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This is where Gordon, certainly in those days, would show a streak of genius. “You mean ‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime,’ ” he said. “Yes,” I said, stunned by the brilliance of it, “that’s exactly what I mean.” And so it became my slogan, but unusually for a slogan, actually encapsulated a philosophical insight. Shortly after returning, I used it in a speech and really never looked back.
If they were scams, then $94 million did not begin to suggest the depth of the losses. To produce $94 million in tax payments, Lincoln Savings had to have produced roughly $300 million in profits. If the profits were fictitious, then Lincoln Savings would have to reverse the recognition of over $200 million in income, and that would mean that Lincoln Savings was hopelessly insolvent. Even the $200 million loss figure did not capture Lincoln Savings’ full loss exposure. In a cash-for-trash deal, the amount of cash the S&L loaned was several times larger than the fictitious profits. Lincoln Savings, therefore, could well have losses approaching $500 million from about ten loans likely to be cash-for-trash scams. Each of the borrowers defaulted.
The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One
William K. Black
It’s good to keep in mind that those who extoll the virtues of disruption tend to be—coincidentally enough—the ones in the winners’ circle. But disruption that spreads its benefits and new opportunities broadly is better for society. Fortunately, most disruption falls into this category. In a 2004 working paper, “Schumpeterian Profits in the American Economy: Theory and Measurement,” Yale economist William Nordhaus examined the US economy from 1948 to 2001. Based on the data he collected, he concluded that only 2.2 percent of “profits that arise when firms are able to appropriate the returns from innovative activity” went to the disrupters. “Most of the benefits of technological change are passed on to consumers rather than captured by producers,” he concluded. Like it or not, change is inevitable—but it doesn’t have to be wholly unexpected.
Blitzscaling
Reid Hoffman, Chris Yeh
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