Please explain to me how Insider Trading is different from what Goldman Sachs did?

[Duer 157099]

No, I'm serious. Insider trading is when someone makes a trade based on info that is proprietary to them.

Isn't that EXACTLY what happened when GS hedged it's bets on the risky financial instruments?

[Warpy]

1. Insider trading is what is done when one big boy shares information

with another big boy that is unavailable to anyone else, enabling both big boys to make big money.

That's insider trading.

And yes, Goldman did that, too.

[napi21]

2. What Goldman was doing didn't involve stocks, insider trading does.

This is actually not my opinion, it's a quote from Norman Goldman on his radio show this past week. He's an Atty, and one of his callers asked almost the same question. That was his response. It's a technicality of the law, but that's how they get away with doing it.

[Duer 157099]

4. OK, thanks for that reply. It's infuriating but at least now I understand why

I wonder if Martha Stewart thinks what she did was worse than what Goldman did?

[MattBaggins]

3. What Goldman did is even worse

[Taitertots]

5. What they did is totally different

The illegal part of what they did was when they lied about what was inside CDOs and who selected it.

[havocmom]

6. Easy: Martha Stewart is a Democrat

See the difference? Dem voter registration = prison for making a little profit because you knew stuff others didn't know.

GOP voter/supporter = you can totally fuck the economy and a huge number of investors, workers, taxpayers for making a MASSIVE profit because you knew stuff others didn't know.

Understand? ;)

[RB TexLa]

7. What was in the MBS wasn't inside information. Anyone could have found out and chose to purchase

CDS on them.

[ejpoeta]

8. easy. you call it something different and now it's not the same. see how easy that was.

[Warren Stupidity]

9. Goldman sachs wasn't 'trading' they were creating the trades for others

while betting against them. In particular, they were deliberately creating investment instruments they knew were going to fail, neglecting to inform their customers of this minor detail, and betting against the same instruments they were creating and selling and also neglecting to mention that minor detail. That goes way beyond mere insider trading. Inside traders are merely capitalizing on information not yet public - they generally are not also deliberately creating the conditions for failure that would allow them to capitalize on that inside information - but when they also do that they are compounding insider trading with outright fraud.

[Duer 157099]

10. So they've shirked their fiduciary responsibility to their clients, also fraud

Fuckers