3 thoughts on “Interesting article on the SEC and insider trading prosecution”

  1. Hm, what the New Yorker describes sounds a lot like the recruitment of agents by an inelligence agency. So if the money is that good, why wouldn’t foreign agencies like the KGB/FSB be doing it? Is the $63.8 million allegedly made by Rajaratnam too small?

  2. Good article. NPR interview with the author:
    http://www.npr.org/2011/06/23/137360778/wall-street-pre-economic-crisis-was-dirty-business

    INTERVIEWER: What did you learn about the culture of Wall Street and the way it changed in the last few years, if at all, from watching this trial?

    Mr. GEORGE PACKER (Reporter): I learned that the level of casual corruption, at least in the world of hedge fund traders and managers, is astonishingly high.

    INTERVIEWER: Casual corruption, what does that mean?

    Mr. PACKER: Just the way in which people would make the decision to break the law, to commit a felony, to trade on inside information almost without thinking very hard about it, as if it was part of the way they did business. And I think it was the way many of them did business before the crash.

    Previous Matt Taibbi article on Wall Street prosecutions:
    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216?print=true

  3. The lesson learned here (other than not committing criminal acts, of course) is to exchange information in person, not on IM or on the telephone. With most of the people in this business all living in one rather small part of a rather small island, it would be pretty easy to do. How many get away with it because they exchange information in the most old fashioned way?

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