Lying for Money
.A field guide to fraud and the mechanisms by which it operates in economic systems.
Stats for nerds
24recommend
44mentions
26people
2018–2026years
82% recommend18% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > Decision laundering is a great term.
Related: The Unaccountability Machine (good book by Dan Davies, who also wrote Lying for Money about financial fraud).
- I would like to add to the list the excellent history of frauds "Lying for Money", by Dan Davies.
- the author of this post has a book called Lying for Money which I'd definitely recommend.
- There's an excellent book on the subject by Dan Davies: https://www.inkwellmanagement.com/books/lying-for-money
- > all the way to bankruptcy and usually reappearing a day later with a new name and a clean sheet.
"Phoenix" bankruptcies are a real problem among small businesses. It defrauds their creditors, and sometimes the public (taxman) as well. All the way up to things like Rangers (Sevco) football club.
The excellent book on the history of fraud, Lying for Money, has a chapter on this. It concludes that almost every middle class person could probably get away with a fake business bankruptcy at least once, because it's difficult to tell from the outside versus a real (extremely common) small business failure.
- Depends on which proposition. Remember that that once they've sold it, they have no further exposure. So if what's happening is looting a company, then as long as they get out before the rot becomes obvious, they don't care.
And no investor has to be stupid for this to work. You just need some investors who are smarter, better informed, better prepared, or more experienced than others. And that's no presumption at all. If you talk to experienced people in the industry, they know that their living comes out of the pockets of other people's pockets. Literal billions of dollars are invested every year in being the winner in zero-sum games in finance.
That said, plenty of investors are stupid and/or naive enough. Boeing's a fine example here. As it WeWork. Or DJT. Or literally any pump and dump or Ponzi scheme. Or nearly all of crypto.
If you're really struggling to understand this, I suggest Dan Davies' "Lying for Money". Because parasitical actors assuming that investors are stupid enough is a huge, multi-century activity.
Related
Easy Money
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The Unaccountability Machine
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Liar's Poker
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Trust Me, I'm Lying
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Fooled by randomness
195 recommend · 403
2023–2026
Number Go Up
6 recommend · 13