| Insider trading is a bad thing, right; after all, it's illegal. Nobody likes a cheater and that is what insider trading really is, whether it's with nonpublic information or not. Pardon, us regular folks don't don't like cheaters; however, politicians and Wall Street don't have a problem with it no matter what country or region it happens in. Surely most of us know in detail what insider trading is but just in case some are confused, here is the Wikipedia definition - Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) by individuals with access to nonpublic information about the company. In various countries, trading based on insider information is illegal. This is because it is seen as unfair to other investors who do not have access to the information as the investor with insider information could potentially make far larger profits that a typical investor could not make. The authors of one study claim that illegal insider trading raises the cost of capital for securities issuers, thus decreasing overall economic growth Unless you're living under a rock, this won't come as a surprise to you: Insider trading violations are ONLY applied to junior traders and the occasional non-trading fall guy, like Martha Stewart. In 2004 Martha Stewart was convicted of insider trading of her ImClone stock holdings in which her broker was said to have disclosed nonpublic information to her. Martha Stewart sold her stock and the very next day the price on ImClone collapsed 16%. I personally believe that Martha Stewart did indeed act on inside information, but where are the charges against the Big Boys? Why is this such a one-way street? When will the CEO or CFO of a major hedge fund or two be sent to jail? Not any time soon by the looks of yesterday's actions that let all of the corrupt banksters off with a fine. Just a few days days ago a MAJOR bit of "insider information" was revealed to European "Wall Street-type" big wigs. An important European Central Bank (ECB) member gave a speech to the well-connected London, etc. power players and disclosed some crucial, heretofore UNKNOWN, information about what the ECBs future actions would be. If that is not disclosing nonpublic and actionable information about a company or central bank actions and indeed RIGGING the short-term markets, then what would be? Zero Hedge reported the following - Shortly after 6pm London time yesterday, The ECB's Benoit Coeure told a non-public audience of hedge funds in London that "the central bank would moderately front-load its purchases in its quantitative easing program because of the seasonal lack of market liquidity in the summer." The reaction was a 50 pips drop in EURUSD... but this was inside information was not released to the trading public until around 8am London time - and resulted in a 150 pip plunge. As you can see, when the facts were released to the hedge fund audience, they took advantage of said information and sold the heck out of the Euro-currency. By their own actions it fell 50 pips; however, they knew that when the public found out the totality of the ECBs actions it would fall a great deal further – and it did. Of course, the hedge funds with the "inside information" were correct – by definition of insider trading! Will there be a European inquiry? Will there be a Martha Stewart-like fall guy? I say no to both: the big boys, like politicians, are above the law these days. Or they'll pay another pedestrian-level fine and move on. RIGGED? Yeah, #Normal Trade well and follow the trend, not the perma-bull OR perma-bear "experts." Behold the age of infinite moral hazard! On April 2nd, 2009 CONgress forced FASB to suspend rule 157 in favor of deceitful accounting for the TBTF banking mafia. | 
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