Government Watchdogs At work.

       Do you follow any of this stuff? There's an article in the New York Times today about SAC having to pay a $602 million fine for insider trading. That's a record fine for insider trading. Now, the fact that such a fine is record breaking is bad enough, but SAC sold about $1 billion in stocks from that deal. From where I sit, that's a pretty good deal.
       If they have to pay $602 million and sell it for $1 billion, that works out to about a 66% markup. I can tell you from experience that a 66% markup over cost is pretty good income. And on top of that is the possibility that they might not have had to pay anything. In fact my guess is that there was a lot of insider trading going on that didn't get caught. Add to that the fact that nobody's going to jail and I'd say it was a pretty good day for SAC.
       I don't want to seem to be a complainer, but somebody at SAC had to be the one, or two, who decided to cheat. Somebody had to think, hey, we can make some real money on this deal if we use this information. That guy had to think, it may be illegal, but hey, the money's great. It's not as though they didn't know what they were doing was illegal.  They counted on it. Or just didn't care. But guess what? Nobody's going to jail. Not even a slap on the wrist.
       Now that's what I call a real deterrent.  This company, SAC Capital Advisors, get's to keep a big portion of it's profits, nobody is blamed and they get to try again. Boy, does that put the rest of the field on notice. Yes-sirree-bob if you break the law, you might get caught and have to pay a reasonable fine, but otherwise you're home free. So now the trick for SAC and others, is not to get caught. That way you get to keep all of it.