Who Will be Next in the Dock?

Every day, it seems, another “insider-trading” defendant is hauled before the courts or sentenced to prison. In fact, many

of these “insider traders” are not insiders at all. They are merely people who have acquired information from insiders.

Yet the business community either clucks its approval of their being sent to prison for years, or it says nothing.

I can understand that insiders—top corporate executives (like Robert Moffat Jr. of IBM), pledged to keep corporate information secret—should not talk about corporate secrets to others (as Moffat talked to his mistress, Danielle Chiesi). And those who do talk should be disciplined by their companies: reprimanded, perhaps fired, perhaps even sued if there are provable damages.

Who will be next? The business community may have gotten use to the idea of imprisoning people who engage in “insider-trading.” How about people who engage in short-selling?

European countries have begun to ban short-selling , in one form or another.

Will American businessmen begin to internalize the anti-capitalist allegation that there is something wrong about short-selling, as they have internalized the accusation that there is something wrong about insider trading?

Or will they speak out when, inevitably, some men violate the ban on short-selling? Will they assert proudly that short-selling is a capitalist act between consulting adults and none of the government’s business? Will they hold a “Short-Sellers’ Pride March” through lower Manhattan?

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