It is not underscored often enough: insider trading is not just about greed. There are victims. Chris Collins and family avoided $760,000 in losses—by foisting the losses off on unsuspecting buyers of the stock who lacked the insider info. This was a mugging.
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) August 11, 2018
Tina Nguyen, at Vanity Fair — “In the witch-hunt era, a criminal indictment has become a mark of pride for Republicans”:
If there’s anyone who can sympathize with Rep. Chris Collins, the first congressman to support Donald Trump, who is currently facing indictment for insider trading, it’s Michael Grimm. “He’s going to have a really, really difficult emotional time,” the retired Republican congressman, who was himself indicted on 20 counts of various crimes, told The New York Times on Thursday, when asked what he’d say to Collins. “He’s going to have to swallow every bit of it. And smile.” He went on, “Washington, as long as you’re riding high, they want to be your friend. And when you’re not, they don’t want to be anywhere near you. . . . And whether he knows it or not, a lot of Washington is going to look at him as a pariah.”
They might also look at him as unelectable, a realistic concern in a potential wave election that threatens to wipe out the Republican hold on Congress, particularly if Collins refuses to bow out of the race. But fear not, Grimm said—he himself had done what Collins aspires to do, running for re-election under indictment in 2012, and winning…“If I were him, I would double down on the president needing us,” Grimm suggested….
But could anyone in the Serious Grown-Up Business-Friendly Party actually defend stock market fraud?
Heeerrre comes MCARGLEBARGLE!
McArdle argues that it's okay to sell worthless Pharma stock to unwitting suckers because, hey, those goobers want to buy the stock based on old info, just like Cam Collins once did, and they don't even have a father on the board. https://t.co/X6t82C9FvS pic.twitter.com/xzXMtuoCNf
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) August 11, 2018
After all, each additional snake oil salesman to enter the market drives down the unit cost of snake oil. So it's actually a service.
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) August 11, 2018
To be fair — to the Washington Post, who paid her this time — McArdle eventually gets around to explaining that, well, insider trading might be offensive, but it’s really all the fault of Government Overregulation:
… It’s surprisingly hard to pin down an actual harm from insider trading. And yet we have a stubborn intuition that it ought to be illegal because it just doesn’t seem fair. That’s a reasonable response: Insiders such as the sons of congressmen and board members should have to take the same losses as anyone else on speculative investments.
There is no evident problem with confidence in the markets today, but there is an obvious problem with confidence in our institutions. That’s the harm of insider trading — and all sorts of other self-dealing, self-interested practices by networks of folks with cultural, economic or political power. Occupational licensing, building restrictions that make it impossible for disadvantaged families to gain access to better schools, professional networks and degree requirements that help “people like us” climb the ladder into the best jobs — all of these look, from the outside, like more insider trading. They’re also often defended by people who regard the allegations against Chris Collins with horror…
Look, regulations only serve to encourage law-breaking, knowhutimean? As J.P. Morgan said, during our first Gilded Age, “Anything not nailed down is mine. Anything I can pry loose, was not nailed down.” It’s not the plundering, it’s the nails!
Question: If person uses Ivy League education/prestige to acquire and serially deploy a series of glib verbal tricks to hold space in the public square that might otherwise be open to voices that are more interesting, challenging or morally substantial is this a victimless crime?
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 11, 2018
Late Night QFT Open Thread: “Trump’s GOP, Party of Corruption”Post + Comments (120)