Dallas Strip Clubs: Ponder This: Should Insider Trading Be a Crime?
The egalitarian belief behind insider trading prosecutions is that everybody should have exactly the same information, even the folks who haven’t worked a day in their lives to gather that knowledge themselves.
So we encourage CEOs to be shareholders yet make it a criminal act for them to trade based on their own hard-earned experience. Instead, they’re expected to trade their millions of shares only after Joe Six-Pack has been fully briefed, despite the fact that he’s not even a current shareholder of the firm.
Imagine if you knew a brothel or gentleman’s club was going to be built next to your home, perhaps thanks to a local contractor or maintenance man hired to install the stripper poles. If insider trading laws were applied to the real estate market, you would not be permitted to sell your home until news about the bordello had been plastered across the front page of the local paper. Would that be fair?