On Monday, SAC, a hedge fund, agreed to plead guilty to five counts of insider trading violations and pay a record $1.2 billion penalty, becoming the first large Wall Street firm in a generation to confess to criminal conduct. The deal caps a decade-long investigation. This will shrink the firm, given the other stipulations in the agreement. All for the non-crime, in fact beneficial action, of insider trading.
Has Steven A. Cohen Bought Off the U.S. Government?
ReplyDeleteIf this is so, why isn’t he in the dock facing criminal charges?
Back in the nineteen-eighties, when Rudy Giuliani held Bharara’s job, he threatened the investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert with racketeering charges, and brought them against Princeton/Newport Limited Partners, a small investment firm. According to reports earlier this year, the U.S. Attorney’s office was considering exercising the racketeering laws, which are a kind of nuclear option, in this case, too.
Evidently, that idea was dropped. Far from being treated like a mobster, Cohen was hit solely in the pocketbook. He wasn’t even mentioned in the U.S. Attorney’s press release about today’s settlement, or in a letter and legal stipulation about the settlement that Bharara’s office filed in U.S. District Court. Rather than naming names, the documents contain repeated references to dozens of corporate entities and investment funds connected to SAC—the “SAC Entity Defendants.”
From Cohen’s perspective, that’s got to be encouraging. He’s not quite in the clear yet. But with about seven billion dollars in his back pocket even after he’s paid off all his fines, he’ll be feeling better about things. Maybe he’ll even go out and buy himself another Picasso to celebrate.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/11/has-steven-a-cohen-bought-off-the-us-government.html
you must smoke some good $h1#.
really....lets get rid of all the rules...the laws...etc...I have a feeling guys like you would not last a New York minute.
Anarcho-Capitalism is rules without rulers. Democracy is rulers without rules. The concept that rules would exist without rulers is hard for most people to imagine.
DeleteYou should rule yourself to do the right thing. If you don't rule yourself you could become chaotic.
DeleteFormer SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt to BTV
ReplyDeleteOn whether Steven Cohen has been found to do anything wrong:
“The curtain hasn’t fallen get on Stevie Cohen. The whole notion of failure to supervise is part of the fiber of the securities business. It is inconceivable that Cohen wasn’t aware of some of the goings on and didn’t built the culture of insider trading that permeated that company. This is not the last act but it is a very important intermission.”
http://www.hedgeaccording.ly/2013/11/former-sec-chairman-arthur-levitt-to.html
If I even mention to anyone that my public company is having "a rough quarter" and they trade on that info ----that's "insider trading".
ReplyDeleteI agree with Bob- it is a non crime, but gives the big boys another way to FUCK the little guys.