In snow-heavy climates, snow clearance is necessary unless you want the sidewalks to be useless for months out of the year. And it's too expensive for the governments to hire people to clear every single sidewalk in town. (Streets can be plowed much more easily.) Thus they get the people involved and require the property owners to maintain the sidewalks.
I imagine this doesn't occur in Australia (assuming your "here" refers to.au) simply because Australian winters don't really require it.
I don't understand why you put lawn care and snow clearing in the same category.
Lawn care is pure eye candy. It hurts nobody to let your lawn go to hell, except that it looks bad and poor weak-brained people can't withstand that.
Snow clearing is important to allow the sidewalks to remain open and functional. It's no fun to have to wade through deep snow to get to where you're going. You essentially have charge of a public pedestrian road, so it's your responsibility to keep it passable.
You're the one running your emergency line through a residential, consumer-grade, non-guaranteed, capped connection, not your ISP. They aren't responsible for your stupidity.
I suppose that makes some sense. But as you say, it just moves the question onto his bookkeeper. Either he somehow didn't have one, or the one he had was utterly incompetent.
Did he hand over his books and have the bank reconcile them? If he did, then this fact did not make it into the article. If he didn't, then once again he has only himself to blame. When errors appear you must discover the source. If the stuff is too complicated for you then you must pass the job on to someone who can handle it. He did neither, and now he's paying the price.
Nonsense. If there are discrepancies which worry you, work it out line by line. If everything agrees but the amounts differ, then you can conclude that there may have been a late check. If spontaneous extra transactions show up then you need to call the bank post haste and file a fraud report and get your money back.
This guy let $20,000/month of fraud slip by him for well over a year. When he called the bank to complain that their statements were wrong, they quite rightly told him that their statements were not, in fact, wrong. But rather than hire an accountant to audit the books, he simply let it slide. Now he's paying the $250,000 price for that.
Let me say it again. This was not a one-time charge that could have been explained by more checks clearing later on. This was a consistent drop that averaged $20,000/month continuously for over a year. No amount of late checks could possibly explain such a thing.
There are plenty of existing proven commercial providers. SpaceX is not one of them at this time, but there are a lot of others. If NASA would hire rides into orbit on a basis which could include SpaceX or other startups once they get up and running, it would be a huge boost to commercial space launch.
You'd think people would learn by now that the One Big Official Agency approach does not produce vastly better results than the Bunch of Little Competing Agencies approach. Quite the opposite, in fact. The American space effort was a lot healthier when NASA and the Air Force both had serious programs running. The NASA space effort was a lot healthier when they were outright competing with the Russians. The modern space scene has a lot of the elements of cooperation that you're calling for, and it's also the most moribund in terms of not doing or trying anything new. Coincidence? I think not.
Banks are responsible for fraudulent transactions if you tell them about it in a timely fashion. Banks don't and can't know whether every single transaction is legitimate or not. There's simply no way for them to do so. For example, what if somebody alters one of your checks, for example, to read an amount greater than what you wrote? Assuming a good alteration, there's no way they could know that this is not the amount of money that you intended.
Even in the case of more obvious fraud, it should be clear that there needs to be some kind of time horizon. What if I'm the victim of ACH fraud as this person was, but I don't tell the bank about it until five years after the fact? It's way too late for the bank to do anything about it by then. And in fact this would leave the bank open to different types of fraud. For example, you arrange for a friend to "defraud" your account by some amount, split the money between you, then have your friend seal himself off from the offending account over the intervening years. Then five years later you make a complaint and get your money "back", resulting in a healthy profit for the both of you with little risk.
If we're on the same page about it so far, the question is what that time horizon should be. Well, big daddy government has already answered that for us: that time horizon is 60 days. That's why this guy is still getting $50,000 back from his bank, because that's the amount that was stolen within the past 60 days.
If this guy had noticed the fraudulent transactions in a timely manner then I would agree that we shouldn't blame him at all for failings of the system. But he managed to miss twenty thousand dollars a month leaving his account for well over a year before he figured out that he was being ripped off. He discovered trouble earlier but apparently decided that it was too inconvenient to follow up on. When asked about the discrepancy, the bank told him that their statements were accurate. What was absolutely true! Their statements included an enormous amount of theft that his records did not. But for some reason he didn't pursue these persistent discrepancies, and he is now paying the price for that decision.
That would explain it, but it doesn't really agree with what the article says:
"Mr. Wyser-Pratte said that the statements have become so complicated not even a Wall Street veteran like himself could detect the continuing theft."
This surely makes it sound like it's an overabundance of cryptic information, rather than too-brief summaries. However, knowing what passes for journalism, it's entirely possible that this guy was improperly paraphrased.
Well that's interesting, but it still doesn't seem all that hard to deal with. You're still just checking for transactions that are known or unknown based on what the thing says. Having three lines per transaction doesn't really seem to complicate it much.
The "I was only following orders" defense was rejected long ago. If somebody is doing something bad, it doesn't matter whether it's "policy" or not. "Policy" is not some magic get-out-of-jail-free card. The people kicking you in the nuts certainly should be held accountable, policy or no.
And you're right that we're fortunate not to see such an extreme policy today. But the difference is only in degree. TSA employees are behaving very badly, and they should be held accountable for this, even though their bad behavior is a matter of official TSA policy. A lot of people love to wear the uniform because they can hide behind it while they do bad things. We shouldn't let them.
Statute of limitations has to do with the time when a criminal can be prosecuted for a crime. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with when you can get a bank to reimburse you after falling victim to fraud.
Urine is not very dangerous. By all means arrest these people if they actually go out and throw it on other people, but there's no justification for a preemptive strike.
I'd love to know more details about this. A lot of people are saying that these statements are really complex, but nobody is saying how they are complex. Personally I don't even know what the difference is between retail banking and "private" banking, much less what a private banking statement actually looks like.
I just don't understand how it can be so complex. I mean, any statement should have a list of transactions, and that transaction should have a date, an amount, and a description. If the transaction is a check then it will list the check number. If it's an ACH transfer, then the description will be something about the nature of the other end. I simply don't see how you can make a list of transactions so complex that it becomes infeasible to check them. If you could provide some enlightenment on this then it would be much appreciated.
And I totally agree about the bookkeeper. If it really was too complex for him to follow, then he should have paid somebody who could follow it. The discrepancies should have set off a bunch of flashing red lights in his head, and if he couldn't track down the cause then he needed to hire a person who could.
Well, at least you're consistent. Personally, I am going to loudly criticize anyone who willingly carries out a policy of kicking me square in the nuts. And, if they should ever try to carry it out on me, that criticism will extend to pressing charges for assault and battery.
"Policy" isn't some magical word that makes everything OK. If someone is doing something bad to me then it is their fault. It may also be other people's fault, but that just extends the blame, it doesn't reduce it.
I didn't take your response as an insult at all. I just thought it was strange that you took my statement as some kind of implicit endorsement of Barr when I never said anything of the sort.
As for Jefferson's opinion of patriotism, I agree with your assessment but the problem is that this is not how patriotism is viewed today. People interpret patriotism as being meaningless crap like facing the flag while singing the pledge of allegiance. Or worse, they interpret it as actual destructive actions such as unconditionally "supporting the troops" or not criticizing the President. This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that I could do with politicians being less patriotic. Essentially, patriotism has morphed from love of country to love of government, and that's not something I want in my politicians.
Not quite. It's more that any transaction which is printed in your statement and which is not challenged by you within a certain period of time (typically two months) is considered to be authorized.
If your financials are so complex that you are unable to audit them for evidence of fraud then you need to hire professional help.
So what? He handles a lot of money, he needs to ensure that things are happening the way they should. He either needs to take the time to verify his statements or he needs to hire someone to do it for him. You don't get to throw up your hands and say "too much work!" just because you write an enormous number of checks.
I think there may be more sway-able voters on here as well. I get the impression that there are a lot of Obama supporters who don't have solid reasons for supporting him. That's exactly the kind of person who these ads could potentially influence. Of course this could just be my bias at play, and maybe I've misread the demographics.
I'm not surprised that this ad isn't influencing you. They certainly don't influence me to vote for anybody, just to make me continually more disgusted with politicians in general. In fact, I have a hard time thinking of anyone I know who would be influenced by a political ad. And yet somehow they have a great deal of effect on the outcome. I guess there must be a lot of weak-minded undecided people out there I don't interact with.
There's a big difference between "your records don't agree with mine" and "this transaction, right there, was not authorized by me and does not appear in any of my records". This fellow did the former but apparently never got as far as the latter.
He really just complained that he couldn't balance his checkbook, though. If the difference was so large, he should have tracked it down line by line until the discrepancy was resolved, or fraud discovered.
And I don't understand how a statement can be "complicated". For each transaction, there is a line. There is an amount, and a name of some kind that tells you what it was for. You compare this with your records. If you have a match, then you're good, move to the next one. If nothing in your records matches that line, then you have an error, red alert, call your bank and tell them you've found an important mistake or fraud.
Sounds to me like he found a discrepancy but never went through the work of tracking it down. And as a result this theft went undetected for far too long.
Slashdot Mirror
In snow-heavy climates, snow clearance is necessary unless you want the sidewalks to be useless for months out of the year. And it's too expensive for the governments to hire people to clear every single sidewalk in town. (Streets can be plowed much more easily.) Thus they get the people involved and require the property owners to maintain the sidewalks.
I imagine this doesn't occur in Australia (assuming your "here" refers to .au) simply because Australian winters don't really require it.
That's just a way of explaining the eye candy factor, though. Property values are influenced purely because buyers value eye candy.
If it were about pest control then it would be legal to let the thing go brown and die, or to pave it, or cover it with gravel. It's not.
I don't understand why you put lawn care and snow clearing in the same category.
Lawn care is pure eye candy. It hurts nobody to let your lawn go to hell, except that it looks bad and poor weak-brained people can't withstand that.
Snow clearing is important to allow the sidewalks to remain open and functional. It's no fun to have to wade through deep snow to get to where you're going. You essentially have charge of a public pedestrian road, so it's your responsibility to keep it passable.
You're the one running your emergency line through a residential, consumer-grade, non-guaranteed, capped connection, not your ISP. They aren't responsible for your stupidity.
I suppose that makes some sense. But as you say, it just moves the question onto his bookkeeper. Either he somehow didn't have one, or the one he had was utterly incompetent.
Did he hand over his books and have the bank reconcile them? If he did, then this fact did not make it into the article. If he didn't, then once again he has only himself to blame. When errors appear you must discover the source. If the stuff is too complicated for you then you must pass the job on to someone who can handle it. He did neither, and now he's paying the price.
Nonsense. If there are discrepancies which worry you, work it out line by line. If everything agrees but the amounts differ, then you can conclude that there may have been a late check. If spontaneous extra transactions show up then you need to call the bank post haste and file a fraud report and get your money back.
This guy let $20,000/month of fraud slip by him for well over a year. When he called the bank to complain that their statements were wrong, they quite rightly told him that their statements were not, in fact, wrong. But rather than hire an accountant to audit the books, he simply let it slide. Now he's paying the $250,000 price for that.
Let me say it again. This was not a one-time charge that could have been explained by more checks clearing later on. This was a consistent drop that averaged $20,000/month continuously for over a year. No amount of late checks could possibly explain such a thing.
Has this idea of yours ever actually worked, or are you just suggesting it because you think it sounds good?
There are plenty of existing proven commercial providers. SpaceX is not one of them at this time, but there are a lot of others. If NASA would hire rides into orbit on a basis which could include SpaceX or other startups once they get up and running, it would be a huge boost to commercial space launch.
You'd think people would learn by now that the One Big Official Agency approach does not produce vastly better results than the Bunch of Little Competing Agencies approach. Quite the opposite, in fact. The American space effort was a lot healthier when NASA and the Air Force both had serious programs running. The NASA space effort was a lot healthier when they were outright competing with the Russians. The modern space scene has a lot of the elements of cooperation that you're calling for, and it's also the most moribund in terms of not doing or trying anything new. Coincidence? I think not.
Banks are responsible for fraudulent transactions if you tell them about it in a timely fashion. Banks don't and can't know whether every single transaction is legitimate or not. There's simply no way for them to do so. For example, what if somebody alters one of your checks, for example, to read an amount greater than what you wrote? Assuming a good alteration, there's no way they could know that this is not the amount of money that you intended.
Even in the case of more obvious fraud, it should be clear that there needs to be some kind of time horizon. What if I'm the victim of ACH fraud as this person was, but I don't tell the bank about it until five years after the fact? It's way too late for the bank to do anything about it by then. And in fact this would leave the bank open to different types of fraud. For example, you arrange for a friend to "defraud" your account by some amount, split the money between you, then have your friend seal himself off from the offending account over the intervening years. Then five years later you make a complaint and get your money "back", resulting in a healthy profit for the both of you with little risk.
If we're on the same page about it so far, the question is what that time horizon should be. Well, big daddy government has already answered that for us: that time horizon is 60 days. That's why this guy is still getting $50,000 back from his bank, because that's the amount that was stolen within the past 60 days.
If this guy had noticed the fraudulent transactions in a timely manner then I would agree that we shouldn't blame him at all for failings of the system. But he managed to miss twenty thousand dollars a month leaving his account for well over a year before he figured out that he was being ripped off. He discovered trouble earlier but apparently decided that it was too inconvenient to follow up on. When asked about the discrepancy, the bank told him that their statements were accurate. What was absolutely true! Their statements included an enormous amount of theft that his records did not. But for some reason he didn't pursue these persistent discrepancies, and he is now paying the price for that decision.
That would explain it, but it doesn't really agree with what the article says:
"Mr. Wyser-Pratte said that the statements have become so complicated not even a Wall Street veteran like himself could detect the continuing theft."
This surely makes it sound like it's an overabundance of cryptic information, rather than too-brief summaries. However, knowing what passes for journalism, it's entirely possible that this guy was improperly paraphrased.
Well that's interesting, but it still doesn't seem all that hard to deal with. You're still just checking for transactions that are known or unknown based on what the thing says. Having three lines per transaction doesn't really seem to complicate it much.
The "I was only following orders" defense was rejected long ago. If somebody is doing something bad, it doesn't matter whether it's "policy" or not. "Policy" is not some magic get-out-of-jail-free card. The people kicking you in the nuts certainly should be held accountable, policy or no.
And you're right that we're fortunate not to see such an extreme policy today. But the difference is only in degree. TSA employees are behaving very badly, and they should be held accountable for this, even though their bad behavior is a matter of official TSA policy. A lot of people love to wear the uniform because they can hide behind it while they do bad things. We shouldn't let them.
Statute of limitations has to do with the time when a criminal can be prosecuted for a crime. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with when you can get a bank to reimburse you after falling victim to fraud.
Urine is not very dangerous. By all means arrest these people if they actually go out and throw it on other people, but there's no justification for a preemptive strike.
I'd love to know more details about this. A lot of people are saying that these statements are really complex, but nobody is saying how they are complex. Personally I don't even know what the difference is between retail banking and "private" banking, much less what a private banking statement actually looks like.
I just don't understand how it can be so complex. I mean, any statement should have a list of transactions, and that transaction should have a date, an amount, and a description. If the transaction is a check then it will list the check number. If it's an ACH transfer, then the description will be something about the nature of the other end. I simply don't see how you can make a list of transactions so complex that it becomes infeasible to check them. If you could provide some enlightenment on this then it would be much appreciated.
And I totally agree about the bookkeeper. If it really was too complex for him to follow, then he should have paid somebody who could follow it. The discrepancies should have set off a bunch of flashing red lights in his head, and if he couldn't track down the cause then he needed to hire a person who could.
Well, at least you're consistent. Personally, I am going to loudly criticize anyone who willingly carries out a policy of kicking me square in the nuts. And, if they should ever try to carry it out on me, that criticism will extend to pressing charges for assault and battery.
"Policy" isn't some magical word that makes everything OK. If someone is doing something bad to me then it is their fault. It may also be other people's fault, but that just extends the blame, it doesn't reduce it.
I didn't take your response as an insult at all. I just thought it was strange that you took my statement as some kind of implicit endorsement of Barr when I never said anything of the sort.
As for Jefferson's opinion of patriotism, I agree with your assessment but the problem is that this is not how patriotism is viewed today. People interpret patriotism as being meaningless crap like facing the flag while singing the pledge of allegiance. Or worse, they interpret it as actual destructive actions such as unconditionally "supporting the troops" or not criticizing the President. This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that I could do with politicians being less patriotic. Essentially, patriotism has morphed from love of country to love of government, and that's not something I want in my politicians.
Not quite. It's more that any transaction which is printed in your statement and which is not challenged by you within a certain period of time (typically two months) is considered to be authorized.
If your financials are so complex that you are unable to audit them for evidence of fraud then you need to hire professional help.
So what? He handles a lot of money, he needs to ensure that things are happening the way they should. He either needs to take the time to verify his statements or he needs to hire someone to do it for him. You don't get to throw up your hands and say "too much work!" just because you write an enormous number of checks.
I think there may be more sway-able voters on here as well. I get the impression that there are a lot of Obama supporters who don't have solid reasons for supporting him. That's exactly the kind of person who these ads could potentially influence. Of course this could just be my bias at play, and maybe I've misread the demographics.
I'm not surprised that this ad isn't influencing you. They certainly don't influence me to vote for anybody, just to make me continually more disgusted with politicians in general. In fact, I have a hard time thinking of anyone I know who would be influenced by a political ad. And yet somehow they have a great deal of effect on the outcome. I guess there must be a lot of weak-minded undecided people out there I don't interact with.
There's a big difference between "your records don't agree with mine" and "this transaction, right there, was not authorized by me and does not appear in any of my records". This fellow did the former but apparently never got as far as the latter.
He really just complained that he couldn't balance his checkbook, though. If the difference was so large, he should have tracked it down line by line until the discrepancy was resolved, or fraud discovered.
And I don't understand how a statement can be "complicated". For each transaction, there is a line. There is an amount, and a name of some kind that tells you what it was for. You compare this with your records. If you have a match, then you're good, move to the next one. If nothing in your records matches that line, then you have an error, red alert, call your bank and tell them you've found an important mistake or fraud.
Sounds to me like he found a discrepancy but never went through the work of tracking it down. And as a result this theft went undetected for far too long.