On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
> >Meanwhile, I don't think I agree that this is merely an effort to
> >legitimate Wall Street.
>
> Not just the prosecution of MS, but the prosecution of "insider
> trading" itself.
But also the prosecution of someone like MS.
The prosecution in times of crisis of someone like MS or Waksal or Milken pour encourager les autres seems like the only way to square the circle that when things have gotten out of hand, you need to get the rich to cool it. But you can't prosecute the rich en masse because that would collapse the market too -- it would show just how pervasive corruption is. Exemplary prosecution squares the circle. It frightens without revealing. It seems like a necessary cyclical regulative manuever that returns everybody back to a starting value of greater abidance by the rules. And then the cycle can begin again where market players progressivly "innovate" -- i.e., evacuate the spirit of the laws -- until the point where the rules are so empty of meaning and so little obeyed that it begins to endanger the the system as a whole. Rinse and repeat.
Michael