> I don't think being an econ professor is quite the position of power you think it is. Source: I have many friends who are professors including econ professors.
I'm baffled you'd pick this hill.
AFAIK, her dad is the chair of the #1 economics department in the world![0]
Her dad is the former boss of the chairman of the SEC. That may be the single biggest political connection. But both Sam and Caroline's families are extremely well connected on the Hill.
And the customers who signed up for FTX did so because the girlfriend of the owner is an top econ professor?
And you think SBF will escape accountability due to his connections? He won't
If you think those connections helped him get VC funding, I can assure you they help a lot of people and most do not become multi billion dollar frauds. The fact that he is an upper class white guy is the important part, the rest is you just reading way too much into this.
They were clearly implying that his girlfriend father's being an economics professor was somehow a critical part of perpetuating the scam.
The people who were scammed were crypto investors who chose to put their money in an unregulated international exchange. Also many many other exchanges have also fallen apart and their parents weren't economics professors.
Give SBF the due credit and blame for what he created.
The connection is more direct than you might think.
They got millions of VC money to spend on advertising. The advertisement campaign influenced people to put money in an unregulated exchange. The fact that mainstream VCs were putting money into this thing also served somewhat as a signal that this might be legit.
The original (root level) comment actually said "surely they should be questioning the system? In particular the VC's". Did the VCs look at the bios of the founders and CEOs? I can't imagine they weren't at least slightly influenced by this. In the crypto world where a major risk would be regulation by the SEC, I can't imagine having the CEO's dad having a relevant political connection wouldn't be a substantial factor for consideration.
How are they picking a hill? Seems like they are just stating an objective claim without putting any judgement to it. Even if it turns out her father had little to do with it doesn't mean she's less of a crook. I don't see any reason to be partisan about this and embrace every single accusation like supreme truth. There's plenty of it as it is.
It's obvious what I mean. Everyone is clearly bending the truth to create the juiciest narrative but no need to attack people just because they're downplaying the most insane conspiracy theories. This is not a movie script.
You make it sound like the poster is defending her just because they don't agree that the world is secretly controlled by a bunch of economics professors.
I'm baffled you'd pick this hill.
AFAIK, her dad is the chair of the #1 economics department in the world![0]
[0] https://economics.mit.edu/people/faculty/glenn-ellison
Edit: And her mom (?) is also in the same department [1] with industry connections in pharma/ecommerce.
[1] https://economics.mit.edu/people/faculty/sara-fisher-ellison