I have been a severe critic of insider trading cases, as insider trading only brings good to the economy.
But there is one kind of insider trading case I can applaud, that's when the DOJ and the SEC charge another government official. The more time they spend harassing each other, the less time they can spend harassing the private sector. So I cheer on the news that the DOJ and SEC are going after FDA chemist Cheng Yi Liang. (Though, I note sadly, that the SEC specialty seems to be Asians of all kinds.)
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According to the DOJ, Liang has been an FDA employee since 1996 and traded in advance of at least 27 different FDA announcements involving 19 publicly traded companies. The government alleges that Liang made as much as $3.6 million through his insider trading activities.
"This is the kind of stuff I lost sleep over," WSJ quotes former FDA commissioner David Kessler as saying. Good.
May Margaret Hamburg, the current commissioner, lose plenty of sleep over this case. And let's hope FDA employees spend most of the days to come gossiping about this arrest, instead of thinking about new ways to harass us in their new role as food fascists,
As for the SEC and DOJ, great job, keep digging in D.C. you never know what you might find.
The FDA has damaged the health and well being of millions through its artificial barriers to entry, regulations and endorsement of corporatist dietary and medical schemes and these clowns are worried about some bureaucrat frontrunning his Monsanto stock? It's nice to know their priorities are straight.
ReplyDeleteDue, in part, to the fine work the FDA has churned out my generation can claim to the be the first, in many, which is not expected to match or exceed the life expectancy of their parents. No small feat in this industrial world.