Oh, I'm sure most will be happy to see Martha do the perp walk. Of course, these losers didn't build a billion-dollar business and create thousands of jobs, unlike Lay and Company, who did just the opposite. And now the Feds want to lock her up for saving 5 figures on a tip. I'm sure her arrest is going to be a voyeuristic thrill, similar to the hour where middle-America lardasses watch Jerry Springer and don't realize that they're a couple of paychecks away from a guest slot themselves. Gunning for people has turned into a spectator sport. Just hope that you never get caught in the crosshairs by an increasingly oppressive government.
You got that right...I'd rather be surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves, than have the Feds determined to make an example out of me. I read somewhere this has already cost her somewhere in the neighborhood of $400 million dollars.
Harboring Jews may have been illegal under Hitler but it was not immoral. Stealing is both illegal and immoral. I was not saying that the two categories were the same, only that insider trading falls under both. Comparing common sense ethics to the Nazis does not make sense. ?? I don't understand. Do you think that if insider trading were legal that she would have come out in public and said "Imclone is about to release bad news, so therefore I am about to sell my stock."? There is no economic incentive to do so. Surely a Nobel Laureate Economist can see that. The reason insider trading is illegal is precisely for that reason...the economic intrests of insiders are in opposition to the shareholder when it comes to adverse news. They are not going to give up profits in the intrest of others. You mistake the fact that it is illegal with the reason she (or any inside trader) sold the stock. The government is not forcing her to act illegally...she is just violating common ethics by her own will. If we use Mr. Friedman's argument for other things the government "forces" us not to do, then if theft were not illegal, the thief would let you know when he was going to steal from you ahead of time and thus make it ok to do so. Secrecy is in the best interest of the thief, no matter if it is legal or not.
I personally would prefer to see some of the ENRON top honchos in jail and stripped of their ill-gotten gains. But given their political connections, does anyone think that will happen? It's easier to go after little Martha Stewart and divert attention from the real criminals...
well put but surely they are just looking out for the 'little guy' here, small investor protection is job one for the Feds... there's no way this is politically-influenced, or that the timing of it is for anything other than to assure the integrity of the investigation and the punishment handed down, right?
I agree that there are plenty of crooks for the government to go after, but they are prosecuting at least some of the Enron crew. Too bad they're not as eager to go after the top people in the investment banks who were financing it and knew of the fraud. Not to go off topic, but if congress or the SEC would ban or severely restrict incentive stock options, much of this fraud would become unattractive. Most of these companies were driven by an options culture where it became vitally important to goose the stock price so options went in the money. I have never understood why an ordinary employee is adequately motivated by his paycheck but the CEO, who is making tens of millions, can only be adequately motivated by hundreds of millions in options windfall. The only proper course of action for a board of directors, when told the CEO needs motivation, is to invite him to purchase stock with his own money or look for another job. Intel and other tech companies are still beating this horse that exec's need to be aligned with stockholders. Fine, we bought stock with our own damn money. Let them do the same.
Oh my God! Criminal guilt and innocence are issues determined by judicial process, not economics and tax policy, and certainly not by who you want to bang. Why don't you apply for a gaurd position at the joint she gets shipped off to, then you can spend time with princess.
I said the same thing, only in this case it is both illegal and wrong. I think you are very naive if you really believe this. As far as I know there is no law saying she can't inform the public as long as it is distributed equally. She is in trouble for profiting off that info at the expense of everyone else, not for not telling everyone. Go ahead and sip the koolaid if you want, but it was not because of what her broker told her. She was good friends with Waksal. He told her. Simple as that. Insider trading is STEALING. It is taking something that is not yours because another person doesn't know better. Please explain how it is not stealing. His crime is that he profited for himself and left his shareholders..who he has a fiduciary duty to...holding the bag. When you purchase stock in a company as an insider, you know going in that you must take the good with the bad since you are privy to material information. If you used to be a broker (as in Martha's case), then you certainly know that trading on info from an insider is also prohibited. That is why the law was made, not because the government wants to spoil your party. I think your collection of examples is flawed. Of course anyone would push someone out of the way of a train. But would you pull someone else in front of it to save yourself? Look, if no one else got hurt from it, then it would be fine. I am a free market capitalist and I am sitting here defending the government. IMO, the government is good for only a few things, protection of property rights being one of them. A stockholder, as an owner of the company, has the right to protection from an insider profiting off of him based on non-public material information. If that were not the case, if would be harder to sell shares to the public, which prevents you from raising the capital needed to invest and grow a business in a capitalist society. I don't mean to come across harsh, I'm really a very nice guy.
She's not been found guilty yet. She's probably guilty of taking her broker's advice, which isn't illegal, and guilty of trying to cover it up to the feds, which was obvious by her statements about having written down the stop order. She probably thought that what she did may be illegal and looked to cover it up, and that may be why they're so gung ho to get her 'cause "nobody's gonna make us look foolish and lie to us and get away with it." They announced it in Feb. that they were going to have something against her by July. It's also probably easier to make an example out of her, and we all know the IRS takes sacrifical victims to their public alter every now and then in order to keep us all in line, than it is to prosecute Kenneth Lay and their ilk. Not to say they won't, but that's a bigger case, probably more work to dot the i's. Them getting the easier target first, Martha, may just also be their way of sending a message to Lay and that bunch, much the same way Sean Connery's cop character in The Untouchables slaps around, threatens and shoots the already dead mobster in order to intimidate the crook they caught to give up names and submit to them (what a great scene).