a $2,500 service call is just good business... Sad.
Sorry, you are suggesting that we regluate the RAM market?!
The fact of the matter over the last 5 years, RAM prices have dropped and sizes have went through the roof. There is no reason _not_ to expect this to continue.
CPUs are made by 2 main companies, yet innovation and price drops are very frequent. RAM has 3, so it's even more competitive if you use that logic.
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See, what confuses me is that other felons aren't allowed to profit from their felonies. That's why drug dealer's houses and cars and boats are taken away. But, these execs still get to keep what they earned during the time they were committing their felonies (minus the 3 months pay they're being fined). I guess it's just more proof that crime does pay.
In essense, pleading guilty and paying the fines is just good business, in the same way that paying a $35 parking ticket in NYC while on a $2,500 service call is just good business...Sad
... if a corporation is a legal person, then revoking a charter is similar to the death penalty. Furthermore, one could make an arguement that price fixing is not a crime that warrants the death penalty. Hmm...
Which is why its high time for Uncle Sam to start revoking corporate charters for misbehaving corporations.
That just made me think
The really sick thing about it is given the conditions in the 'prison' they will be in, a great many people would line up for a free six month stay there if it were offered. There are no bars, just a hedge outside you're not supposed to go past.
They can't have prisons like that for everyone because too many people would deliberatly get caught so they could go there.
Personally, I believe that no prison should be anything but civil to live in nor better than the conditions the poorest law abiding citizen lives under. Note that meeting both conditions will require improving conditions for the law abiding poor in the U.S.