Readers are chiding me for my support of Martha: “Rich rhymes-with-rich…
arrogant… female Kerry, DYKWIA?…. little people need protection in the
market… integrity of the market… yada yada.”
Well, fiddlesticks. I’m a conservative, and my first presumption is that my
main enemy is State Power. This was an exercise in State Power, DYKWIA writ
much larger than any individual in this country can write it.
Stewart’s offenses were trivial, not worth prosecuting. Investor
confidence? Insider trading? (Which she was not even charged with!) Gimme
a break. The markets are a lottery, and the little guy enters at his
peril — always has, always will. “When the little guy gets in, it’s time
to get out,” has been conventional wisdom on Wall Street since (very
probably) the founding of the Republic. There is no way to control insider
trading — in fact, Wall Streeters will defy you to even DEFINE insider
trading (the U.S. Congress, for one, gave up on trying). And in fact, a
little guy who had held on to his Imclone stock would have been smarter than
Martha–the FDA drug rejection that caused the stock to dive has since been
reversed!
Arrogance? Yeah, this is arrogance, all right — the arrogance of gummint
prosecutors with too much time on their hands — since they don’t have the
guts to pursue REAL federal crimes, like the hiring of illegal-immigrant
labor — hunting for a Great White Defendant to boast to their bosses about,
and advance their careers in the federal-judicial bureaucracy — the same
bureacracy that is gradually stifling all our liberties, and wringing the
vitality out of our economy. See BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. This is State
Power run amok.
I’m a little guy, and I’m in the market. If the feds want to boast that
they’re doing ME any favors with this grandstanding, here’s a message from
this little guy to them: NO THANKS!
First they came for the haughty, slightly-dishonest millionairesses….