Martha Stewart and her Merrill Lynch Broker

From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 03:53:48 MDT

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    Martha Stewart was indicted yesterday for insider trading and for
    obstruction of justice, and then forced to resign her position as CEO of her
    own company.

    I feel bad for her and for her broker at Merrill Lynch. Having once been a
    Merrill broker for many years I have to sympathize with both her and him.

    In my day I knew more than one "insider-trader" just like Martha. One client
    of mine, a very rich man named Bob from xxxopolis, made many hundreds of
    thousands of dollars using me as his Merrill broker. I suspected very
    strongly that he was trading on so-called "inside information." In fact I
    had no doubts about it. However I did not say anything to him or to anyone
    else about his trading patterns. Why should I have?

    In other free-market countries, Taiwan for example, it is perfectly legal
    and respectable to trade on so-called "inside information." Why shouldn't it
    be legal? The markets are about the free competition for information.

    Why is it a crime in the USA to profit from information one has in one's own
    brain that others don't have in theirs? Isn't knowledge and insight
    something we should reward? Where in the US Constitution is it stated that
    the federal government is granted the power to tell US citizens what they
    can and cannot do with the business information contained in their own
    brains? Who owns our brains, anyway?

    I am so glad I'm no longer in that business. Fuck the feds.

    -gts



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