60 Minutes ran an interesting but disturbing segment on Insider Trading in congress. We’ve heard about it before how congress can accept bribes in the form of insider trading stock tips. Something they threw Martha Stewart in jail for. Only it’s legal for members of congress. They also showed very disturbing clips about how congressmen can personally benefit from special deals in their own riding. Like I said, we’ve heard it before but it’s hard to believe and it’s only getting worse. No one wants to deal with it. When Michael Moore talked about Senator Dodd's insider trading in his movie Captialism a Love Story Democrats told him to cool it. The struggle continues.
Martha Stewart did not go to jail for insider trading. She was investigated for that offense, but was convicted of lying to a Federal agent, because she told an investigator something that they could later prove was false.
ReplyDeleteThis is why your lawyer tells you to STFU.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
STFU? My aren't we getting testy. Regardless of the reasons for Martha Stewart's incarceration, me thinks Republican and Democrat Senators accepting bribes in the form of insider trading stock tips concerns everyone. Yet we were told the reason Martha Stewart was incarcerated was for insider trading. In a nutshell, Martha was screwed. She got a tip from her stock broker a stock was going to drop and she sold it.
ReplyDelete"The Securities and Exchange Commission today filed securities fraud charges against Martha Stewart and her former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic. The complaint, filed in federal court in Manhattan, alleges that Stewart committed illegal insider trading when she sold stock in a biopharmaceutical company, ImClone Systems, Inc., on Dec. 27, 2001, after receiving an unlawful tip from Bacanovic, at the time a broker with Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated. The Commission further alleges that Stewart and Bacanovic subsequently created an alibi for Stewart's ImClone sales and concealed important facts during SEC and criminal investigations into her trades. In a separate action, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York has obtained an indictment charging Stewart and Bacanovic criminally for their false statements concerning Stewart's ImClone trades."
Not you dude. I refer to the advice a lawyer always give a client, not to make any statement without benefit of counsel.
ReplyDeleteAh yes. I tried to plead the fifth once but we don't have a fifth amendment in Canada.
ReplyDeleteWe'd seen some of this in their earlier show, but...;
ReplyDeleteDid you note 60 Minutes' emphasis on the rise of this new, *political intelligence* - gathering...?
Which 60 Minutes noted at the end, whereby lobby-ists send workers into the offices/corridors of power. They chat up & connect to the Senators' offices, Congress, and wheedle anything they can out of them. The lobby-ist then sends out stock tips, etc., to their clients.
So far, it's a business worth $100 million p/a.
The scope for bribery would seem infinite...
Wow, I missed that part. I think the main problem with legalized bribery through insider trading is that the few can control the many which is in opposition to democracy.
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