Wall St about to be charged by FBI

But as usual, you never consider the consequences.

Who would engage in trading in a market ruled by insiders?

No one.

cc Please do the honorable gesture and exile yourself from the site for your abject vulgarity last night. hones and you were quite a disgrace.

as i noted last night, you have once again mangled the facts.

but, of course, facts are not of interest to you.

I'll have to read Bethany's book and get some ammo.
There's still something foul about Wall Street having to get bailed out from all the bad deals they sold to their idiot clients, while still making money off good deals. Betting for and against the client at the same time.
Shouldn't there be regulation when you're gambling with the pension money of workers who earn 12-20% of what you do (and that's if you earning an average GS salary)? If it's not your $ in the first place, then...

There is no point columbia. She is incapable articulating an answer to any question that challenges what the randers tell her to say.

And why would you expect her to? She just listens to her stories on the radio all day, she doesn't write them.

And then copies and pastes without attribution an article on wikipedia. Wikipedia? I mean seriously, you feel so strongly about something that you lift something from wikipedia in lieu of your own argument. And then you don't even know when to stop when the article starts talking about front running, which is something different. Dumb as rocks.

If you search that text, you'll see that in the past week it was on a few different wingnutjob websites (probably plagiarizing from one another). I suspect one of the cretins dumped it into the Wikipedia just this week.

janeyjoy I really like the kind way you post. You seem to be an objective person. Enjoy your Thanksgiving weekend.

The economics of insider trading is quite simple. Insider traders make money by knowing about news -- good or bad -- before other traders. So if insiders are permitted to trade, they have a powerful market incentive to create such news, true or fictional. Good news is hard. Bad news, on the other hand, is quite easy to create: all it requires is accepting Julialg's view that personal profit is the only measure of decency.

Legal insider trading gives managers a powerful incentive to intentionally hurt their own company. It is a problem for exactly the same reason that it is a bad idea to encourage coaches to bet against their own team, employees to accept kickbacks from their company's customers, investment banks to bet against their products or customers, companies to lie about their products, or, for that matter, executives and bankers to be paid largely by enormous bonuses. When right-wing law makes looting more profitable than production, Adam Smith's invisible hand guarantees that we'll get -- looting.

Justifying looting, claiming that theft is good, and inviting people to exploit the power they have to harm others -- this is the program of today's right wing. By undermining trust, it destroys economic prosperity, political democracy and justice alike.

Just as with most of Julialg's political program, legal insider trading would be another major step towards restoring the natural order of Hobbes' war of all against all, in which the powerful are free to use their power in any way they please, so long as they don't mind a life that is nasty, poore, brutish and short.

Corruption, as we used to call it before the free-marketeers decided that looting and free-loading are the height of patriotism, is one of the most significant obstacles to success in any market economy and any political democracy, as Edmund Burke and Adam Smith eloquently explained two centuries ago. Too bad that the modern right wing no longer knows anything but the idolatrous fetishism of the free market and the morality of the scam artist.

Thanks Julia. I try to be objective. Happy T-day too.
Financeguy - I was just thinking of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's famous quote:
"The first man who, having fenced off a plot of land, thought of saying, 'This is mine' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how many miseries and horrors might the human race had been spared by the one who, upon pulling up the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men: 'Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget the fruits of the earth belong to all and that the earth belongs to no one."

Thanks for the quote janejoy. I loved reading Rousseau in my youth. The last line reminds me of another time and another author who understood the evils of collectivism.

"To many who have watched the transition from socialism to fascism at close quarters the connection between the two systems has become increasingly obvious, but in the (Western) democracies the majority of people still believe that socialism and freedom can be combined. They do not realize that democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is not only unachievable, but that to strive for it produces something utterly different - the very destruction of freedom itself. As has been aptly said: ‘What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven." - F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

“each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and in our capacity, we receive each member as indivisible part of the whole”

Rousseau is awesome. I don't know much about Milton, but I wonder about the differences in regulation in the US and the Tokyo Stock Exchange or the Nikkei. I've read stories of Americans going to Asia to make $$ in their market. I've read it's not as regulated as the US, but...Wall Street is here in the US.

financeguy... Lets say i want to buy stock xyz. I am reaserching the company and the stock is at 90. The next day an insider drives the stock to 80 and the day after earnings come out and they are bad. The stock is now at 78 and i buy the stock. Wasn't i helped by insider trading? Also. i am thinking about selling stock abc. I don't know that someone is in the process of taking over the company at a much higher price. Evilboesky has insider information and the last hour drives up the stock 5 points. The next day due to pressure from the media to answer questions about unusal trading, the company admits to a takeover. That morning the stock opens another 6 points higher and i sell. Wasn't I helped by insider trading? Also, a union pension fund (teachers) owned the stock and was similiarly thinking about selling the stock two day earlier. Because of an inside trader, the teacher's union got 12 points more. Is that fair?

Interesting. Let's say I want to buy a Cabbage Patch Kid. I'm standing in line at Toys R Us, and there are 5 people ahead of me. But there are only 5 Cabbage Patch Kids. Then, someone murders one of the people in front of me. Now I can get a Cabbage Patch Kid. Murder is good, right?

(the Cabbage Patch Kid is for my grandson)

Julialg:

Why would I, or anyone, be happy that you made a little money at the expense of some other shareholder who sold for too low a price? You've contributed nothing, produced nothing, made no one better off. All you've done is to redistribute wealth from one rentier to another as a result of pure uninformed luck.

Meanwhile, however, the manager -- who is supposed to be doing something useful for the rest of us -- is spending his time creating negative information by driving the company into the ground, or hunting for information and trading stock, instead of doing what we pay him to do, which is to run the company in a way that creates jobs, services and products that people value. And, of course, any profits the manager makes from inside trading are directly and completely at the expense of the shareholders who sold stock to the manager -- in other words, he is expropriating the very investors who rely on him by his lies-by-silence.

If you think this is socially productive, presumably you also approve of straightforward fraud or theft. There is no meaningful difference from an economic, moral, legal or ethical point of view. I can understand why this might lead you to disapprove of the modern US government, which, for all its faults, actually produces quite a bit. But it should lead you to be quite at home in, for example, Russia both before and after the fall of communism, with its government devoted almost exclusively to the kind of extraction of rents you are promoting. This is not the first time your "libertarianism" has sounded more like warmed-over Leninism, except without the facade of concern for your fellow human beings.

When you say the manager is supposed to be doing something for the rest of us, and is doing things instead of what we pay him to do, are you referring to us/we as shareholders?

Um, no, shareholders don't pay corporate managers. Corporations do, and corporations get their money from customers, with a good deal of assistance from taxpayer funded legal systems, infrastructure, security and education, and a certain willingness of other employees to work for less than their marginal product.

When I say "we" I mean We the People, who authorized the extraordinary privileges of corporate form. That said, a manager who is betting against his employer is also violating the trust placed in him by the corporation itself, and everyone dependent on the corporation, from shareholders and bond investors to employees, customers, suppliers and the US government.

financeguy.... I could careless about socially productive or the greater good. I care about freedom, the individual, private property rights and want an extremely limited government.

And also financeguy, This government of ours is crimminal. I expected someone of your ilk to approve and acquise to a dictatorial regime.

Don't forget, Jersey Housewife, that each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will.

alanhart.. I'm starting to like you. You're humor is impeccable,quite original. Really!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_OIXfkXEj0

Howard Roark, a young architecture student, is expelled from the Stanton Institute of Technology for refusing to abide by its outdated traditions. Despite an effort by some professors to defend Roark and a subsequent offer to continue at Stanton from the headmaster, Roark chooses to leave the school. He goes to New York City to work for Henry Cameron, a disgraced architect whom Roark admires. Cameron, who once was architecture's modernist hero, has fallen from fame due to the fickle demands of society and his own caustic personality. His work serves as an inspiration for Roark. Roark's highly successful but vacuous schoolmate, Peter Keating, also moves to New York to work for the prestigious architectural firm, Francon & Heyer. Roark and Cameron create inspired work, but their projects rarely receive recognition, whereas Keating's ability to flatter and please brings him almost instant success despite his lack of originality.

After leaving Cameron's employ, Roark briefly opens his own practice, but he has trouble finding clients and eventually closes his office rather than compromise his ideals to win business from clients who want more conventional buildings. He takes a job at a Connecticut granite quarry owned by Guy Francon of Francon & Heyer. Meanwhile, Keating has developed an interest in Francon's beautiful, temperamental and idealistic daughter, Dominique, who works as a columnist for The New York Banner, a yellow press-style newspaper. While Roark is working in the quarry, he encounters Dominique, who has retreated to her family's estate in the same town as the quarry. There is an immediate attraction between them. Rather than indulge in traditional flirtation, the two engage in a battle of wills that culminates in a rough sexual encounter that Dominique describes later in the story as "rape". Shortly after their encounter, Roark is notified that a client is ready for him to start on a new building, and he leaves without Dominique even knowing his name.

Ellsworth Toohey, author of the popular architecture column One Small Voice in the Banner, is an outspoken socialist, who is covertly rising to power by shaping public opinion through his column and his circle of influential associates. Toohey sets out to destroy Roark through a smear campaign he spearheads. As the first step, Toohey convinces a weak-minded businessman named Hopton Stoddard to hire Roark as the designer for a temple dedicated to the human spirit and gives Roark carte blanche to design it as he sees fit. Roark designs the temple, including a naked statue of Dominique, which creates a public outcry. Toohey manipulates Stoddard into suing Roark for general incompetence and fraud. At Roark's trial, every prominent architect in New York (including Keating) testifies that Roark's style is unorthodox and illegitimate. Dominique defends Roark, but Stoddard wins the case and Roark loses his business again.

Dominique believes that greatness such as Roark's should never be offered to a public unable to appreciate it, and decides that since she cannot have the world she wants (in which men like him are recognized for what they are) she will live completely and entirely in the world she has, which shuns him and praises Keating. That evening, Dominique pays Keating a visit, and makes him a one-time offer of her hand in marriage. Keating accepts, though he is engaged to Toohey's niece Catherine, and they are married that evening. Dominique turns her entire spirit over to Keating, hosting the dinners he wants, agreeing with him, and saying whatever he wants her to say. She fights Roark, and persuades his potential clients to hire Keating instead. Despite this, Roark continues to attract a small but steady stream of clients who see the value in his work.

To win Keating a prestigious architecture commission offered by Gail Wynand, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Banner, Dominique agrees to sleep with Wynand. Wynand then buys Keating's silence and his divorce from Dominique, after which Wynand and Dominique are married. Wynand subsequently discovers that every building he likes is done by Roark, so he enlists Roark to build a home for himself and Dominique. The home is built, and Roark and Wynand become great friends, although he does not know about Roark's past relationship with Dominique.

Now washed up and out of the public eye, Keating realizes he is a failure. Rather than accept retirement, he pleads with Toohey for his influence to get the commission for the much sought after Cortlandt housing project. Keating knows that his most successful projects were aided by Roark, so he asks for Roark's help in designing Cortlandt. Roark agrees to design it in exchange for complete anonymity—and the agreement that it would be built exactly as he designed.

When Roark returns from a long yacht trip with Wynand he finds that, despite the agreement, the Cortlandt Homes project has been changed. Roark asks Dominique to distract the night watchman and dynamites the building to prevent the subversion of his vision. The entire country condemns Roark, but Wynand finally finds the courage to follow his convictions and orders his newspapers to defend him. The Banner's circulation drops and the workers go on strike, but Wynand keeps printing with Dominique's help. Wynand is eventually faced with the choice of closing the paper or reversing his stance and agreeing to the union demands. He gives in; the newspaper publishes a denunciation of Roark over Wynand's signature.

At the trial, Roark seems doomed, but he rouses the courtroom with a speech about the value of ego and the need to remain true to oneself. The jury finds him not guilty. Roark marries Dominique. Wynand, who has finally grasped the nature of the "power" he thought he held, asks Roark to design one last building, a skyscraper that will testify to the supremacy of man: "Build it as a monument to that spirit which is yours...and could have been mine." A brief epilogue eighteen months later shows the Wynand Building well on its way to completion. The last scene follows Dominique (now Mrs. Roark), entering the site to meet Roark atop the steel framework.

alanhart you're a great guy a likeable man very appealing. sidecars anyone?

aboutready, if you're not fond of me you don't have to say so on a public discussion board. You can tell me over sidecars.

MidtownerEast, alanhat doesn't say the same thing over and over -- he just posts the canned weekly talking points, pat phrases and sound bites that are disseminated on anti-American websites. You'll never see him posting last week's talking points.

Holy infallible pope (except for condoms), that bitch got stamina.

Happy Finnish gobble gobble. With a sidecar.

You too 67... a sidecar?

HOME > NEWS > US NEWS
Wall Street crook Raj Rajaratnam has cushy cell, ‘manservant’ at prison: insider
By JOHN CRUDELE
Last Updated: 5:04 AM, August 27, 2013

This ain’t hard time.
Fat-cat financial felon Raj Rajaratnam is kickin’ it big in the Big House — with a personal “manservant” at his beck and call, a prison insider tells me.
“He’s reigning like a king,” said the source of Rajaratnam’s new digs at the Federal Medical Center Devens, in Ayer, Mass., where he’ll spend the next 11 years on an insider-trading conviction.
“He’s doing his time in the lap of luxury compared to the other inmates.”
I’m told the one-time high-flying Manhattan billionaire has snagged a prime cell in Unit P3, the top floor of Devens’ hospital ward — usually reserved for the most seriously ill inmates.
What’s more, the source tells me, Raj “has a very delightful guy doing all sorts of stuff for him — sort of like a ‘manservant.’ When Raj needs something, this guy gets if for him.”
The manservant is a “gentle giant,” an American Samoan named Eddie, whose main job in the P3 unit is to push wheelchair-bound prisoners. He got himself transferred to P3 after befriending Raj, according to the snitch.
“He became enamored of Raj, and Raj started talking about how much he once paid his chauffeurs. Now Eddie wants to be Raj’s driver when he gets out,” the insider told me.
He even cooks for Rajaratnam using a nearby microwave when the fallen financier doesn’t want to hoof it to the dining hall.
P3 residents have private toilets, a shared balcony for sunning themselves, televisions and adjustable beds. The doors aren’t locked — but neither are they in most of the buildings at the Devens facility, according to my source.
The three floors in the “P” facility, including Rajaratnam’s, are usually reserved for the very elderly and those who are crippled.
For perspective, famous old mobster John “Sonny” Franzese — who was born in 1917 and is in failing health — is housed on the same floor as the 56-year-old Rajaratnam.
My source is annoyed that other, sicker patients are being held in parts of the prison that require up to a half-mile walk to the hospital and to the chow hall.
All of Devens is a medical facility, although some of the ailments are mental and not physical. Some seriously dangerous people are jailed there, including Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston bombing suspect.
Rajaratnam, my source says, seems to get around fine. In fact, he’s lost weight and has been congenial with the other prisoners, although the help of his “manservant” makes mingling less necessary.
Where in the prison does Rajaratnam really belong? My source says that, for some reason, he’s not in with the general population that’s housed in Building H.
On H’s two floors, there are two prisoners to a cell. They use a communal bathroom and — as far as anyone knows — there are no manservants.
“He is getting special treatment,” said my source, who asked that his name not be used.
Of course, when the rotund rat does want to head to the chow hall, he has a very short walk, most of it through an enclosed walkway, to get food.
John Dowd, the fallen hedge-fund titan’s lawyer, didn’t bother to call me back. The US Bureau of Prisons won’t comment beyond confirming that Rajaratnam is being held in Devens.
At trial, Rajaratnam’s legal team claimed he is very ill and asked the judge for a lenient sentence. Manhattan prosecutors seemed to have their doubts about the extent of the illness and challenged Team Rajaratnam to release medical records.
Those records, turned over to the court, showed that Rajaratnam has diabetes and might need a kidney transplant — the procedure all diabetes patients may ultimately face.
Prosecutors didn’t seem impressed by those maladies when they sought a longer term than Rajaratnam suggested.
“Big deal,” my snitch said about the diabetes claim. “Up there, diabetes is like a common cold.”
So maybe now prison officials and Rajaratnam’s lawyers would like to discuss this. They have my number.
Until I’m convinced differently, Rajaratnam looks like a billionaire baby.

That update cracks me up.