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Could Crowdsourcing Help the SEC Detect Fraud?
An anonymous reader writes "The SEC failed to catch Bernie Madoff largely because they are understaffed (a fact the SEC itself has admitted), under-funded, and simply lack the resources to adequately investigate his activities. Undoubtedly, there were other smaller incidents of fraud that have gone unpunished because of this deficiency. To solve this egregious issue, NERA Economic Consulting proposed crowdsourcing, the concept behind Wikipedia's existence. Proving financial fraud is essentially an exercise in finding numbers that do not match. Through crowdsourcing, regulators would make financial data publicly available to the masses, who would do the 'grunt work' of sifting through them to find discrepancies. But would it work?"
The SEC doesn't stop fraud because it doesn't want to stop it, not because it lacks the resources.
Why have people do this instead of developing a sufficiently accurate / sophisticated algorithm to spot these things in the first place. Not some simple code which monitors few obvious indicators and that anyone can work around - something which really correlates and analyzes all the available data. Plus, tools to make the human verification of the flagged accounts a lot faster and easier, so they can check thousands in a week.
Hell, anonymize data for 1000 past frauds and 49000 non-frauds, put the thing online and issue a public prize a la netflix challenge.
Vacuum cleaners suck. Kings rule.
I won't ask for forgiveness, my sins are all I have.
sopssa = SquarePixel = odies. Three (possibly more) sockpuppets, one stupid troll. Remember it moderators!
Peace out!
Maybe. Better than the current system, at least, considering that this guy was sounding alarms about Bernie Madoff more than 10 years ago.
Crowd sourcing is fine for finding out what people in general think, but that's the problem : it reflects what the mass of people think and know.
When specific data becomes available to investors they generally act on it pretty fast, unless it goes against the wisdom of the crowd in which case it gets ignored until the evidence becomes overwhelming. So - we have a very motivated form of crowd sourcing at the moment that isn't doing the job.
The way forward is to change the rules on disclosure, and to change the penalties for fraud. In particular to make the top 50 pay packets in all limited companies partnership packets. If executives had unlimited personal liabilities for one year, 90% in the second year and so on after accepting a top 50 position in a year then I would bet that fraud in organizations and between organizations would decline rapidly. Also, put a tax on goods from any company that is based in a territory that doesn't enforce this practice (or all the execs will go live in Hong Kong or somewhere!)
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
The SEC would still require more workforce because they need to evaluate the feedback from the crowd which can be tedious if you consider the quality.
The government spends money like drunken sailors, yet somehow law enforcement is underfunded. How does that happen?
We don't need yet another new programming language. Let's just pick an existing language and fix its flaws.
... like a really bad way to fix this problem.
Seriously, with the exception of number nerds, who's going to take a look at the numbers?
... but it seems like the article lost me at this point:
Of course, individuals from crowds can make false and erroneous claims. However, the beauty of crowdsourcing is that if a claim is indeed true, a large number of people would repeat and validate it, which would give the claim prominence and credibility. Social news sites like Digg, with their “up-vote” and “down-vote” system, use a similar concept.
Voting systems can and will be gamed. If you are going to break the rules in a money game, you have no qualms about hiring voters to help bury your illegal activity.
At least they are not proposing that they need to get bigger. At least a step in the right direction for a government office. If it would work is another question and what about the privacy issues? Some people may not want it known that they lost millions in a scheme because it would show how stupid they were. Lots of people lost to B.M. some where higher ups... The problem was even when the SEC new there were irregularities, they still turned a blind eye to B.M. because he had friends and power. Corruption over looked by corrupt government regulatory agency? Now, btw, they are also exempt from Freedom of Information Requests, so who will ever really know what went on besides what they say???
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
Lies lies lies lies lies lies lies. Don't believe a word of it, not a single one.
SEC failed to catch Bernie Madoff because the system is corrupt, they have enough people, the problem is what KIND of people they have. You can increase their manpower by a factor of a million and if they still get the kind of people they have there now, they will not end up catching any Madoffs.
Madoff case is so outrageous: Harry Markopolos is the whistle-blower who uncovered Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme 10 years before the rest of the world learned of the biggest financial crime in history. ...
It was exactly as I had warned the government of the United States approximately $55 billion earlier. And as I stood in the lobby of that dojo, my sense of relief was replaced by a new concern. The piles of documents I had in my possession would destroy reputations, end careers, and perhaps even bring down the entire Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the government's Wall Street watchdog -- unless, of course, the government got to those documents before I could get them published. I grabbed my kids and raced home. - go to this link, there is a video there
more videos
--
Don't believe the hype. It is not about not having enough people, it is the system that exists that is completely captive, the SEC needs to be disbanded for corruption.
--
But I am libertarian, I don't actually care about some people losing their money because they are stupid, I am more concerned that government is part of the corruption scheme and it is helping the thieves.
You can't handle the truth.
Maybe they wouldn't be behind in their work if they actually did the work. You know, work rather than watch porn during working hours.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Could I crowd source my home work?
Maybe they would be behind if they actually worked. You know, come to work and actually do their jobs rather than watching porn,
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Government agencies will always "admit" to being understaffed. "Oh, we admit that we need more cash" is quite a useful "admission", no?
Using Madoff as an example of understaffing is extra rich, as they were essentially served the case on a platter by a concerned citizen who had done the due diligence himself (on multiple occasions, natch).
Wasn't there a guy out there trying to get the SEC to look into Madoff for like 10 years because the numbers didn't make sense?
I suppose that every Dollar you invest in tax law enforcement should return thousand-fold its value.
The corporate shenanigans are overwelmingly dwarfed by our government's congressional shenanigans!
How about "Could Crowdsourcing Help the Electorate Detect Congressional Shenanigans?"
Might work for a while, but probably not longer term. "Available" doesn't mean "looked at," so anyone who might get caught will probably be OK until they irk someone who knows about the program.
Didn't yesterday /. have the trouble Digg has with this style of thing?
It sounds like this would be highly vulnerable to gaming. It's pretty easy to twist numbers to imply anything. The people who would be most interested in participating in such a scheme would probably be those who are also the most interested in 'cooking the books.' The impartial are probably not going to participate.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Maybe they would be keeping up with their workload if they were, you know, working rather than watching porn. I mean, if things are so lax that recording porn on an everyday basis for extended periods of time happens what are the non-porn-addicts doing with their time? Just surfing the web? Sleeping? Who knows when there is no supervision and it's blatantly obvious that no one cares what the employees are doing?
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
How can the SEC hide behind the fig leaf of being understaffed when "As early as 2001, the media had quoted financial professionals who raised questions about Madoff's fund. In 2005, independent fraud investigator Harry Markopolos sent the SEC a memo raising 29 red flags -- he had complained about Madoff to regulatory officials for six years." It is very apparent that enough red flags were raised but they were ignored ... this smacks of connivance. .. question is will anybody take any action on the same ? Their track record speaks otherwise ..
So what if the "crowd" finds some anomalies in accounts
Insight into much, Influence over nothing !
there are nuff small - and not so small people who would like to deliver those crooks!
Imagine this scenario:
1. Short sell a stock.
2. Submit apparently crowdsourced information that would prompt the SEC to investigate the company.
3. Stock drops like a rock due to the SEC investigation.
4. Cover your short before anyone can figure out that there's nothing to investigate.
I am officially gone from
actually PAYING people to do work? The problem isn't that the government doesn't have the money to hire more staff at the SEC. The problem is that our government would rather waste money on bailing out public unions as a big thank-you for their election-year support.
Would this not expose a ton of data that should remain secure?
... on their favorite topic. Not to mention the will to do so.
Not everyone has the skills to check complex accounting files. I guess incentives need to be setup here. In at least one big developed country (is it the US or Japan? I can't remember) a member of a cartel has an incentive to speak up and will see its sentence reduced as it helped bust out other members. It's worked in the past (and for a big cartel). Such incentives are the only way to guarantee that people will actually do the job and help.
To Mrs Shapiro: give me a couple grand, send me your files and I'll read them!
Sure, it would work. Let Zynga put it up on FaceBook as a mindless clickfest waste of time. People will flock to it.
"Oh no! My '07 quarterly reports need watering!"
As Wikipedia has shown, it's pretty easy for a small group of people to convincingly alter supposed factual information. In this particular case, the people most interested in manipulating the numbers are the same people who would most likely participate in the project (again, see Wikipedia). Those who are the most neutral or impartial are less likely to participate.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Good thing we had editors.
Call it "crowdsourcing" if you want to use your newfangled terminology, but this is basically just a sunshine law. Nothing new, everything good.
I don't know much about finance (IANACA) but wouldn't "an exercise in finding numbers that do not match" be something a computer could do rather easily and quickly to even large amounts of data?
At least that would be my guess. This seems like it would be very similar in practice to the open source maxim that many eyes make all bugs shallow. It works very when someone has a problem and people who understand code then have an idea where to start, but comparatively few people are prepared (or able) to take source code and methodically check it line by line for flaws. That number is further reduced when you deduct those who would then use that knowledge to further their own ends without disclosing it. I doubt that there enough people who are both suitably skilled and prepared to spend their time trawling through a company's finances in the hope of finding evidence of fraud to make this idea work.
On the other hand, it is a dog eat dog world out there in the world of finance and investments; I can envisage some banks and trading companies might actually employ people to do this kind of thing full time. Why bother trying to out perform a competitor if you can find enough evidence of possible fraud (well founded or otherwise!) and subject them to a detailed investigation by the SEC or some other regulatory body? Come to think of it, it could be the next growth centre for those countries who specialize in staffing call centres and other such cheap labour body shops.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
... on their favorite topic. And a lot of people have the will to do it.
Not everyone is ready to go through complex accounting files, nor has the skills to actually do it. One needs to setup proper incentives is this is to work. In an OECD country (not sure which one), a member of a cartel who goes clean with regulators will see its sentence waived as it helps bust out other cartel members. It's very efficient and there have been successful outings in the past.
To Mrs Shapiro: Send me a couple grand, accounting PDFs and I'll read through them! Otherwise, no thanks, I'm busy.
Consider this possibility if you will:
1. Short sell a stock.
2. Pay off some crowdsourcers in China or some other foreign nation where law enforcement is a bit lax to submit info that makes it look like an otherwise sound company is engaged in some flim-flam, which will cause the SEC to start investigating.
3. Watch the stock drop as people find out about the SEC investigation.
4. Cover your short, and possibly even buy up some extra.
5. Watch the stock go up as people find out that the SEC has dropped its investigation due to a lack of any real evidence.
6. PROFIT!!!
I am officially gone from
...to create a "secure" IT gateway between confidential submissions to the market authorities and the general public, which can then be downloaded to a DVD by some employee wanting to "look at it at home", which is then accidentally left lying around in a car somewhere shortly before billions of personal financial transactions end up in a file torrented on the PirateBay with edited highlights providing Julian Assange with another headline.
Salocin.com
This much is obvious - the more transparent an institution, the easier it is for outsiders to find fraud or other problems. Where privacy is not an issue, I wholeheartedly support making as much data as possible available (in analysis-friendly formats) to as many people as possible. Data.gov is a great initiative. On the other hand, while it is good to open things up to fresh air and external review, blindly trusting on "the crowd" to do your work for your poor, understaffed self does not sound like due diligence. The key word in the title is "help". Staff professionals are expected to pick the most promising traces and do full investigations that lead to prosecution. With more transparency, public opinion will hopefully badger them on if they falter.
The article itself talks about moderation systems that allow the crowd to separate wheat (real cases of fraud) from chaff. In many crowdsourcing initiatives, a bad moderation system has resulted in a swamp of duplicate suggestions and some great internet humor, but little of actual value. A worse risk is that of concerted action by special interest group minorities, which could bury findings considered "negative" by group members and bolster those that furthered the group's agenda, giving this agenda a false legitimacy by appearing to come from "the crowd".
Recall http://mps-expenses.guardian.co.uk/ "U.K. newspaper The Guardian, which published online 700,000 expense claims by members of the U.K. Parliament" and http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/06/19/0152259/Newspaper-Crowdsources-700000-Page-Investigation-of-MP-Expenses
End users could be given forms with details removed and look for the classic 'straight lines'
eg."If you look at his performance, it was a straight line up"
http://www.investmentadvisor.com/Issues/2009/January%202009/Pages/More-Regulation-PostMadoff.aspx
Anything of interest could be noted. The main issue would be an elite backlash, their trusts and generational insider trading would have to be protected.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Let me coin a phrase.
You gotta be kidding me. Understaffed? Only because no one is actually working. If there are employees who are allowed to surf porn the majority of work day then discipline is so lax that very little is getting done. Sure, not everyone is surfing porn, but it's for sure there are checks on how much work someone is getting done. There is zero accountability.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Of course the SEC would "admit" to being understaffed and underfunded, regardless of the actual cause. That's how you get Congress to throw more money at you.
... the one that would be called "competition financial analyst"... given that it took quite a small effort to de-anonynimize a trivial "search log", I wonder how hard would it be to do the same with financial records of companies (which, I reckon, would show a higher regularity/better identifiable patterns). Once this is done, what an invaluable source of info to see on what the competition is spending money (not that this would help much... I mean, knowing better how your competition is spending money doesn't necessary mean that the CEOs would now better about the businesses they themselves manage).
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Not only did the SEC fail to notice Madoff, they failed to react to people who reported Madoff. So, it seems to me the real problem here isn't one that can be solved by crowdsourcing, unless vigilantism counts.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Sounds incredibly boring and not very useful. The SEC had multiple people come forward and report Bernie Madoff for fraud long before they decided to punish him. What going to fix that?
Some NYSE specialists were charged with fraud: Richard Ney and economist who later turned actor, wrote a best selling book in 1970 ("The Wall St Jungle", interview NY Magazine 1970) with a few follow up books that all called out the NYSE Specialist families for fraud, explaining exactly how they defraud the public. At the time The Wall Street Journal boycotted anyone selling the NY times longest running best seller, and Ney was not permitted as a guest on The Tonight Show - very unusual at the time for someone with such a long run best seller/controversial book - his message had touched a raw nerve. In response, the establishment had Ney widely counter-attacked, labelled a conspiracy theorist nut at every opportunity - comments like "what would an actor know of the stock market" were common and can be heard even today.
To prove Ney's wild eyed grand conspiracy theory right - The SEC and Department of Justice finally got around to charging the NYSE specialists for the exact fraud that Ney described - 33 year's after he wrote about the crime! In 2003 the Specialist firms quickly got their get out of jail free cards for a tiny fraction of what they had actually defrauded over the years. Those get out of jail free cards just keep coming off the monopoly pile. The story does not end there however... news came out shortly after that the NYSE was at long last going to move to an all-electronic exchange - and that the Specialists firms charged with defrauding the public were the very same that had been blocking the move due to their 30% NYSE stake. Everyone in the know + those that read Ney's books knew all too well of the massive fraud going on in full public view for at least 33 years (more like 210+ years), but it was not until these Specialist criminals blocked other powerful interests that the illegal behaviour was actually pursued by the DOJ.
If ever there was an example of the lack of credibility for the SEC, this is it. 33+ years of massive fraud in full public view, but the DOJ did not get around to prosecuting until it was ordered to - until it was necessary to coerce the Specialist family firms into letting the NYSE go electronic. Nothing to do with justice, or protecting the innocent being defrauded to the tune of billions of dollars over the decades. As an added insult, the DOJ let the criminals off the hook with a paltry fine. But then there is no surprise there, as Richard Ney said it best:
"Regrettably, the arrangements that exist to preserve the traditions and legalize the frauds of the security industry are inseparable from the general organization of a society controlled by the financial establishment, a society whose laws and principal customs have been contrived to serve the special interests of the financial community,"
Voting Red or Blue will not change this arrangement of US society and it's laws - merely reinforce it.
It's gonna take a bounty to get me to stare at a bunch of weird numbers. I'd like a bounty. Six figures, please.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
because they are understaffed (a fact the SEC itself has admitted), under-funded, and simply lack the resources to adequately investigate his activities
Harry Markopolos did all their work for them but they simply refused to investigate because they had a cozy relationship with Madoff.
Croudsourcing might be a nice idea in general when dealing with vast problems and patterns, but what is the reward?
When I write an article for *pedia, I "scratch an itch" or increase the worlds' knowlege (well, at least the enthropy...). When I do somethink like Seti@Home, its for science.
But why should I waste my time by sifting through financial numbers? To help reducing the risk for the rich to get richer?
sounds like another system for 4chan to raid and game for the lulz
I used to work large balance fraud for a living in my previous career. I think fraud is typically pretty easy for a human to bust. There are certain kinds of things that can and should be easy to catch. There's. No harm and I think the proof has now come to show how much damage fraud can do.
Information like that would be a treasure trove for educating the public
test
This sounds boring, useless, and a huge buzzword heavy distraction. The SEC had multiple people coming forward for many years before they prosecuted Bernie Madoff, I'm sure some of these people had proof. How is this any different from what they're claiming to do. Instead it sounds like a lazy buricrates way of getting his boss off his back. SEC Fraud Guy: "Hey Boss, lets *crowdsource* it!" Boss: (I don't know what that is) "Sure! And here's a nice raise!"
SEC investigated investigated several cases, just not one of the biggest fraud cases ever about which they had been warned several times.
Discrepancies had been found, but not acted upon. It seems to be a matter of messed up priorities more than anything else.
Crowdsourcing won't fix that.
Watchdog 'ignored' Madoff warning{s} ... ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7786923.stm
It has been revealed the SEC received warnings about Wall St figure Bernard Madoff almost 10 years ago, in 1999.
The SEC chairman said he was "gravely concerned by the apparent multiple failures" of SEC staff to look into claims about Mr Madoff.
Mr Cox said: "Credible and specific allegations regarding Mr Madoff's financial wrongdoing, going back to at least 1999, were repeatedly brought to the attention of SEC staff, but were never recommended to the commission for action." ...
SEC was explicitly alarmed by H. Markopolos on November 7th, 2005, that the world’s largest hedge fund is a fraud. The original 19 pages paper can for example be seen here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9189285/Markopolos-Madoff-Complaint
This paper tells straight that Bernie Madoff was committing fraud. Crowd sourcing would never have helped here as SEC was just refused to accept the evident proof of Madoff's wrongdoing.
I heard the first time about this paper in a talk given by Prof. Paul Embrecht. His very interesting talk notes can be found here: http://www.actuaries.org/ASTIN/Colloquia/Helsinki/Presentations/Embrechts.pdf
Whenever someone would gain from people believing what they're saying, I think its more along the lines of an excuse than an admission. Or misdirection. The SEC saying "we need more people, and thus more money" is the same thing as Kim Jong Il "admitting" he doesn't have nuclear weapons to keep inspectors and/or invaders out. If the employees they have now would do their jobs rather than look at pr0n on government time and just build contacts until they can get jobs with major financial institutions helping them avoid the SEC, then this would likely would not have been an issue in the first place.
More like they just weren't doing their job. Surfing for porn all day is not in the SEC charter.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/sec-pornography-employees-spent-hours-surfing-porn-sites/story?id=10452544
Madoff got away with it for so long, despite warnings to the SEC, because he was quite literally beyond reproach. His respected standing and reputation as a financial mastermind from his heyday as a NASDAQ bigwig inclined those with oversight to write off the occasional warning bell as the complainer (or the regulator himself) being unable to fathom the financial kung-fu of the master. Of course, in his later years he only looked so good because he was cheating. I sometimes wonder if he started down that road to fill a void left after the tech bust deflated the NASDAQ, that he still needed to feel and be treated like the captain of finance he once was.
That being said the resources, tools, and staff of the SEC have not kept pace with the growth of their mandated realm of oversight. This is true of many regulators, but the SEC especially so.
If the SEC is underfunded and understaffed then how the heck do they expect to deal with the avalanche of false positives by idiots who think they're qualified to participate? The SEC should get its funding directly from the businesses they're supposed to regulate. A flat percentage of gross corporate income, no doubt a fraction of a percent would be plenty enough.
Libertards complaining that corporations deserve a free ride on the backs of real citizens in 3..2..1..
Caveat Utilitor
"Of course, individuals from crowds can make false and erroneous claims. However, the beauty of crowdsourcing is that if a claim is indeed true, a large number of people would repeat and validate it, which would give the claim prominence and credibility." So they want to rely on thousands of people with no financial training to balance the books? If people rely on H&R Block to do their taxes do you really think they can spot "irregularities" in this massive amount of data? If they're collecting the data they can simply have the computers do it.
"The SEC failed to catch Bernie Madoff largely because they are understaffed (a fact the SEC itself has admitted), under-funded, and simply lack the resources to adequately investigate his activities."
What a crock of pure BULLSHIT that statement is!
The SEC, and all of the other law enforcement agencies of the Federal government failed to catch Madoff and the other 10,000 crooks and fraudsters in the financial industry because they willfully and deliberately refuse to do their jobs. This guy, Harry Markopolos handed Madoff to the SEC on a silver platter repeatedly over the course of several years:
http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/12/busting-bernie-madoff-one-mans-10-year-crusade
As more evidence as to the mindset of our Federal government regulators, the FBI was talking about an "epidemic of fraud" in the mortgage industry as early as 2004, yet refused to act.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/the-two-documents-everyon_b_169813.html
The Federal government is NOT interested in applying the law to the politically well connected elites. Laws only apply to little people. We have the FBI, SEC, FDIC, OTS, OCC, and FRBs all with a mission to regulate various parts of the financial industry. However, most of the employees, from the Treasury Secretary on down are either former industry execs, or want to become industry execs after their government careers.
All of the whistle-blowing, crowd sourcing, blatant evidence of crime, etc. is TOTALLY USELESS when the government actively participates in the frauds and refuses to enforce the existing laws. That's why the whole "financial reform" bill is a joke as well. Write more laws and hire more regulators not to enforce them.
I'm really hoping that we get some whistle-blowers in the financial industry sharing data with wikileaks. The Feds won't do anything about it, but I want the people to know the full story of how the financial industry, with the full cooperation of the Federal government, raped the people of the U.S.
Of course, individuals from crowds can make false and erroneous claims. However, the beauty of crowdsourcing is that if a claim is indeed true, a large number of people would repeat and validate it, which would give the claim prominence and credibility. Social news sites like Digg, with their “up-vote” and “down-vote” system, use a similar concept.
Not to stroke Slashdot's ego, but I think a meta-moderation system is a better model. A financial institution may remain honest but piss off a lot of vindictive people who can click "Digg this". Whereas a small set of competent savvy number-crunchers may dispassionately find the clues needed to identify a fraud, with far more reliability. I believe they may underestimate the amount of noise that will come from investors who lose a lot of money from a perfectly honest, if incompetent, financial advisor.
There's also no mention in the article of financial compensation models for the crowd - except for the word "volunteer" halfway down the article. I'm not sure if this system would be better with cash rewards or not.
Wikipedia works because people enjoy showing off what they know. I'm not sure that motivation would apply to sifting through accounting figures.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I suggest you start with every major corporation in the United States. Then you can move on to every politician they "lobby" (aka bribe).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...cure insomnia worldwide at the same time! I'm all for it.
Consider a company that has filed for chapter 11 reorganization. Said company is consistently MONTHS late with their theoretically mandated-by-the-SEC filings. A large number of people publicly call attention to this fact, over and over again, stating that according to the SEC rules said company should not be allowed to trade stock - not on the pink sheets, not on the major exchanges, NOT AT ALL. Yet, the company continues to trade.
I would assert this demonstrates that crowdsourcing has already been tried, and the SEC's (lack of) actions in this matter demonstrate it won't work.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Its been going on for decades, but only recently is a small percentage of the public beginning to realize the true extent of the conflict of interest on Wall St.
Given the SEC ignored detailed reports from various members of the public that Madoff was running a scam, I'm sure sending them more such reports (of lower quality from people with less experience in the relevant fields) will help greatly.
The SEC would have to listen when people report problems.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The SEC failed to catch Bernie Madoff largely because they actively ignored and hide numerous well formed and filed complaints and warnings about his fraudulent activities.
So no, it probrably wouldn't work.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Crowdsourcing works nicely for things like open-source software and encyclopedias because the whole project is of limited scope, it's predicated on Samaritan-like communal giving, and generally no one can profit one way or the other from particular responses or pieces of writing. This probably breaks down and becomes unstable if participants can profit one way or the other from particular outcomes. i.e., Campbell's Law:
"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_Law
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Of course it can, especially combined with the new bounties on successful whistle-blowing : http://community.nasdaq.com/news/2010-08/whistleblower-law-could-payout-millions-for-tips-on-fraud.aspx?storyid=31840
That is at least $100,000 for you if the damages reach the lilliputian amount of 1 million dollars. I have seen dumber hobbies for interns at big companies...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I want something to help me detect fraud. The SEC might or might not do something, but it remains my responsibility to manage my money. If crowd-sourcing works, I'd use it for sure as would millions of other investors.
If you're familiar with the CAPS community at www.fool.com, you'll understand the concept. Make the records/numbers public and start ranking the individual screeners by their credibility - if they're right more often, their input gets more weight. People that provide innacurate analysis will be ranked less significant.
Proverbs 21:19 It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman.
Back then, they didn't have a system for listening to public info like this. I know, I know, all the brilliant geeks on Slashdot think they could have run it perfectly like everything else but let's put that aside for a second and consider reality. In reality with a big bureaucracy it is difficult to get things done when you don't have a system for it. Just the way it goes. So one of the first parts of this change would doubtless be creating a method for people to submit reports, and a method internally for dealing with that.
In fact, that might be part of what is leading to this. The SEC said "You know, we really fucked up on this Madoff thing and there was a guy who noticed it a long time ago and tried to tell us. Maybe we should set something up so people like him can comb over what is going on and submit reports to us to process."
It is actually possible for people and organizations to learn from their mistakes.
Through crowdsourcing, regulators would make financial data publicly available to the masses, who would do the 'grunt work' of sifting through them to find discrepancies. But would it work?
Two words: Facebook badges.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
The SEC were told about Madoff, more than once. They chose to ignore the warnings.
This has nothing to do with being understaffed, though "admitting" you were understaffed makes a very nice excuse.
Shame on Slashdot for repeating a well known well exposed falsehood, and propagating the corporate bullcrap.
The crowd is too stupid to even detect that a clearly staged professional photoshoot of a model holding a whiteboard quitting her job is a fake. You're going to trust the crowd to identify financial frauds?
Many who work for the SEC later end up in jobs in big financial firms. So those at the SEC who hope to work on Wall Street have plenty of incentive to ignore evidence of fraud. They don't want to create a stir and damage their chances for future employment with one of the firms they regulate.
That's why Markopolous said the SEC should only hire people over 50 in positions that involve detecting and investigating fraud -- people who have already been on Wall Street and are towards the end of their careers, not people hoping to work on Wall Street.
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There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
Abstract: That there is a coalesced short list of Goatse troll links.
Goatse is one of those Pictures Worth a Thousand Nightmares. Christmas Island was the original host of the site, but they since took steps to remove their copy, and then the domain bounced around for a while. Currently someone is trying to establish a Goatse email.
The successor "True Goatse" for trolling appears to be the French copy. Other copies exist, but they are generally not used on Slashdot.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
That would have worked just about as well. Scanning Madoff's extended family ties would have revealed Madoff's family ties at the SEC. Can't remember if it was a son-in-law or daughter-in-law that had a supervisory role in the SEC investigation. The SEC has gone to great lengths to put this info down.
SEC are oath breakers milking the teet.
"Crowdsourcing" - right. You give out a file of all ticker transactions for the last year. Now what? Anything useful in this area is going to be done by a small number of people crunching on the data. Individual items aren't significant; analysis is necessary.
The real issue here for the financial community is transparency of hedge funds. Hedge funds need to be registered with the SEC and regulated as mutual funds. It would also help if pension funds were not treated as "sophisticated investors" allowed to invest in hedge funds. That would quickly move the hedge fund industry into the regulated mutual fund category.
Crunching on publicly available data can be very effective, though. I called the dot-com crash that way, company by company, using a program which automatically ground through SEC filings and did a simple cash-flow calculation. ("Chart is not available for this symbol" means the company is long gone.)
Thats why the SEC is considering it. They need more solutions that dont work so that they can continue not doing their job.
The SEC wasn't interested in a scam that hit us for $50 k, and over 250 other investors for a total of $5.5 million. Not sexy enough for them, I guess, but it sure hurt this disabled veteran!
Why can't SEC publish the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fmri reports of the company directors along with the quarterly results?
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga