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IBM, Intel Execs Arrested Over Insider Trading
An anonymous reader writes to share a report from The Register stating that executives from IBM and Intel have been arrested as a part of insider trading allegations. "According to a report from the Associated Press, six people were arrested today as part of an insider trading case, including Bob Moffat, senior vice president and general manager of IBM's Systems and Technology Group; Rajiv Goel, director of strategic investments at Intel Capital; Anil Kumar, a director at management consultancy McKinsey & Co; and Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of the $7bn Galleon Group hedge fund."
No it's not interesting. It takes time to move through all the documents and prepare for the arrest. The word you were looking for is routine.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Probably wanted to make sure they had a solid case. If they are guilty, who else thinks these guys will get away with a lower sentence then a non-violent drug user?
There is a war going on for your mind.
Helping the Nazis is worse than insider trading.
Does this surprise anyone? Insider trading must be commonplace at the executive level across most industries these days. How else, but corruption, do talentless, unethical, unproductive sociopaths get paid? These are all lucrative positions to hold, why do they need to cheat to get more bread? Meanwhile, honest mom and pop outfits are folding like lawn chairs and hardworking people are in debt beyond hope just to from month to month. Will somebody please flush the elitist toilet?
Nice. So executives at Intel, IBM, Bear Stearns, and McKinsey were tipping off a Billionaire hedge fund manager. Any wonder _how_ he made those Billions, then? And all of them massive contributors to politicians. How nice. These idiots should all go to jail, for a very long time. Maybe, use the per capita income of ordinary Americans to judge their prison terms; 25M/43k/yr = 500 years between them. Some of them _might_ get out in time to die.
andy
Business as usual for corporations. The only thing out of the ordinary here is that they got caught.
It's called, 'getting caught.' You see, when you get caught, everyone else in business has to pretend they don't do it, and that they are shocked! Shocked and appalled at the bad apples ruining the barrel. By 'bad apples,' they mean, 'people just like me except they got caught' and by 'ruining the barrel,' they mean, 'drawing the attention of the peons to our utter corruption.'
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'm afraid that insider trading is deeply, deeply frowned on by most companies, who put strong clauses in their confidentiality agreements, and at some larger companies provide "training" about how not to do it. I've attended such training several times, as part of corporate mergers, and it's striking how thee announced policy does not apply to VP's in practice: does not apply to "corporate partners": and does not apply to the people who have the most to trade with and the most to gain. It _does_ apply to the peons, the people with stock options who might want to trade them in at the right moment but whose activity might pre-announce and thus reduce the profitability of the corporate changes which are the direct knowledge of those most with the most to gain from insider trading.
Yes, I've become extremely cynical about this: I know VP's who really try to help their companies and improve their products, but I've been running into far too many since the Dotcom boom who simply studied how to make their bundle and get out with the last glowing quarter on their resume, and get out before the SEC or the market stomps their grandiose "big vision" plans into the dust.
There are victims of this crime. Those who bought or didn't buy shares at the 'wrong' price because they didn't have the information that the insiders did. Insider trading causes the honest people to A) lose money or B) not make as much money. So there are victims and injuries.
The drug thing is a whole different debate that I do not wish to even start with.
You think that there are no victims and no injuries caused by insider trading? How about the people at the other end of those trades? What about the former shareholder who sold stock early, not having had access to information showing that the stock was undervalued? Or how about the new shareholder who did not have the information to know that the stock was overvalued? Those who have access to proprietary information, or who are in a position to manipulate the value of an organization, have a fiduciary duty of loyalty to shareholders. Insider trading violates that duty and is a subtle, but very real, method of stealing from them. For another perspective, click here.
It's really a tossup. +5 insightful, or +5 cynical. Ironic that cynicism and insight are so much alike, isn't it?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Nope. Most people don't realize it, but financial crimes in the US are punished pretty severely. Enron's Skilling got 24 years in jail for conspiracy to defraud investors. You can get less than that for killing somebody. Martha Stewart got six months for lying to an investigator (while she wasn't under oath) about something that wasn't a crime. As with drunk driving for awhile people have this idea the penalties are light, but in the meantime legislators are reacting to public anger and jacking up the sentences. It takes awhile for reality to sink in to the public consciousness. From here:
I think the drug laws are pretty stupid, too, but where I live first time offenders never get jail time for possession. You can usually avoid jail on the second conviction as well if you don't have a bunch of other stuff on your record. By the third one, well, you're an idiot who's going to jail for being an idiot. But only for a few months.
I totally agree with you.
These people are going to have the very very best investigators, experts, and lawyers. They are going to examine every nook and cranny of the case in the attempt to find one little crack of reasonable doubt that will enable them to beat the rap.
The FBI doesn't just need to dot every i and cross every t, they need to develop a case so tight that even the most moronic juror will see the wrong clear as day, when the best lawyers in the world are trying to obscure everything.
On top of that, the US Attorneys don't like to go to trial unless they have a slam dunk. Losing makes them (and their administration) look bad--and image is sooo important!!
Bottom line is that the FBI had to work their ass off to get the goods on these guys and we should all damn well appreciate it!
Well, it's not like there aren't any good, ethical people even at the highest levels of corporate power. There are good, ethical politicians, too. Heck, I've met some of both.
But in both cases, you have two things working against there being a preponderance of ethical people. First, power tends to attract high functioning sociopaths. Second, and perhaps as a consequence of the first, you have a culture where corruption is seen as normal, a perk of one's position over other people.
People in positions of power are shielded from anything that can touch their comforting illusions about themselves. They believe that they deserve their positions because they are good people. They are good people because they are in those positions of power, sacrificing their superior selves to make the lives of we, the incompetent peons who need them to look after us, better. Of course they deserve a little on the side for such sacrifice!
You see, the terrible burden of such awesome responsibility entitles them to whatever they can take because the rules for little people don't apply to them.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Same thing applies to pastors and preachers, too. They preach the word of God, and start to think they understand all the exceptions, and when it is 'ok' to break them.
I knew a guy who had a collection of old/historical bibles. He always locked them up whenever a pastor came over, because he'd had too many of them stolen, by pastors.
Qxe4
Nope. Most people don't realize it, but financial crimes in the US are punished pretty severely.
I don't have a problem with the amount of punishment, but I'm pissed with how few get caught. If you follow the market and take a look at important announcements like rate cuts, economic numbers, earnings reports, etc., you could often (not always) see high volume trade before the announcements pre-announcing the result. Its sad that people almost never get caught, considering how often it happens.