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Nortel Executives Found Not Guilty On Fraud Charges
Following up on the earlier story about Nortel execs waiting for a ruling in their corporate fraud case, new submitter Unknown1337 writes "Something doesn't add up when a multi-billion dollar corporation loses it's value so quickly, but the courts have decided it wasn't intentional fraud by the executives that caused it."
"Do not attribute to malice, what can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Still, this does not pass the smell test..
That shows how good they were at cooking the books, if malpractise can't be proven. They should open a school for Creative Accounting.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
two-tiered justice system — the way in which political and financial elites now enjoy virtually full-scale legal immunity for even the most egregious lawbreaking, while ordinary Americans, especially the poor and racial and ethnic minorities, are subjected to exactly the opposite treatment: the world’s largest prison state and most merciless justice system.
This is one of those cases where the defendant can't possibly win.
If guilty: they dishonestly re-jigged a companies accounts so as to pay themselves a massive bonus. Fraudsters of the highest order.
If not guilty: Not the point. They were in charge of Nortel. If they (totally innocently) re-jigged the accounts thinking it would do the company good, gave themselves a massive bonus as a big pat on the back and then found the company collapsing around their ears, they're still responsible. Only instead of being fraudsters, they're dangerously incompetent.
“In Financial Crisis, No Prosecutions of Top Figures.” It asks: “why, in the aftermath of a financial mess that generated hundreds of billions in losses, have no high-profile participants in the disaster been prosecuted?” And it recounts that not only have no high-level culprits been indicted (or even subjected to meaningful criminal investigations), but few have suffered any financial repercussions in the form of civil enforcements or other lawsuits. The evidence of rampant criminality that led to the 2008 financial crisis is overwhelming, but perhaps the clearest and most compelling such evidence comes from long-time Wall-Street-servant Alan Greenspan; even he was forced to acknowledge that much of the precipitating conduct was “certainly illegal and clearly criminal” and that “a lot of that stuff was just plain fraud.
Download academic articles? Go to prison and be tortured for decades.
Falsify records, ruin a company for your own personal enrichment, and defraud hundreds of thousands of shareholders along the way? No fucking problem.
America is winning a worldwide race to the bottom.
Oh gee, how will they ever survive on the mere millions they've got in the bank? They might have to cut back right down to the bone, where they can no longer afford a new car every month, have to give up 3 of their 5 mistresses, and settle for only a gold swimming pool instead of the platinum one they set their little hearts on.
Nortel was subject to an organized, sustained industrial espionage effort conducted by Chinese companies. Huawei was specifically named by Brian Shields, Systems Security Advisor for Nortel at the time of the attacks (at the time Huawei supposedly were even copying Nortel's instruction manuals). Shields petitioned Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 2004, because even the CEO's computer had been compromised.
the rootkits employed on Nortel hardware were sophisticated enough to survive formatting. it wasn't until recently that Canadian Security and Intelligence Service became interested in the role Huawei had in Nortel's demise
I suggest the story of Nortel's demise has not been fully revealed. Nortel presented with a sudden, public exanguination and it has been a mystery in Canadian IT industry. This is not just another "golden parachutes" story.
And yet,
so many people who were 'against' the occupy movement and everyone still believes in trickle down economics.
Really if you think about it. Trickle up makes a lot more sense.
Why should millionaires who get another few million really spend any of it? Just add it to the pile.
I think Michael Moore did it best, he went into the Wall street buildings and tried to make some citizens arrests. That's what should've happened en mass.
It would seem that - with isolated exceptions - having wealth is a get out of responsibility free card. Society generally is more forgiving of the transgressions of the wealthy than of the working class. I wonder why this is because these transgressions can be just as serious yet we more readily forgive them. Look at past political figures and scandal: they often make comebacks. It is difficult for the working class person to make any kind of comeback after scandal. It is an interesting double standard.
Nortel was subject to an organized, sustained industrial espionage effort conducted by Chinese companies. Huawei was specifically named by Brian Shields, Systems Security Advisor for Nortel at the time of the attacks (at the time Huawei supposedly were even copying Nortel's instruction manuals). Shields petitioned Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 2004, because even the CEO's computer had been compromised.
The rootkits employed on Nortel hardware were sophisticated enough to survive formatting. it wasn't until recently that Canadian Security and Intelligence Service became interested in the role Huawei had in Nortel's demise
I suggest the story of Nortel's demise has not been fully revealed. Nortel presented with a sudden, public exanguination and it has been a mystery in Canadian IT industry. This is not just another "golden parachutes" story.
Thank you for posting these links in one convenient location. I'm working my way through them and ... just ... "Wow".
I was vaguely aware of some of the allegations previously, but not the extent of them.
I've considered us to be engaged in a "cyber-war" for quite a while, but still there's more I have to do to lock down my systems.
What a load of bullshit.. Nortel's infamous "return to profitability" is almost a textbook example of a dying company fiddling the books. I hope that the Canadian government takes this to appeal, else it looks like Canadian corporations can get away with whatever they like if they blow enough cash on lawyers..
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
And yet,
so many people who were 'against' the occupy movement and everyone still believes in trickle down economics. Really if you think about it. Trickle up makes a lot more sense.
If you succeed in destroying someone's deeply entrenched beliefs using facts and logic, that person won't change his mind but will hate your guts forever.
I was an employee of Nortel, and I do not buy this completely. It might have happened - for sure, but Nortel was so slow that even otherwise, its demise was on the cards. Once I was part of a big project - which was supposed to be 50+ people for 9 months - which in the end ballooned to 150+ people and was not over even after 2 years. Not that these sort of overruns doesnt happen in other companies - but the project itself was to implement one existing specification in their system 2 years after all their competitors. Also, the whole thing shouldnt have taken 9 months and 50+ people itself, but their language and architecture was so old that it was very non-agile and we could straightaway see it struggling with its monolithic architecture against the COTS system provided by the competitors.
For me, Nortel failed because they (1) did not innovate enough in the later years and (2) their software architecture did not move with the times. Other factors like espionage might have been a major cause, but they were still struggling a lot otherwise also.
Please note that I was a small time developer in one area, so in other areas they might have been much better. But our area was one of their lucrative ones though - so cant say either ways.
The Occupy movement was like a safety valve, a way for the little guy to blow off steam before the whole thing blows up so the status quo can be maintained, not a movement that proposed realistic plans for reform.
If you succeed in destroying someone's deeply entrenched beliefs using facts and logic, that person won't change his mind but will hate your guts forever.
Best line I've heard in a long time. I'm so going to steal it.
TCAP-Abort
I have a deeply entrenched belief that people are people, and that people who gravitate to power and wealth often do so by unethical means, and that the people in the Occupy movement would be just as bad if they came into power. If someone has some amazing way to ensure justice and decent treatment for all of us, I'm all for it, but in the absence of that, the current system is as good as it gets.
Did you actually bother to read what I wrote?
Well, yes. Telecom vendors are not exactly celebrated for their competence, especially in security.
A more accurate statement might be that if I see a product from any major telecom vendor, I go in assuming that it will be riddled with security holes that were well documented ten years ago. Usually I can't even meet those low expectations and am disappointed -- again.
"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend unto the death your right to say it." -- Voltaire
I just heard an interview with a forensic accountant who served as an expert witness for the plaintiffs. He said he was surprised the prosecution tried to make its case on the most difficult, least provable grounds possible. He also suggested other lines of attack that would have been much more likely to get a conviction.
For anybody interested, the interview was on the CBC Radio show Metro Morning.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Yes, but maybe I misunderstood it.
I like to think upper end of the spectrum intelligence is a required attribute in many of our science, engineering, mathematics, and problem-solving vocations. There are positions in industry, however, that are seemingly best suited to those with no moral compass at all. It is not that these two conditions are mutually exclusive, merely that a complete lack of ethics is the most decisive trait in determining who will Captain our industry. Very often intelligence is burdened with that pesky human condition known as empathy, and that will slow your roll at Goldman Sachs faster than a bestiality addiction.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
They also had a line in SDH and SONET equipment. That's been or is being replaced with IP/Ethernet protocol equipment. Basically, all their old core markets evaporated, and they weren't able to adapt in time.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"If you work on the basis that people trying to get into a position of power are doing so for one of two reasons:
1. Personal gain, money, power, influence, and the chance to live the high life; or
2. A genuine desire to help people and with the conviction that they are able to improve the lot of all people,
then when the people get into power, one of three things will happen.
Those who go in for reason 1 (and who are not dumb enough to get caught) will line their pockets. Those who go in for reason 2 will be offered the inducements that the "reason 1" people get. They will probably be tempted, and if they give in to temptation they will turn into more "reason 1" people, possibly without really realizing it. If the reason 2 group are tempted but resist, stay true to their ideals, and see everyone around them behaving like pigs at the feeding bucket, they will probably be tempted to expose the problems and educate the masses about what is going on. At that point, the "reason 1" people, with a collective will borne out of self-preservation instincts, will do everything they can to neutralize, silence, or otherwise discredit/eject the honest people from their sphere of influence.
If my (rather low) opinions of the people who seek power and influence is correct, then the honest types who could make a positive difference become ineffective, while the rest just do whatever they can to keep the gravy train rolling.
The only way to prevent that is to have oversight of those in power. The only way to prevent the corruption of those responsible for the oversight of the people in power is for the oversight to be performed by the broader community, not by specific individuals. That way, the cost of bribery/corruption becomes too high, and while human nature makes a group individually lazy, it also makes the group generally more honest as there is more scrutiny and less possibility of corruption.
Why should millionaires who get another few million really spend any of it?
Because if they dont their employees will find a job that actually pays them.
"Something doesn't add up when a multi-billion dollar corporation loses it's value so quickly"
I figured out what it is! It's the apostrophe in the word "it's." It isn't supposed to be there grammatically. Woo, tricky one but I got it.
Because nothing is perfect we should never try to be better than we are? Really?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It's not trickle up it's flow or flood up. Then off to the Cayman Islands.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
They both make sense. Trickle down is supply side. Trickle up is demand side.
"Add it to the pile" is the desired outcome of "trickle down", since adding it to the pile mean investing it. That investment ends up funding businesses and the economy grows.
Trickle up would increase spending and hence demand which businesses will hopefully then meet by expanding.
Trickle down has problems of course. The most obvious being that not all investment goes to businesses - the US government, for example, also borrows a fairly large amount of money - that comes from the pool of investment and is going to the government rather than to businesses.
Trickle up has problems too. Increased demand can be satisifed by foreign producers and hence the economic benefits of more jobs and more production end up happening elsewhere.
Of course those investments can be made overseas, and increased spending can be directed to bidding up the price of things like real estate - so both those example problems cut both ways.
Come on, those things were not part of the Nortel demise. Nortel's demise started long before Huawei was a serious player outside of the poorest third world countries. Huawei has also gone after CISCO's market far more than Nortel's market. Nortel collapsed due to incompetence. For example:
A small company called Xros (X as in the Greek letter Chi) was started by some guys who wanted to create a laser printer using mems technologies. The VC said "no, forget about laser printer, her is a ton of cash, go and create me an all optical switch". OK the dudes said, we'll do that, and they started working. They got some prototype stuff running. They made some in-roads into creating a sixteen channel switch etc. In 2000, they did not have much of a product, but quite a bit of prototype stuff. They were acquired by Nortel for a whopping $3.25B. A company with a handful of employees and no products.
That's how you kill a company.
Oh, and I should mention, about a year or two later, all activities related to the Xros acquisition was halted. Nortel wanted to play cool with the likes of CISCO, but had none of the (management and sales) talent.
What's worse is this is one of those cases where the corporation dipped into or underfunded the pension plan, so when they went under they took all their past and current employees with them.
Just imagine how you might feel having worked your whole life, retire on a fixed pension, then hear about these execs that get 12million bonus OVER their salary, and stock, to tank the company (perhaps illegally cooking books in process), which btw ends up reducing your pension income by 33% or whatever.
I'm just suprised these sort of jerks (Nortel isn't the only one) arn't beaten to death by walkers and canes from cheated pensioners.
Please note that I was a small time developer in one area, so in other areas they might have been much better
They were not. I think remember the management software side of Nortel had a couple of thousand people in it at one point in time. They produced less than tiny startups with skills did, and were utterly incapable of taking advice. At least until about 2005-6 or so. At that time they were open to advice, but it was too late.
I've come to believe that it's down to appearances in the end.
Take a wall street exec for example - they dress nice, they may be a bit extravagant, but are otherwise "normal" in the eyes of society. They "obey" the rules (for the most part), generally follow the norms of society, wash regularly and look presentable. Prosecutors know if you want to charge them, you really need an airtight case, otherwise they'll just pull out the charm card of how they help starving children, blah blah blah and are otherwise upstanding citizens.
Take an OWS protestor - as a whole, most are unkempt, "hippies", and while some generally are presentable, the others clad in the tie-dyes and masks/balaclavas and torn jeans, not so much. It's much easier to cast these people as "lazy bums who could work but choose not to" in the eyes of society, and thus, if you were prosecuting them, easier to find a jury who will view them in the same way. They're basically "yucky", and once cast in that light, the defense needs to prove that they are upstanding citizens.
In the tragic case of Aaron Schwartz, I think a similar thing happened - the prosecutor sees a teenaged rebel intent on causing havok in "civilized" society, and they know all they have to do is cast him as someone society really doesn't want (despite all the good he does).
And I suspect even people like RMS run into similar issues - they can preach all they want, but the unkempt hair, potential odours etc., just give everyone a negative first impression.
Or perhaps why the typical stereotype of a scammer generally is one of a street hoodlum - when in reality they tend to be very appropriately dressed for the occasion (even sharply dressed), so people are instantly disarmed.
I suppose TL;DR - people judge books by their cover, and if you're a reasonably dressed person, you can get away with quite a lot. But if you're not up to what society expects in general hygiene, attire or behavior, it's a lot easier to convince others you're a detriment despite all the good.
Hence OWS arrests, while Wall Street looks on after plundering all the money. Or the prosecutor dumping over the top charges on Aaron. They know they can get away with it because they can portray them as people society doesn't want based on looks and behavior alone. And you know juries will form their first opinions (he LOOKS guilty!) the moment they step into the courtroom.
Nortel? How long does it take? No wonder the banks haven't been charged with anything...
Trickle down has problems of course. The most obvious being that...
The most obvious being that it doesn't work and has never worked anywhere in the dozens of countries that it has been implemented. Ever. Anywhere. The historical reality is that giving the rich and powerful more riches and more power just means that they will grab an ever-larger share of everything for themselves at the expense of the less-rich and less-powerful. This has been the outcome of every case of trickle-down economics that I have ever seen. Even David Stockman now admits that it's bunk, and that he knew it was a fraud when he was pushing for it. When a program's main evangelist admits that it's fake you really should abandon it altogether.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
If the topic is how can the government best inject money into the economy, then that money directly coming back to the government without circulating is clearly a bad thing - it defeats the entire purpose.
Lots of the spending to "game markets" ends up in the local country as well. Accountants and lawyers and brokers are people just like shop assistants.
How is that not working?
Does GDP not go up? What does income and wealth distribution have to do with it?
Or are you referring to what the "will trickle down to the poor" part of the name, but everyone knows that's garbage so why resurrect it?
Have to agree. I work in the physical security field, and when the unnamed 800-pound gorilla of the network world decided to enter the IP camera world I got sent to training. The first day of class we were introduced to their analog to digital encoders, an uninspiring piece of hardware without even any venting, which quickly heated up too hot to touch. During a break I looked at it with a port scanner that I was learning to use and found that Telnet was open. I opened a telnet session to the box and immediately connected without even a password prompt. Whoami got the reply 'root'. I was so shocked that I said "Holy crap!" loud enough to attract everyone's attention and had to explain what I had done. The instructor didn't seem to think that it would be much of an issue since of course everyone ran their entire security system on private networks on dedicated hardware in locked cabinets, right? The class as a whole quickly informed him what life was like in the real world. Telnet got closed in a subsequent firmware upgrade, but TFTP was still open (and accepting connections) for another two years.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The also were a telco trying to move away from a dying business. Their 'solution' was to buy technology left and right and then have no clear path to integrating it.
I agree that Brian Shields' claims do not add up. As a fellow former Nortel employee employed at the time, it was not Huawei the execs were concerned with. The groups they were most concerned with were Cisco and Lucent. I had never heard them even mention the name of Huawei at the time (~2001 when the biggest decline started). The timeline doesn't even make sense. Supposedly, the hacking started in 2000, but the big downturn (and massive layoffs) hit throughout 2001 (in seemingly endless waves). That would have given Huawei a year to steal the tech, make sense of what they'd stolen, started fabricating cloned hardware and software, and convince buyers that their equipment was worth buying versus the incumbents in order to make a sufficient dent in Nortel's sales. At this point the telecoms generally were willing to pay a premium for known reliability in order to meet their 5 9's, there is no way in the span of one year a sufficient number of orders would have transitioned from Nortel to Huawei since the buyers would not have been convinced to go with this upstart in any significant way. Now it is possible that in the latter years (2004+) the Huawei effect was significant enough to prevent a comeback (although I doubt it; they Nortel was already too far gone), but there is virtually no way it played a significant role in the downfall.
The problem was simply that Nortel, Lucent, Cisco, and others were all in a massive game of chicken trying to expand faster than their competitors by gobbling up all the talent they could get and get products on the market as quickly as possible to claim ownership of the massive demand from the telecom bubble. When the bubble popped, there was simply no way for all the major players to survive in their newly bloated states. What was amusing is that when the downturn occurred, Nortel threw away (sold off or spun off) their older, but still highly profitable products (telephone handsets and older phone switch systems) in an effort to focus on the newer product lines that were hoped to be the future, but which few actually bought. This was silly since the stable profits from the older tech gave Nortel a significant and stable base in which to invest in the newer products and innovate. By getting rid of the older products, they slit their own throats.
And obviously you don't remember how many corporation and their officers got sued for cooking the books by their stock holders. The courts were clogged for several years.
Because the OWS are simply looking to not be raped any more, and the folks on Wall Street are dedicated to raping us bloody... see that is a fundamentally different point of view, a fundamental difference in motive. People who don't want to rape pass laws that look like chastity belts. People who are dedicated to rape pass laws that look like a picture book derived from the Marque De Sade's diary. If you look at the laws that exist today, and the fact that the banks have forged millions of mortgage documents and committed fraud on a level that would make Lincoln's statue do a spit take, and STILL nobody is doing time at the gray bar, I assert our laws and their enforcement leans a wee bit towards the sadist... yes? no?
How about we just remove the Government funnels, tubes and hoses that pump every loose penny into the pockets of the wealthy. I would settle for a level playing field. Oh, and the fact that the wealthy now control 99.9% of the nations wealth... if we could just break that up as a one off (level playing field?), so there's a little capital down here where they pumped out everything including the oxygen?
If I had to opt for short term fixes... I'd go with; Flat tax without loop-holes? Its not fair i.e. progressive, but its better than what we have now... and that goes for corporations too, set it at... lets say 15%. Give a special boost for small to medium business with an extra goose to new entrepreneurs. Bring back Glass Steagall. Take away the rights of "People" from Corporations. Separate Corporation and State. Push sustainable energy resources like our heads are on fire... if Germany and China can do it, then the rhetoric coming for the fossil fuel industry is just more smoke up our collective asses (sustainable energy includes cutting edge nuclear.) Harvest the plastic in the ocean, a great idea is to use it to build floating cities. Legalize sex, drugs and rock n' roll... then free 80% of the people from prison and invest in schools, real schools, where they teach the truth and actually inspire people to arrggghhh! THINK. Teach people that religion is fine, but its not a substitute for physical reality. For that matter, the whole fantasy as political view, ontology, sociology or financial system... enough already, the only thing that ever trickled down needed to be cleaned with toilet paper. Let's have public service announcements explaining to the people from the planet Mongo. that global climate change and evolution are done deals, and all there is left to do now is decide how we're going to address them. Tax sex, drugs and rock n' roll, to make the sex trade clean and safe, the drug trade adult and safe, and shut the MAFIAA up once and for all, this is all you're getting, leave the people alone, they get to figure out what fair use is without you're wet dreams of public rape being any part of the future of music or motion pictures (and if you don't like it, I'm certain there are thousands of other artists who'll only be too happy to take your place at the feeding trough.) Last, patents are good for five years... from the day of the first product sold and vanish after five years if you don't release a product... no software patents, death to patent trolls. There, I'm sure this will mess up thousands of things but it would fix the worst of what's killing us today. YMMV.
Because GDP is a calculation of cost centers, and not a calculation of utility or productivity, what your really looking for is total factor productivity.
You could hire a dozen painters to do nothing but paint your portrait, and the GDP and employment would certainly go up, but would it do anything better for the world?
The problem is that much of the raise in GDP is "non productive consumption" or "luxury goods" or just cartels creating piles of imaginary capital.
No they don't. Trickle down has never made sense. Its what George H. W. Bush called "Voodoo Economics" and wherever it had been tried before lead to uncontrollable "Boom - Bust" cycles terminating in economic collapse. This is not a new theory and is directly attributable to the "Panic of 1896". Paul Krugman said "The specific set of foolish ideas that has laid claim to the name "supply side economics" is a crank doctrine that would have had little influence if it did not appeal to the prejudices of editors and wealthy men." You can read more here, and the results of the 32 year experiment that is supply side are now in. IT FAILED MISERABLY. It gutted the middle class. It drove all the wealth in the nation to the top 0.001% It corrupted our government. It destroyed our economy. It has nearly destroyed the American way of life. Adam Smith warned of wealth concentration and the danger of losing the middle class and here we are facing that warning head on.
Dude... you gotta stop watching "As the Telecom Turns"... that soap opera is completely unbelievable. Personally I find "All My VOIP" way more entertaining.
Here is an example:
Your iphone breaks, the replacement screen is $50. You fix it yourself in 2 hours GDP goes up $50
You sell it to someone online to fix it up $200, take 2 hours to fix it with the $50 part, and they sell it online again (back to you) for $350 GDP goes up $600
If you succeed in destroying someone's deeply entrenched beliefs using facts and logic, that person won't change his mind but will hate your guts forever.
You must hang around with a lot of stupid people then.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I have a deeply entrenched belief that people are people, and that people who gravitate to power and wealth often do so by unethical means, and that the people in the Occupy movement would be just as bad if they came into power. If someone has some amazing way to ensure justice and decent treatment for all of us, I'm all for it, but in the absence of that, the current system is as good as it gets.
What political illiterates like you fail to realise is that the Occupy movement would at least set up a fair SYSTEM. It's the system that's wrong, individuals just have to work within that system.
It's not the fault of the sociopathic people at the top, it's the fault of a system that requires people to be sociopathic to get to the top. A CEO should not earn 100x what a cleaner does. Both of them are part of the organisation and have specific roles to play, so should be paid the same, or at the most the CEO should earn two or three times what the cleaner does.
Yes, this is some form of communism. There's no point in bleating about the evils of pure capitalism while simultaneously believing that pure capitalism is the best way of organising things.
People on slashdot don't like the Occupy movement because they are essentially anti-pure-capitalism, and most people here seem to be in love with capitalism with as little an admixture of socialism as possible.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yes, people like you here in Slashdot.
Redistributing that wealth on a democratic mandate is not evil, except in the eyes of the poor rich fucks who have to admit they are a part of society and not precious snowflakes above the common run of humanity.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Because nothing is perfect we should never try to be better than we are? Really?
That is pretty much the basis of conservative politics.
You either believe in progress or you don't, and conservatives don't: they always think that things were better fifty or a hundred years ago.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
How is that not working?
Does GDP not go up? What does income and wealth distribution have to do with it?
Or are you referring to what the "will trickle down to the poor" part of the name, but everyone knows that's garbage so why resurrect it?
The people who invented "trickle down" economics most certainly did say that it would make everyone richer, and thus "trickle down to the poor".
Remember "a rising tide floats both large and small boats" or whatever other metaphor sounded good?
As someone says below, GDP in itself doesn't prove anything.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Your post is disingenious and focused on What Matters To Beancounters ("trace the money").
I think tracing the money is quite important when you're talking about alleged financial fraud
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it