Nonvoters implicitly consent to the outcome ahead of time. Which means that they can carry part of the blame--if they didn't like it they could have voted against it.
Hot take: if <80% of eligible voters show up, nobody wins and the same politicians stay in office for another year, even if term limits would normally apply.
Slightly less left field proposal: failure to pass a budget should immediately force fresh elections (both houses plus presidency), as it would in a Parliamentary system. None of this "shutdown" nonsense.
I didn’t vote for Trump but I don’t blame the voters. I don’t think many people foresaw him doing this on either side of the political aisle. Other stuff we disapprove of, yes. But not this.
I say that because he had famously resisted to enter extended conflict in his first term. Maybe he wanted to but now has the chance since he’s in his final years. (At least, I hope it’s his final years.) But I didn’t hear anyone predicting this before his second term.
It was pretty obvious he was wanting to enter a conflict with someone, and was mostly held back in his first term by the actual professionals in his cabinet at that time. But the guy wanted a military parade with tanks rolling through DC on his birthday, wanted to nuke a hurricane, and forcibly annex Greenland. It isn't really surprising that once he replaced the sane people with sycophants, he would start something.
it was patently obvious. people were just blinded by xenophobia as the primary issue facing the nation and they bought it, peripheral consequences be damned
You make a good point. At the same time, when he broke his electoral promise to stop foreign interfefence and kidnapped Maduro, his voter base did not turn against him. That seems to have emboldened him to pursue more military actions abroad.
Now let's see how long until he invades Cuba, and how his voters will react.
I wonder what Cuba would look like now if Batista had never been overthrown. That's probably on par with how it would have worked if US meddling were more successful. I can't say I know it would be worse.
Difficult to separate "Cuba is bad because it is badly governed" from "Cuba is bad because it has been heavily sanctioned and no longer gets help from the Soviet Union", really. Too many different variables. Hard to imagine it being worse than Haiti or El Salvador, but also hard to imagine it having free elections (because that would immediately elect an anti-US socialist who would be overthrown again).
Somebody, in a conversation of which there will be no record, told him it was a good idea, telling him it would be quick, he would be lauded as a hero, there would be vast mineral riches, etc. This person wanted to break up NATO, but this wasn't part of the sales pitch, I imagine.
Almost everyone's asking the same question regardless of what they think's going on inside Trump's head. The two most coherent answers I've seen are "to soothe his narcissistic injury from being told he can't" and "feels entitled to it because NATO", you will note neither of these was his stated reason, and all of this is still catastrophically poor judgment on his part.
At what point people will realize "his first term" isn't a good bar and its certainly not because "he resisted" rather he at least had some better advisors and GOP had some control over him.
This time around GOP has been flattened into his mouthpiece and the government is fully of sycophants. Its not that he's in his final years more like his yes-men are afraid of being booted out and replaced with another power hungry nincompoop sycophant.
If people fell for this "but this didn't happen in the first term" even then they are to blame for this mess, they voted for this person in the first place. Just like being ignorant doesn't let you escape from legal consequences, it should let people escape from outcome of their actions.
He's notoriously unpredictable. I would agree that it's more obvious now, but I think it was still quite obvious in his first term, especially after inciting a riot at the Capitol.
Given the rashness that he displayed prior to his second term, I don't see why it's at all surprising that he would start a war. To think otherwise just seems like wishful thinking.
Trump's statements on these issues have always been self contradictory.
On the one hand he says Russia would never have dared invade Ukraine if he was President, yet he was also against military support for Ukraine before the full scale invasion, and says that Ukraine's plight is basically their and Europe's problem.
He was adamantly against bombing Syria in response to Assad using chemical weapons while Obama was president, then when they used chemical weapons as soon as he became President he bombed them for it.
He's advocated for the USA not getting involved in military conflicts, while also advocating for massive increases in military spending and capability.
This has always been his approach, say one thing while very often actively doing the other. Promote domestic manufacturing, while putting massive tariffs on the inputs on which American manufacturing depends, many of which are only available in the required quantities abroad even for current production.
Trump voters have been scammed by a self-professed scammer that's been successfully prosecuted for scamming, and they know it. They were quite happy for him to betray, backstab, double-deal and scam whoever he liked on whatever issue he liked, as long as it was people they didn't like or care about.
"We didn't see it coming" is not very believable. Trump campaigned on a general theme of chaos and griefing, and he is delivering on exactly what he promised.
It was obvious that Trump is unstable and has extreme and volatile views on foreign policy. So yes, I think it is entirely fair to blame anyone that voted for Trump in the last election.
He can absolutely counted on to do stupid, corrupt shit. We saw plenty of it when he had 4 years in office and was somewhat held in check by having hired some more or less 'normal' Republicans.
It was entirely predictable that he would fuck things up in some way. He's demented (although the press stopped caring about that sort of thing when Biden dropped out), deeply corrupt, narcissistic, and was never particularly intelligent to begin with.
Anyone with half a brain knows Trump is an actual idiotic person. So yes, we could foresee him doing this, because it was a dumb fucking plan and Trump is the dumbest person who has ever been president.
People voting for a convicted felon should definitely be held partially responsible for the looting of the country. Also, considering the various rape accusations, his constant lies and his obvious narcissism makes it absolutely insane to vote for him and expect any kind of predictable good to come from it.
There were plenty of warnings about electing Trump and people chose to ignore them.
Almost all the troops that committed those massacres are still there, and if anything even more ready and willing to do it all over again, and have a leadership ready to give the order.
Every time this gets repeated without a shred of evidence I have to think of the "beheaded babies" thing. "Feel better about the crimes against humanity you see us doing and bragging about by reading this spam email from a Nigerian prince once again, this time with even more pomp and even less details, even less pretense of actually caring or being honest."
A lot of Trump supporters, including Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Dave Smith, voted for him because of his anti-war stance during campaigning. I’m not defending their poor judgement of an infamous con artist (I didn’t vote for Trump) but we should ask ourselves how democracy can function if candidates can just make things up during campaigns and do the complete opposite when they’re elected. We should also ask ourselves who really wanted this war and how they have so much leverage over our country to instigate it when 50-60% of Americans do not support it. We should ask how it’s possible that such unpopular wars always seem to have bipartisan support. We should also ask ourselves how Congress failed to stop this war which has been illegally executed without congressional approval. It’s all very curious if you think about it.
We can’t just keep finger pointing at the other party whenever things go wrong. There are systemic issues and outside influences destroying this country. Some people think this will all be fixed when democrats take over again in November but they’re wrong and the cycle will continue just with a more presentable veneer of decency.
I'd just like to remind everyone that this guy got fired from Fox News for being too extreme an idealogue.
> I’m not defending their poor judgement of an infamous con artist
At some point you have to hold adult Republicans accountable for their actions. They were warned repeatedly; they chose to ignore the warnings.
> ask how it’s possible that such unpopular wars always seem to have bipartisan support
Americans love war and guns! This is like, #1 national characteristic as observed by other nations. Especially because America always wins in the movies! The reason Americans are complaining about the Iran war and not the illegal Venezuelan invasion or whatever is because they are losing.
> but we should ask ourselves how democracy can function if candidates can just make things up during campaigns and do the complete opposite when they’re elected.
Education. Actually teaching people how to think critically about what they see and hear needs to start as soon as they get a phone in their hand, if not sooner. That education in critical thinking needs to come from family, school, social clubs and religious institutions. I don't think that'll ever happen in America though. Our economy depends on people not thinking critically.
"lying is free" and it has no consequences for these people. whether it is WMDs or war or fiat money printing with trillions or killing millions. What you people call justice is, well it's obv. so no need to write about it. These facts dont change with two party or three party, it's cultural btw.
We all know how some cultures are violent and backwards to each other? some or like this, just different culture
> A lot of Trump supporters, including Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Dave Smith, voted for him because of his anti-war stance during campaigning.
That was just their nice-sounding excuse for voting for him. It's not like they are going to go out and say that they like him because of his jingoistic machismo authoritarian 'strong'-man bullshit.
They'll performatively grumble for a bit, but are all ready to vote for the guy a fourth time in 2028.
As if anything in the executive branch of the US still works properly.
Isn't the FBI already raiding the homes of political opponents for intimidation?
The famed US constitution with all its 'checks and balances' they would never shut up about turned out to be papier mâché and completely trampled by the first person that tried.
To be fair, you could also be a real world user of a commodity and productively use futures markets. For example, an airline or trucking company using them to hedge fuel prices.
It kind of can, but trading futures is trading termed contracts, kind of like options, but a bit stranger (and you can buy options for futures contracts too!) For a retail trader, you definitely are not in a buy and hold/invest mindset. Often people use futures as a hedge or for locking in prices for physical delivery- it serves a very real world problem.
If you consider 'trading' to be short term buying and selling of stocks, then yeah. Holding stocks long term is nothing like trading commodities though.
There's a <50% chance you'll make money off of it because it's zero-sum, and if insiders make money on average then other traders (i.e., you) have to lose money on average.
The issue is that the odds aren't actually 50/50 on you buying either side of the trade; one half will look like a better deal (and given public information, it is a better deal) so you'll buy that half. Then when the market resolves, it'll turn out that insiders knew some piece of information that made the other half of the trade a better choice.
So, basically, over the last century or more or so, we've learned:
- our laws, the ones that supposedly keep society stable and safe, don't apply to particular groups of people
- we can catch them, and maybe, just maybe, we will hold someone accountable for those people, though often they just distract and trick everyone from holding them accountable
- the majority of people are getting stolen from, treated like slaves and tricked and abused, and they will tolerate this abuse because of <fear???>
Am I to accept this frame of reality in which the universe and the earth, and the leaders currently making decisions for me and holding influence over the worlds' military powers, are this hostile towards me?
I refuse. I think we have more power than we think. In America at least, we still have an amendment that has yet to be repealed (created for scenarios in which abusers hold leadership positions and refuse to be accountable): the 1st amendment and parading guns legally, safely, and responsibly is a powerful reminder of what accountability and dignity looks like.
edit: I advocate for parading guns peacefully with an intention and purpose: go with a group standing for rights, safety and dignity
The scary thing for me is that in the US, the President and by extension the DoJ has a lot of power to override any legal protections that exist in most countries. In the UK, the Prime Minister or the Home Office cannot ring up any of the enforcement agencies and tell them to drop a corruption case - the law is supposed to apply to everyone.
In the US, for some reason, if you are a danger to the President's friends, you can be fired/your department can just be shutdown executively and this isn't just about Trump, it is about a serious weakness in the systems of governance.
> In the UK, the Prime Minister or the Home Office cannot ring up any of the enforcement agencies and tell them to drop a corruption case - the law is supposed to apply to everyone.
I would not rely on that. The Attorney General can withdraw prosecutions, and is a government minister (although not technically in the Cabinet).
Parliament can do anything, it just usually doesn't. This includes retroactive legislation to decide that you did not win a lawsuit that you actually did win (Reilly and Wilson v Secretary of State, although that itself was eventually ruled unlawful). The infinite delay of Bloody Sunday prosecutions is probably the biggest example in UK discourse.
No country is safe from this if enough authoritarian-collaborator political appointments are made (such as happened to SCOTUS). It should really be viewed as a form of coup.
Yep; I think the above comment took the wrong lessons.
What actually happened in the US is that "common norms and expectations" were thrown out the window, so instead of the question being "What is traditionally done?" it became "What can legally be done?" And, as it turns out, when you're only constrained by the letter of the law the executive branch is insanely powerful.
UK politics, more than most younger countries, is particularly susceptible to this. Norms, traditionally, and commonly understood standards make up a scary amount of constraints on the powers of government. If anyone gained power that only feels limited by the letter of the law (i.e. throws out norms, traditions, and standards), the UK is in serious trouble and Parliament hasn't moved to address it.
Somewhat ironically (given how unpopular it is), the Lords may be the best back-stop the UK has. Particularly the 30%~ which do not originate from politics.
What if the whole point of the war was planned to generate trading opportunities? Every crazy tweet or announcement another cash out.
It's like every time you see a poorly run business and you think, how can they stay open? The answer is it's usually a laundering operation, a tax shelter, and who knows what else. The message to us poors is, nothing these people do is as it appears; there's always a bunch of stacked, leveraged advantages.
Heard of the documentary, "Everything is a Rich Man's trick"? It's quite eye opening, and makes this similar conclusion with evidence pointing to the Rich Men through history. Highly recommend a watch.
While I don't think trump and co are smart enough to plan big stuff like this, I think it is pretty obvious they are trying to benefit oil companies and I have no doubt oil companies were involved in the decision to bomb Iran to some degree.
What I mean is Trump and Co probably spoke to oil execs before making the Iran decision to ask if they would raise production. Then they lied and said yes, while knowing they would drag their feet as prices rose.
Trump is a stoog. The folks around him treat him like an idiot. There's no way they weren't involved here. They've been around his entire presidency.
>The Trump administration is making no real effort to crack down on whoever is trading using inside information, and these inside traders are operating with a complete sense of impunity, assured that they can get away with it.
Yeah that's because IT's HIM.
Jesus how much more proof do you people need that the Trumps themselves are looting the country.
Welcome to the world of commodity trading. There is no SEC here, and this is business as usual. You can look at T&S to see this for yourself, but this is (like it or not) how this typically goes in commodity markets.
Insider trading laws are for the plebs. Tip off your cousin about an acquisition by a public company? Go to prison. Tip off your cronies about war? Business as usual.
"The U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday that it had charged 30 people allegedly linked with a decade-long insider trading scheme involving high-profile law firms."
Let me guess, these guys said something bad about Trump?
Not that it means that they didn’t do it, just that they would not have gotten charged otherwise.
Honestly, insider trading laws should be removed since they manipulate markets. If you know things, make moves that are public, that would price things _more_ accurately.
This, as a generality. There are plenty of multi-billion-dollar Wall Street firms doing algorithmic trading. Your prospects for being smarter or faster than them are very poor.
I've heard of this working in other kinds of markets, where if you can identify the traders who consistently beat the market, and you can emulate them with precise timing, then you can beat the market too.
These were before news reports that came out with the scoop before any press conference. How would you know that some big news scoop is going to drop? You'd have to jump on every futures drop.
Civilization will be effected the same way anyway, why not make a buck of it? But you wouldn't be able to anyway because some quant's ml model would have already sucked every dollar out of the opportunity two milliseconds after the insider executed the trade
Psychopaths and sociopaths come from all types of backgrounds. One things for sure, they all tend to gravitate towards power and exploitation of people without remorse. C suite and founders are far from immune from this...
> "The Trump administration is making no real effort to crack down on whoever is trading using inside information, and these inside traders are operating with a complete sense of impunity, assured that they can get away with it."
same, without context it is speculation. even with context, if the person creating the story controls the window, a window can be found which supports the story.
>paying what in retrospect will have been an excessive price
This can be said about any negative price movement. You still get the same amount of oil you agreed to regardless of if the price goes up or down afterwards.
It's a tax. I don't know if you specifically are one of the "taxation is theft" types, but it's absolutely wild how many of these are totally cool with the tax if it's funding insider trading payouts but not if it's paying for poor person healthcare or whatever.
In the absence of the insider trader selling you oil futures on the basis of his insider knowledge, what would you do?
You'd buy oil futures at broadly the same price from someone else (maybe a worse price! Because the presence of the insider selling is already driving the price down). So how exactly do you lose?
The only people who lose out are those whose limit orders don't get filled because the insider outbid them. The counterparty benefits from trading with the insider.
This is completely ignorant of market microstructure. For big swaths of the market, most parties interacting with the market do so by trading with a market maker who ensures that everyone's trades clear immediately in exchange for a fee that covers the risk of getting caught offsides. If you're big enough, it makes sense to take that risk in house, but the risk and its very real financial cost remains. In both cases, trades that increase the risk increase the fee. So no, corruption is a tax and everyone pays the tax even though the mechanics have fallen through the rather large cracks in your understanding.
If you think this tax is de minimis, great, glad to hear it, let's put a government tax of similar magnitude in there and resume the peanut butter rations to starving african kids that DOGE cut.
I'd say the entire market loses out on insider trading except for the two parties involved in the insider trade. The insider trades take away a part of the profit margin that other good faith future providers need to justify the risk they take on by offering the futures. This leads to future providers needing to raise the prices of futures to remain profitable.
I remember one take I had in 2024 after the election.
We're all familiar with some of the "defund the police" experiments that went too far in places like Portland and San Francisco and resulted in things like epidemics of casual shoplifting.
Well, what we just did is basically the white collar crime equivalent. We now have a wide open free for all for all forms of white collar crime. You can just insider trade, launder money, commit investment fraud, anything you want, the way you saw random people just walking into CVS drug stores years ago in SF and grabbing stuff and walking out.
But as usual when someone steals $100 worth of stuff on the street that's a national crisis and those people are scum, but when people steal billions that's fine cause they're wearing suits.
The whole retail theft epidemic (and the ensuing Union Pacific cargo theft ) was a corporate scam perpetrated by local news and law enforcement PR departments.
It wasn't at all. There's still a serious problem with shoplifting. Wal-mart would not be removing self-checkout if this were just a PR campaign.
At my local CVS, they just started locking up the bulk candy. You don't take the the sales hit and the expense of those locking cabinets unless you have a real shrinkage problem.
> You can just insider trade, launder money, commit investment fraud, anything you want, the way you saw random people just walking into CVS drug stores years ago in SF and grabbing stuff and walking out.
Something I'd disagree with is... enforcement will not help against what causes people to turn out and steal in stores. Fix widespread poverty, get people out of homelessness, help people legitimately get off of drugs, help them get jobs even when they have convictions on the book, and then they won't need to become members of what is, essentially, small and hyperlocal crime networks.
In contrast, insider traders and billion-scale fraudsters - they do not have the need for survival pushing them to do crime. It is just pure unchecked greed that drives them.
It’s a myth that petty shoplifting is something done by poor people. The people doing it are usually part of organised crime (that is not “hyperlocal”) and generally are doing better than actual poor people.
The idea poor people are somehow criminal is a myth that needs to be eradicated.
> t’s a myth that petty shoplifting is something done by poor people. The people doing it are usually part of organised crime (that is not “hyperlocal”) and generally are doing better than actual poor people
There is not such a strong distinction. Organized crime groups often use poor people who have few alternatives as the pawns of their theft and fencing operations. People with other better options don't usually take up petty crime as a vocation.
> enforcement will not help against what causes people to turn out and steal in stores
Yes and no. Enforcement deters career criminals by increasing the cost of doing business. Improving society means fewer honest people have to turn to crime.
> insider traders and billion-scale fraudsters - they do not have the need for survival pushing them to do crime. It is just pure unchecked greed that drives them
The corruption is a welcome byproduct of Trump's role as a Reality TV host who has to keep the conflict going and Hormuz closed.
The fact that he is talking peace again now is just because he cannot attack before the meeting with Xi in mid May.
The real issue is US energy dominance and control of the sea routes. Which Krugman does not mention, because the effort is bipartisan and he probably likes it. The US literally has a National Energy Dominance Council:
It is designed to subjugate and increase EU and Asian dependencies on US exports. The EU committed to buying $750 billion in US energy exports. LNG terminals in Alaska are being approved to make Asia dependent on US energy.
This process is accelerated by the emerging forever conflict that will keep Hormuz closed. It won't be a full scale war, just pinpricks so that shipping companies don't dare to cross Hormuz.
Maybe China is able to pressure Iran in a way that the US can no longer pretend it has the right to intercept Iranian ships. But Russia is another factor:
The closure of Hormuz benefits both Russia and the US and the EU is too incompetent to negotiate Trump-style and threaten (it does not necessarily have to happen) to resume Russian imports. In an ideal world it would also block US vessels from entering the Baltic sea, because since the Greenland and now the overt Gulf energy threats the US is no longer an ally.
I think you’re giving Trump too much credit. If he starts firing shots again the war is illegal. The 60 day window is over. He has no appropriated money to fight the war, no public support, and no way out. There is no chess game here. It’s not even checkers. He is just trying to not have to admit he made a mistake - just with billions of dollars and lives on the line. Such sad.
> If he starts firing shots again the war is illegal. The 60 day window is over. He has no appropriated money to fight the war, no public support, and no way out.
There's at least two other belligerents in this war who get a say, as well as a large number of other countries which count as victims (everyone from Lebanon to UAE). No US decision can stop Israel and Iran from fighting.
He has operational control of the armed forces. This has never been disputed recently; he can order whatever shots he wants. The armed forces funding is in one whole pot which is guaranteed even against a "shutdown". He also has total legal immunity for official acts.
He will just say it's a different operation. That's what they've been doing and it's working. Republicans have no desire to stop Trump. Democrats don't care either cuz they want this power once they're elected.
This topic keeps coming up so I'll summarize some points I've alrady made [1].
1. The size of this market manipulation can be measured by the gap between spot or physical oil prices (which generally aren't public) and the future or paper price [2]. Historically these have tracked each other so close it was a non-issue. Now it's a huge issue;
2. Part of the gap can be attributed to the financial markets being in denial [3] and the market itself being in extreme backwardation. That simply means the spot price is significantly higher than the future price. It indiciates some sort of market dysfunction (or delusion). We saw this in the silver market last year.
All credit for this wanton insider trading goes back to the Supreme Court inventing presidential immunity out of thin air [4][5] and a Congress that has completely abdicated any kind of constitutional responsibility.
You might think there might be some kind of criminal prosecution or at least investigation by government agencies of the players involved. Well, sycophants and crackpots have put in charge of those agencies (eg Michael Selig of the CFTC [6]).
The article displays a laughably out of date view of futures markets, too
There are people and institutions, such as oil producers, who will need to sell oil at a future date. They want to lock in the price today on those future sales. There are also people and institutions, such as airlines, who have a future need for oil and would like to lock in the price today.
Airlines haven’t hedged fuel in a long time and generally run a policy now of just adjusting fares whenever fuel prices change.
Oil producers sell futures simply to ensure deliver of their oil at a certain date so that someone actually shows up to pick it up.
The rest of the market is speculation, and in particular short term movements have always been very speculative and also believed to be plagued by insider trading. Airlines and oil producers do not care about minute to minute changes.
Southwest was famously killing it during the oil shocks of the 1990s and 2000s because they had the foresight to buy futures when spot prices were low. See https://southwest50.com/our-stories/the-southwest-jet-fuel-h... - I used to joke that Southwest was a futures trader disguised as an airline.
It doesn’t work that way. Canceling flights has significant business-impacting downstream effects that go beyond mitigating the loss caused by a bad bet.
Metals (miners <> manufacturers) and agricultural (farmers <> food makers) futures are still non-speculative. There are industries that still buy materials from these markets, for delivery, as in they want to see the physical product in their hands. I was surprised to find that out as well
What if it's not insider trading and in fact the Trump inner circle has been compromised and foreign actors are trading on the news? You might think they wouldn't want to expose themselves just to make some money on oil futures, but at this point, they are bringing in billions.
Keep your salt shaker handy because he produces opinions at a prodigious rate.
That personality type- highly verbal but able to produce talk to fit anything from a 5 second sound bite up to 2 hours, superficially bright but not actually thoughtful, full of spicy opinions, prone to predictions that sound interesting but don’t come true - is all over TV and now podcasts. Alex Jones is the same type.
You’re literally doing what you’re railing against. In fact it’s worse, because it’s not even about the thing itself, but about the commentary on the thing.
It's more evidence if any was needed that the US is now definitively in a late imperial phase of decline - US elites have become corrupt. This is classic decline of empire stuff.
So no you can't stop it, but knowing that does at least let you make decisions with more clarity in your own life
I'm just glad I'm alive to witness it. Ww2 is what finally sank Britain's declining empireafter ww1, I'm hoping Iran and maybe a global war finally knocks them off that top spot and the east takes over
So if this sort of "insider trading" is bad, what does this mean for other sorts off strategies hedge funds do to get an edge, like flying helicopters to look at how full oil storage tanks are? Should that be banned too? The article basically argues that any sort of edge is bad because it disincentivizes others from participating.
edit: see my subsequent comment. I'm not saying corruption is good. The whole point of the article is that it's bad beyond just corruption, and that's the point I'm pushing back on.
This insider trading isn't hedge-funds working hard to get an edge. It's political insiders trading ahead of public statements. They are getting gains not by dint of being incredibly smart, nor from working very hard. Instead its from abusing their position in power. And by doing so in this manner, they are taking money away from the actual productive people trading in the futures market.
Besides, as Matt Levine often says. In the US, insider trading is a matter of miss-appropriating information when you have a duty of confidentiality. Its not about trading when you know more than someone else. Its about trading when you know something your not supposed to share.
>It's political insiders trading ahead of public statements. They are getting gains not by dint of being incredibly smart, nor from working very hard. Instead its from abusing their position in power.
The article specifically argues that it's extra bad beyond just corruption. That's the part I'm pushing back on.
>The stench of corruption is overwhelming. Yet aside from the raw corruption, these incidents also raise a larger question. The insiders ripped off the parties who sold futures to them at what turned out to be very unfavorable prices to the sellers. What broader damage does this kind of unchecked insider trading do?
The American people knew who they were electing. They knew it, and they elected him anyway. Whatever damage results from that collective decision is our cross to bear.
A market maker who doesn't know if their counterparty is a Trump insider looking to fleece them must ask for a bigger safety margin to cover the risk they are taking -- and not just from the insiders. Honest participants in the market get taxed in order to provide the insider payout.
This is extremely basic incenive / money-flow tracing and "setting aside corruption" is a premise that has the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up. It smells like someone looking to force the framing. Everyone before me in this conversation was right to be suspicious of your motives in asking it, and I am suspicious as well.
>A market maker who doesn't know if their counterparty is a Trump insider looking to fleece them must ask for a bigger safety margin to cover the risk they are taking -- and not just from the insiders. Honest participants in the market get taxed in order to provide the insider payout.
That's still corruption. Your argument about other participants being "taxed" applies for other sophisticated counterparties as well, eg. hedge funds with armies of analysts and can fly helicopters around to gather intel. Unless you want to say that's bad too, the only difference between the two is that the hedge fund isn't engaging in corruption.
If you assume the referee is actually playing the game then yes, the difference between a referee making a call to advantage their own bets to make the other team win and an opposing team making a play to make themselves win is one of those entities is engaging in corruption.
>Ah, so you were just trying to force the "set aside corruption" framing.
Again, if you read the TFA, the entire thesis is that the insider trading is extra bad beyond corruption. The corruption itself only gets a passing mention.
I'm not sure what world we live in where being able to rent a helicopter implies hard work and not large amounts of preexisting wealth (generally taken by many to indicate at least some abuse of power, somewhere along the way).
It's a world where renting a helicopter is hilariously cheap available to some average person.
Looking at my local tourist helicopter place, a private custom flight is $1k per ~15m. That seems like nothing if it allows you be make millions with the information.
Shorts don't cost much to open, just the borrow rate on the shares. As long as it goes straight down you can leverage quite a bit without getting called.
Of course, this is the fastest way to lose your shirt and everything you have ever worked for, if there is any uncertainty.
Yes, I'm sure Robinhood or Schwab will allow me to open a $2M short position when my portfolio is $[sufficiently small that I'm debating the costs of a couple of thousand for a helicopter charter].
Gee, what could go wrong using governmental info to provide personal gain? Surely they wouldn't be tempted to start causing situations to become reality for personal gain! (ala Dick Cheney and Halliburton.)
Politician are servants of the people, for the people. This involves sacrifice and following the law. (I realize this is a naive statement, but shouldn't we be jailing these law breakers?)
> So if this sort of "insider trading" is bad, what does this mean for other sorts off strategies hedge funds do to get an edge, like flying helicopters to look at how full oil storage tanks are?
This is allowed because you've gotten that extra information through your own methods that in theory anyone else can get access to. The problem here is they're using information that nobody else could possibly have access to, therefore its "insider" trading and it's been illegal for a long time.
If those hedge funds are doing something that stops the market from functioning then of course there should be intervention but it doesn't seem clear to me at all that hedge funds trying to get an edge (especially in a way that's replicable by other funds) has the same effect as rampant insider trading in regards to destroying the market.
>Wait, those big oil tanks don’t have lids? Doesn’t that mean rain would mix with the oil??
Modern tanks have floating lids. The lid is as much for keeping the volatiles in as keeping water out. Water gets into all sorts of places in oil refining anyway. It wouldn't really matter anyway since oil and water being famously good at mixing. You can just draw water off the bottom, filter it or boil it off depending on the situation and amount. Obviously they don't want more water (you're wasting money processing everything that you can't sell) but some isn't a big deal.
There are differences between the insider trading and your helicopter example. The theory is the better traders know the reality when making decisions, the better. When oil traders hide information about their reserves, they are working on creating a rift between the reality and the public knowledge. Helicopter is overcoming it. When Trump makes empty announcements that change prices in a purely speculative manner, but before doing this he buys futures, he is just creating instability on the market and he exploiting it. Instability is bad, the whole idea of futures is to deal with the risks stemming from the instability.
Instability is bad, but when the cause of it is market getting new information, it becomes ok: it is bad now, but it is good in the long term. But when the instability becomes a source of profits, when there are incentives and means to create the instability, then long term benefits go away.
Considering the very House, Senate, and connected buffoons with the presidency are all in on insider trading and corruption... Why shouldnt others?
Hell, being a congresscritter in charge of oversight of $industry allows you to cheat the public cause you know what's coming. How else do you see a senator making $174k/yr but net worth's of $100M? Its legal, only cause they carved their own exemptions and scam the public.
> The real issue is never whether the trading was unfair to the people on the other side; it’s whether the information was misappropriated from its rightful owners
In this case the rightful owners are the American public in whose employ the leakers are. They got this information from their position of trust, and sold that information, to the disadvantage of the people they work for.
This kind of "well eksuallyyyy" argument isn't very useful or good faith when a systemic harm is highlighted. It's just contrarian muddying of the conversation.
It's not, when the article is specifically arguing that the insider trading is bad beyond just corruption, and barely touches corruption. You don't get to tack on a weak claim on top of a strong claim, and then when the weak claim gets pushback fall back to the strong claim and say everything's fine because you're directionally correct, or claim the person pushing back is wrong because they're directionally incorrect.
You keep saying this, when it is counter to the actual text of the article.
> Yet aside from the raw corruption, these incidents also raise a larger question....What broader damage does this kind of unchecked insider trading do?
That is what the article is about. It's saying that this is corruption, and discussing what the effect of this corruption is. "Beyond just corruption" is wholly your invention. I don't even know what it would mean?
Corruption is the cause. The article discusses the resulting effect.
The numbers are big enough that I kind of suspect it's the various funds that are doing it. They've probably have some legal gray area intel they're leveraging like paying a guy who knows a guy overseas who knows a guy who's a l33t h4x0r (i.e. someone who got erroneously invited to a group chat).
The worst part is the sharp changes in the price being traded aren't achieved by magic but rather with guns & actual human suffering
Someone has taken the Rothschild motto too literally:
“Buy when there is blood in the streets, even if it is your own.” — Baron Nathan Rothschild
https://medium.com/@douglasp.schwartz/buy-when-theres-blood-...
Nazi ideas are making a comeback this century, full on with the obsession with that specific family
The only place I've heard that name come up recently is the very real and close association to Jeffrey Epstein
source?
That’s not what that quote means. It means even if your portfolio is down you should keep buying.
That's what they meant by "too literally."
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YXivtoSkuVQ
The war must continue in order to bring us to the status quo that was in place before we started the war.
I hope that everyone responsible for this is enjoying every cent of what they get to pay at the pumps.
> I hope that everyone responsible for this is enjoying every cent of what they get to pay at the pumps.
As if the people responsible actually feel the impact of their choices to that degree.
Maybe at least the people that put them in power (voters). But being honest, it wasn't just voters.
Nonvoters would win the Electoral College if that was a thing.
Nonvoters implicitly consent to the outcome ahead of time. Which means that they can carry part of the blame--if they didn't like it they could have voted against it.
Hot take: if <80% of eligible voters show up, nobody wins and the same politicians stay in office for another year, even if term limits would normally apply.
How about instead it immediately triggers another new election and the people who ran previously are not eligible to run ever again
Slightly less left field proposal: failure to pass a budget should immediately force fresh elections (both houses plus presidency), as it would in a Parliamentary system. None of this "shutdown" nonsense.
Arguably people who voted for Trump are somewhat responsible, and include a lot of car drivers.
(Not to imply that many Democrat politicians aren't also owned by AIPAC and big business.)
I didn’t vote for Trump but I don’t blame the voters. I don’t think many people foresaw him doing this on either side of the political aisle. Other stuff we disapprove of, yes. But not this.
I say that because he had famously resisted to enter extended conflict in his first term. Maybe he wanted to but now has the chance since he’s in his final years. (At least, I hope it’s his final years.) But I didn’t hear anyone predicting this before his second term.
It was pretty obvious he was wanting to enter a conflict with someone, and was mostly held back in his first term by the actual professionals in his cabinet at that time. But the guy wanted a military parade with tanks rolling through DC on his birthday, wanted to nuke a hurricane, and forcibly annex Greenland. It isn't really surprising that once he replaced the sane people with sycophants, he would start something.
Or, more specifically, by 2020 he was sending military boats to attack Iranian targets and trying to force Russia to respond.
He only stopped because of COVID.
If it were that obvious we would have specifically heard it it predicted. Maybe someone did but I didn’t hear it, and I listen to politics daily.
Expressing a desire to take Greenland but not actually doing so was a move out of his book Art of the Deal.
it was patently obvious. people were just blinded by xenophobia as the primary issue facing the nation and they bought it, peripheral consequences be damned
What exactly do you want people (who exactly?) to have predicted that they didn't?
The million dollar question is how america occupies Greenland.
As always Europe does nothing
America attacks Greenland? Europe liberating bases on their soil would be the obvious response
You make a good point. At the same time, when he broke his electoral promise to stop foreign interfefence and kidnapped Maduro, his voter base did not turn against him. That seems to have emboldened him to pursue more military actions abroad.
Now let's see how long until he invades Cuba, and how his voters will react.
God, they're going to love that - provided it's a swift victory, of course. They've wanted that since the Bay of Pigs.
I wonder what Cuba would look like now if Batista had never been overthrown. That's probably on par with how it would have worked if US meddling were more successful. I can't say I know it would be worse.
Difficult to separate "Cuba is bad because it is badly governed" from "Cuba is bad because it has been heavily sanctioned and no longer gets help from the Soviet Union", really. Too many different variables. Hard to imagine it being worse than Haiti or El Salvador, but also hard to imagine it having free elections (because that would immediately elect an anti-US socialist who would be overthrown again).
Unlike Venezuela and Iran, Cuba doesn't really fuel China, so I assume it's not such a priority.
I mean, in that case why rattle about Greenland?
Somebody, in a conversation of which there will be no record, told him it was a good idea, telling him it would be quick, he would be lauded as a hero, there would be vast mineral riches, etc. This person wanted to break up NATO, but this wasn't part of the sales pitch, I imagine.
Reportedly, Rare earth minerals.
America also has those; and it’s not like we’ve had a bad trading relationship with the EU until fairly recently.
Almost everyone's asking the same question regardless of what they think's going on inside Trump's head. The two most coherent answers I've seen are "to soothe his narcissistic injury from being told he can't" and "feels entitled to it because NATO", you will note neither of these was his stated reason, and all of this is still catastrophically poor judgment on his part.
At what point people will realize "his first term" isn't a good bar and its certainly not because "he resisted" rather he at least had some better advisors and GOP had some control over him.
This time around GOP has been flattened into his mouthpiece and the government is fully of sycophants. Its not that he's in his final years more like his yes-men are afraid of being booted out and replaced with another power hungry nincompoop sycophant.
If people fell for this "but this didn't happen in the first term" even then they are to blame for this mess, they voted for this person in the first place. Just like being ignorant doesn't let you escape from legal consequences, it should let people escape from outcome of their actions.
He's notoriously unpredictable. I would agree that it's more obvious now, but I think it was still quite obvious in his first term, especially after inciting a riot at the Capitol.
Given the rashness that he displayed prior to his second term, I don't see why it's at all surprising that he would start a war. To think otherwise just seems like wishful thinking.
Trump's statements on these issues have always been self contradictory.
On the one hand he says Russia would never have dared invade Ukraine if he was President, yet he was also against military support for Ukraine before the full scale invasion, and says that Ukraine's plight is basically their and Europe's problem.
He was adamantly against bombing Syria in response to Assad using chemical weapons while Obama was president, then when they used chemical weapons as soon as he became President he bombed them for it.
He's advocated for the USA not getting involved in military conflicts, while also advocating for massive increases in military spending and capability.
This has always been his approach, say one thing while very often actively doing the other. Promote domestic manufacturing, while putting massive tariffs on the inputs on which American manufacturing depends, many of which are only available in the required quantities abroad even for current production.
Trump voters have been scammed by a self-professed scammer that's been successfully prosecuted for scamming, and they know it. They were quite happy for him to betray, backstab, double-deal and scam whoever he liked on whatever issue he liked, as long as it was people they didn't like or care about.
"We didn't see it coming" is not very believable. Trump campaigned on a general theme of chaos and griefing, and he is delivering on exactly what he promised.
It was obvious that Trump is unstable and has extreme and volatile views on foreign policy. So yes, I think it is entirely fair to blame anyone that voted for Trump in the last election.
I absolutely blame the voters. Vote for a clown and you get a circus.
The man is a pathological liar and nothing he says can be trusted, although it's pretty reliable to consider every accusation is an admission.
Last term he had grown ups in the room to contain him -- this term he's surrounded himself by enablers and acts as if he is now god emperor for life.
He can absolutely counted on to do stupid, corrupt shit. We saw plenty of it when he had 4 years in office and was somewhat held in check by having hired some more or less 'normal' Republicans.
It was entirely predictable that he would fuck things up in some way. He's demented (although the press stopped caring about that sort of thing when Biden dropped out), deeply corrupt, narcissistic, and was never particularly intelligent to begin with.
Anyone with half a brain knows Trump is an actual idiotic person. So yes, we could foresee him doing this, because it was a dumb fucking plan and Trump is the dumbest person who has ever been president.
People voting for a convicted felon should definitely be held partially responsible for the looting of the country. Also, considering the various rape accusations, his constant lies and his obvious narcissism makes it absolutely insane to vote for him and expect any kind of predictable good to come from it.
There were plenty of warnings about electing Trump and people chose to ignore them.
they earned millions off it, how would they even feel fuel price ?
That will be hard to achieve unless we resuscitate the leadership that was responsible for murdering 30,000 protesters earlier this year.
Almost all the troops that committed those massacres are still there, and if anything even more ready and willing to do it all over again, and have a leadership ready to give the order.
And killing Iranians and destroying their assets helps how the Iranian opposition?
The Iranian opposition is against Iranians.
Every time this gets repeated without a shred of evidence I have to think of the "beheaded babies" thing. "Feel better about the crimes against humanity you see us doing and bragging about by reading this spam email from a Nigerian prince once again, this time with even more pomp and even less details, even less pretense of actually caring or being honest."
Odd thing to blame on a bunch of schoolgirls!
Can you formulate in a short paragraph, why you think US attacked Iran, exactly.
I thought it was a lot more than that, Gaza is not a small place
A lot of Trump supporters, including Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Dave Smith, voted for him because of his anti-war stance during campaigning. I’m not defending their poor judgement of an infamous con artist (I didn’t vote for Trump) but we should ask ourselves how democracy can function if candidates can just make things up during campaigns and do the complete opposite when they’re elected. We should also ask ourselves who really wanted this war and how they have so much leverage over our country to instigate it when 50-60% of Americans do not support it. We should ask how it’s possible that such unpopular wars always seem to have bipartisan support. We should also ask ourselves how Congress failed to stop this war which has been illegally executed without congressional approval. It’s all very curious if you think about it.
We can’t just keep finger pointing at the other party whenever things go wrong. There are systemic issues and outside influences destroying this country. Some people think this will all be fixed when democrats take over again in November but they’re wrong and the cycle will continue just with a more presentable veneer of decency.
> Tucker Carlson
I'd just like to remind everyone that this guy got fired from Fox News for being too extreme an idealogue.
> I’m not defending their poor judgement of an infamous con artist
At some point you have to hold adult Republicans accountable for their actions. They were warned repeatedly; they chose to ignore the warnings.
> ask how it’s possible that such unpopular wars always seem to have bipartisan support
Americans love war and guns! This is like, #1 national characteristic as observed by other nations. Especially because America always wins in the movies! The reason Americans are complaining about the Iran war and not the illegal Venezuelan invasion or whatever is because they are losing.
(who on earth is Dave Smith?)
> I'd just like to remind everyone that this guy got fired from Fox News for being too extreme an idealogue.
Do you have any evidence that this was the reason?
> ... because they are losing.
The pnly unforgiveable sin in USA politics.
> but we should ask ourselves how democracy can function if candidates can just make things up during campaigns and do the complete opposite when they’re elected.
Education. Actually teaching people how to think critically about what they see and hear needs to start as soon as they get a phone in their hand, if not sooner. That education in critical thinking needs to come from family, school, social clubs and religious institutions. I don't think that'll ever happen in America though. Our economy depends on people not thinking critically.
"lying is free" and it has no consequences for these people. whether it is WMDs or war or fiat money printing with trillions or killing millions. What you people call justice is, well it's obv. so no need to write about it. These facts dont change with two party or three party, it's cultural btw.
We all know how some cultures are violent and backwards to each other? some or like this, just different culture
> A lot of Trump supporters, including Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Dave Smith, voted for him because of his anti-war stance during campaigning.
That was just their nice-sounding excuse for voting for him. It's not like they are going to go out and say that they like him because of his jingoistic machismo authoritarian 'strong'-man bullshit.
They'll performatively grumble for a bit, but are all ready to vote for the guy a fourth time in 2028.
Criminal probe into this started last month.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-probes-suspicious...
As if anything in the executive branch of the US still works properly.
Isn't the FBI already raiding the homes of political opponents for intimidation?
The famed US constitution with all its 'checks and balances' they would never shut up about turned out to be papier mâché and completely trampled by the first person that tried.
If you are trading in the futures market and you don't have inside info or are not an actual supplier of the commodity, you are the sucker.
To be fair, you could also be a real world user of a commodity and productively use futures markets. For example, an airline or trucking company using them to hedge fuel prices.
Sure, and increasingly those people are being played for suckers. The article makes that point.
Less so than those buying it for spot? They need oil one way or another, whether from a future contract or the spot market (or downstream thereof).
That logic would also extend to individual stocks, wouldn’t it?
It kind of can, but trading futures is trading termed contracts, kind of like options, but a bit stranger (and you can buy options for futures contracts too!) For a retail trader, you definitely are not in a buy and hold/invest mindset. Often people use futures as a hedge or for locking in prices for physical delivery- it serves a very real world problem.
If you consider 'trading' to be short term buying and selling of stocks, then yeah. Holding stocks long term is nothing like trading commodities though.
I suppose if you're shorting or trading options generally, yes to some extent.
Isn't there a 50% chance you are betting on the "insider" side of it?
There's a <50% chance you'll make money off of it because it's zero-sum, and if insiders make money on average then other traders (i.e., you) have to lose money on average.
The issue is that the odds aren't actually 50/50 on you buying either side of the trade; one half will look like a better deal (and given public information, it is a better deal) so you'll buy that half. Then when the market resolves, it'll turn out that insiders knew some piece of information that made the other half of the trade a better choice.
The world will remember who you Americans chose to vote in.
And then we'll do nothing anyway because the wealthy and corrupt run every single country on the planet. Money talks.
And people are too easily preoccupied with trivial policy squabbles to care about how badly we've all been fucked by the last 50 years or so.
So, basically, over the last century or more or so, we've learned:
- our laws, the ones that supposedly keep society stable and safe, don't apply to particular groups of people
- we can catch them, and maybe, just maybe, we will hold someone accountable for those people, though often they just distract and trick everyone from holding them accountable
- the majority of people are getting stolen from, treated like slaves and tricked and abused, and they will tolerate this abuse because of <fear???>
Am I to accept this frame of reality in which the universe and the earth, and the leaders currently making decisions for me and holding influence over the worlds' military powers, are this hostile towards me?
I refuse. I think we have more power than we think. In America at least, we still have an amendment that has yet to be repealed (created for scenarios in which abusers hold leadership positions and refuse to be accountable): the 1st amendment and parading guns legally, safely, and responsibly is a powerful reminder of what accountability and dignity looks like.
edit: I advocate for parading guns peacefully with an intention and purpose: go with a group standing for rights, safety and dignity
The scary thing for me is that in the US, the President and by extension the DoJ has a lot of power to override any legal protections that exist in most countries. In the UK, the Prime Minister or the Home Office cannot ring up any of the enforcement agencies and tell them to drop a corruption case - the law is supposed to apply to everyone.
In the US, for some reason, if you are a danger to the President's friends, you can be fired/your department can just be shutdown executively and this isn't just about Trump, it is about a serious weakness in the systems of governance.
> In the UK, the Prime Minister or the Home Office cannot ring up any of the enforcement agencies and tell them to drop a corruption case - the law is supposed to apply to everyone.
I would not rely on that. The Attorney General can withdraw prosecutions, and is a government minister (although not technically in the Cabinet).
Parliament can do anything, it just usually doesn't. This includes retroactive legislation to decide that you did not win a lawsuit that you actually did win (Reilly and Wilson v Secretary of State, although that itself was eventually ruled unlawful). The infinite delay of Bloody Sunday prosecutions is probably the biggest example in UK discourse.
No country is safe from this if enough authoritarian-collaborator political appointments are made (such as happened to SCOTUS). It should really be viewed as a form of coup.
Yep; I think the above comment took the wrong lessons.
What actually happened in the US is that "common norms and expectations" were thrown out the window, so instead of the question being "What is traditionally done?" it became "What can legally be done?" And, as it turns out, when you're only constrained by the letter of the law the executive branch is insanely powerful.
UK politics, more than most younger countries, is particularly susceptible to this. Norms, traditionally, and commonly understood standards make up a scary amount of constraints on the powers of government. If anyone gained power that only feels limited by the letter of the law (i.e. throws out norms, traditions, and standards), the UK is in serious trouble and Parliament hasn't moved to address it.
Somewhat ironically (given how unpopular it is), the Lords may be the best back-stop the UK has. Particularly the 30%~ which do not originate from politics.
What if the whole point of the war was planned to generate trading opportunities? Every crazy tweet or announcement another cash out.
It's like every time you see a poorly run business and you think, how can they stay open? The answer is it's usually a laundering operation, a tax shelter, and who knows what else. The message to us poors is, nothing these people do is as it appears; there's always a bunch of stacked, leveraged advantages.
https://newrepublic.com/post/192244/trump-celebrates-destroy...
Heard of the documentary, "Everything is a Rich Man's trick"? It's quite eye opening, and makes this similar conclusion with evidence pointing to the Rich Men through history. Highly recommend a watch.
While I don't think trump and co are smart enough to plan big stuff like this, I think it is pretty obvious they are trying to benefit oil companies and I have no doubt oil companies were involved in the decision to bomb Iran to some degree.
What I mean is Trump and Co probably spoke to oil execs before making the Iran decision to ask if they would raise production. Then they lied and said yes, while knowing they would drag their feet as prices rose.
Trump is a stoog. The folks around him treat him like an idiot. There's no way they weren't involved here. They've been around his entire presidency.
>The Trump administration is making no real effort to crack down on whoever is trading using inside information, and these inside traders are operating with a complete sense of impunity, assured that they can get away with it.
Yeah that's because IT's HIM.
Jesus how much more proof do you people need that the Trumps themselves are looting the country.
So, what should we buy next? There can be bread for all of us :D
Welcome to the world of commodity trading. There is no SEC here, and this is business as usual. You can look at T&S to see this for yourself, but this is (like it or not) how this typically goes in commodity markets.
Commodity trading is managed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission CFTC and a criminal probe into this started last month.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-probes-suspicious...
Does the SEC even matter anymore with the current administration?
Insider trading laws are for the plebs. Tip off your cousin about an acquisition by a public company? Go to prison. Tip off your cronies about war? Business as usual.
"The U.S. Department of Justice said Wednesday that it had charged 30 people allegedly linked with a decade-long insider trading scheme involving high-profile law firms."
https://www.newsweek.com/premier-law-firms-spy-ring-11920914
Let me guess, these guys said something bad about Trump? Not that it means that they didn’t do it, just that they would not have gotten charged otherwise.
The list doesn't corroborate that. The international component seems important.
Honestly, insider trading laws should be removed since they manipulate markets. If you know things, make moves that are public, that would price things _more_ accurately.
Can you watch what happens on a market just before the press conference and do the same?
By the time you’ve reacted, it’s already too late.
This, as a generality. There are plenty of multi-billion-dollar Wall Street firms doing algorithmic trading. Your prospects for being smarter or faster than them are very poor.
You'd risk amplifying every fluctuation. It's often impossible to know what's a shift vs. what's noise until it's well under way (if not over).
I've heard of this working in other kinds of markets, where if you can identify the traders who consistently beat the market, and you can emulate them with precise timing, then you can beat the market too.
These were before news reports that came out with the scoop before any press conference. How would you know that some big news scoop is going to drop? You'd have to jump on every futures drop.
Eager to make bank off the back of civilisation, too? My IT colleagues continue to impress!
Civilization will be effected the same way anyway, why not make a buck of it? But you wouldn't be able to anyway because some quant's ml model would have already sucked every dollar out of the opportunity two milliseconds after the insider executed the trade
Psychopaths and sociopaths come from all types of backgrounds. One things for sure, they all tend to gravitate towards power and exploitation of people without remorse. C suite and founders are far from immune from this...
> far from immune from this...
Its a pre-requisite for the job
> C suite and founders
You missed "VC backed" in front of "founders". Most founders are good people.
> "The Trump administration is making no real effort to crack down on whoever is trading using inside information, and these inside traders are operating with a complete sense of impunity, assured that they can get away with it."
I think this sums it up.
If only the NYMEX somehow knew who ordered a trade
The inside trader made no real effort to crack down on themselves
Why would they turn off the tap for easy money?
Indeed, since 2016.
Well, the entire global monetary system is a scam, so this is nothing by comparison.
I'd like to see the base rate. Ie were there similar bets at similar times when Trump did not make an announcement
same, without context it is speculation. even with context, if the person creating the story controls the window, a window can be found which supports the story.
Is this an oligarchy or a kakistocracy?
The Venn Diagram isn't a circle, but you need a magnifying glass to tell it from one.
> Is this an oligarchy or a kakistocracy?
Yes. Also a klepotocracy
>paying what in retrospect will have been an excessive price
This can be said about any negative price movement. You still get the same amount of oil you agreed to regardless of if the price goes up or down afterwards.
It's a tax. I don't know if you specifically are one of the "taxation is theft" types, but it's absolutely wild how many of these are totally cool with the tax if it's funding insider trading payouts but not if it's paying for poor person healthcare or whatever.
In the absence of the insider trader selling you oil futures on the basis of his insider knowledge, what would you do?
You'd buy oil futures at broadly the same price from someone else (maybe a worse price! Because the presence of the insider selling is already driving the price down). So how exactly do you lose?
The only people who lose out are those whose limit orders don't get filled because the insider outbid them. The counterparty benefits from trading with the insider.
This is completely ignorant of market microstructure. For big swaths of the market, most parties interacting with the market do so by trading with a market maker who ensures that everyone's trades clear immediately in exchange for a fee that covers the risk of getting caught offsides. If you're big enough, it makes sense to take that risk in house, but the risk and its very real financial cost remains. In both cases, trades that increase the risk increase the fee. So no, corruption is a tax and everyone pays the tax even though the mechanics have fallen through the rather large cracks in your understanding.
If you think this tax is de minimis, great, glad to hear it, let's put a government tax of similar magnitude in there and resume the peanut butter rations to starving african kids that DOGE cut.
I'd say the entire market loses out on insider trading except for the two parties involved in the insider trade. The insider trades take away a part of the profit margin that other good faith future providers need to justify the risk they take on by offering the futures. This leads to future providers needing to raise the prices of futures to remain profitable.
Yes but it is being said about a manipulated movement, not any negative price movement.
I remember one take I had in 2024 after the election.
We're all familiar with some of the "defund the police" experiments that went too far in places like Portland and San Francisco and resulted in things like epidemics of casual shoplifting.
Well, what we just did is basically the white collar crime equivalent. We now have a wide open free for all for all forms of white collar crime. You can just insider trade, launder money, commit investment fraud, anything you want, the way you saw random people just walking into CVS drug stores years ago in SF and grabbing stuff and walking out.
But as usual when someone steals $100 worth of stuff on the street that's a national crisis and those people are scum, but when people steal billions that's fine cause they're wearing suits.
The whole retail theft epidemic (and the ensuing Union Pacific cargo theft ) was a corporate scam perpetrated by local news and law enforcement PR departments.
It wasn't at all. There's still a serious problem with shoplifting. Wal-mart would not be removing self-checkout if this were just a PR campaign.
At my local CVS, they just started locking up the bulk candy. You don't take the the sales hit and the expense of those locking cabinets unless you have a real shrinkage problem.
I heard it was organised crime loading up on stuff it could sell at informal locations.
> You can just insider trade, launder money, commit investment fraud, anything you want, the way you saw random people just walking into CVS drug stores years ago in SF and grabbing stuff and walking out.
Something I'd disagree with is... enforcement will not help against what causes people to turn out and steal in stores. Fix widespread poverty, get people out of homelessness, help people legitimately get off of drugs, help them get jobs even when they have convictions on the book, and then they won't need to become members of what is, essentially, small and hyperlocal crime networks.
In contrast, insider traders and billion-scale fraudsters - they do not have the need for survival pushing them to do crime. It is just pure unchecked greed that drives them.
It’s a myth that petty shoplifting is something done by poor people. The people doing it are usually part of organised crime (that is not “hyperlocal”) and generally are doing better than actual poor people.
The idea poor people are somehow criminal is a myth that needs to be eradicated.
> t’s a myth that petty shoplifting is something done by poor people. The people doing it are usually part of organised crime (that is not “hyperlocal”) and generally are doing better than actual poor people
There is not such a strong distinction. Organized crime groups often use poor people who have few alternatives as the pawns of their theft and fencing operations. People with other better options don't usually take up petty crime as a vocation.
> enforcement will not help against what causes people to turn out and steal in stores
Yes and no. Enforcement deters career criminals by increasing the cost of doing business. Improving society means fewer honest people have to turn to crime.
> insider traders and billion-scale fraudsters - they do not have the need for survival pushing them to do crime. It is just pure unchecked greed that drives them
Right, so career criminals. See above.
The corruption is a welcome byproduct of Trump's role as a Reality TV host who has to keep the conflict going and Hormuz closed.
The fact that he is talking peace again now is just because he cannot attack before the meeting with Xi in mid May.
The real issue is US energy dominance and control of the sea routes. Which Krugman does not mention, because the effort is bipartisan and he probably likes it. The US literally has a National Energy Dominance Council:
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook-rema...
It is designed to subjugate and increase EU and Asian dependencies on US exports. The EU committed to buying $750 billion in US energy exports. LNG terminals in Alaska are being approved to make Asia dependent on US energy.
This process is accelerated by the emerging forever conflict that will keep Hormuz closed. It won't be a full scale war, just pinpricks so that shipping companies don't dare to cross Hormuz.
Maybe China is able to pressure Iran in a way that the US can no longer pretend it has the right to intercept Iranian ships. But Russia is another factor:
The closure of Hormuz benefits both Russia and the US and the EU is too incompetent to negotiate Trump-style and threaten (it does not necessarily have to happen) to resume Russian imports. In an ideal world it would also block US vessels from entering the Baltic sea, because since the Greenland and now the overt Gulf energy threats the US is no longer an ally.
I think you’re giving Trump too much credit. If he starts firing shots again the war is illegal. The 60 day window is over. He has no appropriated money to fight the war, no public support, and no way out. There is no chess game here. It’s not even checkers. He is just trying to not have to admit he made a mistake - just with billions of dollars and lives on the line. Such sad.
> If he starts firing shots again the war is illegal. The 60 day window is over. He has no appropriated money to fight the war, no public support, and no way out.
There's at least two other belligerents in this war who get a say, as well as a large number of other countries which count as victims (everyone from Lebanon to UAE). No US decision can stop Israel and Iran from fighting.
He has operational control of the armed forces. This has never been disputed recently; he can order whatever shots he wants. The armed forces funding is in one whole pot which is guaranteed even against a "shutdown". He also has total legal immunity for official acts.
> If he starts firing shots again the war is illegal.
Whos gona prosecute america? Germans ar still waiting for somebody to go to jail for Dresden, and rightly so
He will just say it's a different operation. That's what they've been doing and it's working. Republicans have no desire to stop Trump. Democrats don't care either cuz they want this power once they're elected.
No mistakes, public largely forgot about Epstein files with the Iran war.
This topic keeps coming up so I'll summarize some points I've alrady made [1].
1. The size of this market manipulation can be measured by the gap between spot or physical oil prices (which generally aren't public) and the future or paper price [2]. Historically these have tracked each other so close it was a non-issue. Now it's a huge issue;
2. Part of the gap can be attributed to the financial markets being in denial [3] and the market itself being in extreme backwardation. That simply means the spot price is significantly higher than the future price. It indiciates some sort of market dysfunction (or delusion). We saw this in the silver market last year.
All credit for this wanton insider trading goes back to the Supreme Court inventing presidential immunity out of thin air [4][5] and a Congress that has completely abdicated any kind of constitutional responsibility.
You might think there might be some kind of criminal prosecution or at least investigation by government agencies of the players involved. Well, sycophants and crackpots have put in charge of those agencies (eg Michael Selig of the CFTC [6]).
And if that fails, just buy a pardon [7].
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47955623
[2]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-interpret-wartime-oil-pric...
[3]: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Is-Reality-Finall...
[4]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/supreme-co...
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States
[6]: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/12/michael-selig-predi...
[7]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/04/donald-trumps-...
If you think this is bad, just wait until you see Nancy Pelosi's portfolio.
What is your point there? That designated opponent made the same thing so this is acceptable or should be overlooked?
Whataboutism is not useful.
Stfu with this idiotic nonsense, thanks.
The warring parties greatly influence the price of oil futures but they are not the only influences, and there are other markets
The losses of market participants and the gains from insiders is difficult for me to take seriously as a problem in commodities market
I read all of the cases in the article
The article displays a laughably out of date view of futures markets, too
Airlines haven’t hedged fuel in a long time and generally run a policy now of just adjusting fares whenever fuel prices change.Oil producers sell futures simply to ensure deliver of their oil at a certain date so that someone actually shows up to pick it up.
The rest of the market is speculation, and in particular short term movements have always been very speculative and also believed to be plagued by insider trading. Airlines and oil producers do not care about minute to minute changes.
Airlines are absolutely still hedging fuel:
https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/airline-fuel-hedging-iran...
Southwest was famously killing it during the oil shocks of the 1990s and 2000s because they had the foresight to buy futures when spot prices were low. See https://southwest50.com/our-stories/the-southwest-jet-fuel-h... - I used to joke that Southwest was a futures trader disguised as an airline.
Unfortunately they ditched the strategy last year, claiming the costs were no longer worth the benefits: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-southwest-airlines-finally-... and http://www.wsj.com/articles/airlines-pull-back-on-hedging-fu...
I bet they’re regretting that decision now.
Airlines can't raise the prices of tickets sold months ago. There is still financial reason to hedge.
"All the airlines cancelling flights and adding extra charges amid jet fuel crisis"
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/jet-fue...
You have to read more than the clickbait headline
> While this figure might appear significant, it constitutes a mere 1.5 per cent reduction in total worldwide aviation capacity,
The trick is to sell tickets based on the cost at time of sale, and just cancel flights when it's convenient.
When airlines cancel flights, they usually put you on a similar itinerary, not just refund your money and hope you rebook at a higher price.
That said, I don't know a lot of people that book that far in advance, even when their travel plans are well settled.
It doesn’t work that way. Canceling flights has significant business-impacting downstream effects that go beyond mitigating the loss caused by a bad bet.
> The rest of the market is speculation
Metals (miners <> manufacturers) and agricultural (farmers <> food makers) futures are still non-speculative. There are industries that still buy materials from these markets, for delivery, as in they want to see the physical product in their hands. I was surprised to find that out as well
It's done by Truthsocial IT team, they are tracking when he opens the app.
Good for them, I guess.
What if it's not insider trading and in fact the Trump inner circle has been compromised and foreign actors are trading on the news? You might think they wouldn't want to expose themselves just to make some money on oil futures, but at this point, they are bringing in billions.
Apply Occam's Razor to your statement and try again.
brb, directing ai to build an app notifying me of oil futures volume spikes
By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's
- Paul Krugman, 1998
Excuse me if I take the Krug-o-tron's opinions with a grain of salt.
Keep your salt shaker handy because he produces opinions at a prodigious rate.
That personality type- highly verbal but able to produce talk to fit anything from a 5 second sound bite up to 2 hours, superficially bright but not actually thoughtful, full of spicy opinions, prone to predictions that sound interesting but don’t come true - is all over TV and now podcasts. Alex Jones is the same type.
Five years later, still mourning the dot-com bubble
https://www.southcoasttoday.com/story/news/nation-world/2005...
for a view of the internet's impact on the economy in 2005.
internet delivered massive value post 2005, but that is outside of the window K called out.
So everyone who was wrong once 20 years ago should have their well presented insight dismissed without further reasoning?
The insider trading is pretty obvious right now.
Yes, the article is right.
And every time an article like this is published, HN predictably goes into the same tirade.
What are you actually going to do about it? Nothing. So keep complaining and hoping things change without changing.
Maybe if you had some suggestions or wanted to lead by example?
> What are you actually going to do about it?
Discussing it is against this website's TOS and the law in most countries
You’re literally doing what you’re railing against. In fact it’s worse, because it’s not even about the thing itself, but about the commentary on the thing.
It's more evidence if any was needed that the US is now definitively in a late imperial phase of decline - US elites have become corrupt. This is classic decline of empire stuff.
So no you can't stop it, but knowing that does at least let you make decisions with more clarity in your own life
I'm just glad I'm alive to witness it. Ww2 is what finally sank Britain's declining empireafter ww1, I'm hoping Iran and maybe a global war finally knocks them off that top spot and the east takes over
The lesson from the British empire is it's a slow process, death by a thousand cuts.
"There is a great deal of ruin in a nation" and all that.
We'll be watching it for the rest of our lives, mostly in slow motion with occasional rapid periods of decline like the one at the moment
So if this sort of "insider trading" is bad, what does this mean for other sorts off strategies hedge funds do to get an edge, like flying helicopters to look at how full oil storage tanks are? Should that be banned too? The article basically argues that any sort of edge is bad because it disincentivizes others from participating.
edit: see my subsequent comment. I'm not saying corruption is good. The whole point of the article is that it's bad beyond just corruption, and that's the point I'm pushing back on.
This insider trading isn't hedge-funds working hard to get an edge. It's political insiders trading ahead of public statements. They are getting gains not by dint of being incredibly smart, nor from working very hard. Instead its from abusing their position in power. And by doing so in this manner, they are taking money away from the actual productive people trading in the futures market.
Besides, as Matt Levine often says. In the US, insider trading is a matter of miss-appropriating information when you have a duty of confidentiality. Its not about trading when you know more than someone else. Its about trading when you know something your not supposed to share.
>It's political insiders trading ahead of public statements. They are getting gains not by dint of being incredibly smart, nor from working very hard. Instead its from abusing their position in power.
The article specifically argues that it's extra bad beyond just corruption. That's the part I'm pushing back on.
>The stench of corruption is overwhelming. Yet aside from the raw corruption, these incidents also raise a larger question. The insiders ripped off the parties who sold futures to them at what turned out to be very unfavorable prices to the sellers. What broader damage does this kind of unchecked insider trading do?
> The article specifically argues that it's extra bad beyond just corruption. That's the part I'm pushing back on.
They are elected officials that are supposed to be working in our best interests, or at least the interest of their supporters.
Are they making decisions in our best interests or what makes their pocket book fatter? Poisons the whole system.
The American people knew who they were electing. They knew it, and they elected him anyway. Whatever damage results from that collective decision is our cross to bear.
Many of them will insist that they didn't know. Another group of "many" will insist that this is all somewhere between "not that bad" and "great".
The problem is that everyone else on earth has to suffer the consequences of those choices.
Again, that's bad, but still under "corruption", which is not what I, or the article is addressing.
A market maker who doesn't know if their counterparty is a Trump insider looking to fleece them must ask for a bigger safety margin to cover the risk they are taking -- and not just from the insiders. Honest participants in the market get taxed in order to provide the insider payout.
This is extremely basic incenive / money-flow tracing and "setting aside corruption" is a premise that has the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up. It smells like someone looking to force the framing. Everyone before me in this conversation was right to be suspicious of your motives in asking it, and I am suspicious as well.
>A market maker who doesn't know if their counterparty is a Trump insider looking to fleece them must ask for a bigger safety margin to cover the risk they are taking -- and not just from the insiders. Honest participants in the market get taxed in order to provide the insider payout.
That's still corruption. Your argument about other participants being "taxed" applies for other sophisticated counterparties as well, eg. hedge funds with armies of analysts and can fly helicopters around to gather intel. Unless you want to say that's bad too, the only difference between the two is that the hedge fund isn't engaging in corruption.
If you assume the referee is actually playing the game then yes, the difference between a referee making a call to advantage their own bets to make the other team win and an opposing team making a play to make themselves win is one of those entities is engaging in corruption.
Ah, so you were just trying to force the "set aside corruption" framing.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
>Ah, so you were just trying to force the "set aside corruption" framing.
Again, if you read the TFA, the entire thesis is that the insider trading is extra bad beyond corruption. The corruption itself only gets a passing mention.
Nope. TFA does not adopt the extremely narrow focus you are trying to force. Nice try.
The pacing of strategic military decisions being modulated to allow leading the futures market would be the very definition of "blood money".
I'm not sure what world we live in where being able to rent a helicopter implies hard work and not large amounts of preexisting wealth (generally taken by many to indicate at least some abuse of power, somewhere along the way).
Businesses require investment and a helicopter charter is probably less than a year of office space.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
Okay so what are you trying to say with this quote? Are you arguing that businesses don't require investment and risk?
It's a world where renting a helicopter is hilariously cheap available to some average person.
Looking at my local tourist helicopter place, a private custom flight is $1k per ~15m. That seems like nothing if it allows you be make millions with the information.
You can’t make millions from shorts unless you’ve already got millions to risk.
Shorts don't cost much to open, just the borrow rate on the shares. As long as it goes straight down you can leverage quite a bit without getting called.
Of course, this is the fastest way to lose your shirt and everything you have ever worked for, if there is any uncertainty.
Yes, I'm sure Robinhood or Schwab will allow me to open a $2M short position when my portfolio is $[sufficiently small that I'm debating the costs of a couple of thousand for a helicopter charter].
Gee, what could go wrong using governmental info to provide personal gain? Surely they wouldn't be tempted to start causing situations to become reality for personal gain! (ala Dick Cheney and Halliburton.)
Politician are servants of the people, for the people. This involves sacrifice and following the law. (I realize this is a naive statement, but shouldn't we be jailing these law breakers?)
> So if this sort of "insider trading" is bad, what does this mean for other sorts off strategies hedge funds do to get an edge, like flying helicopters to look at how full oil storage tanks are?
This is allowed because you've gotten that extra information through your own methods that in theory anyone else can get access to. The problem here is they're using information that nobody else could possibly have access to, therefore its "insider" trading and it's been illegal for a long time.
If the market wants to incentivize flying a helicopter to bring it information about the real world, that's somewhere between ok and good.
If the market wants to incentivize pumping and dumping the American economy by releasing a stream of fake news from the US President, that's bad.
We should tilt the arbitrary rules away from the bad things and towards the good things.
If those hedge funds are doing something that stops the market from functioning then of course there should be intervention but it doesn't seem clear to me at all that hedge funds trying to get an edge (especially in a way that's replicable by other funds) has the same effect as rampant insider trading in regards to destroying the market.
> like flying helicopters to look at how full oil storage tanks are
Unless the helicopter is dropping a bomb on a school on the way there (or back) I am not sure that the comparison is fair.
HN will never stop surprising me with it's takes on how it's okay to make money at anyone else's expense regardless of laws, ethics or harm done
It’s really only a few people who believe this, and they’re always replied to by people vehemently disagreeing with them.
Wait, those big oil tanks don’t have lids? Doesn’t that mean rain would mix with the oil??
AFAIK the lids "float" on top of the oil, probably to prevent vapors from building up if the tank is half full.
>Wait, those big oil tanks don’t have lids? Doesn’t that mean rain would mix with the oil??
Modern tanks have floating lids. The lid is as much for keeping the volatiles in as keeping water out. Water gets into all sorts of places in oil refining anyway. It wouldn't really matter anyway since oil and water being famously good at mixing. You can just draw water off the bottom, filter it or boil it off depending on the situation and amount. Obviously they don't want more water (you're wasting money processing everything that you can't sell) but some isn't a big deal.
There are differences between the insider trading and your helicopter example. The theory is the better traders know the reality when making decisions, the better. When oil traders hide information about their reserves, they are working on creating a rift between the reality and the public knowledge. Helicopter is overcoming it. When Trump makes empty announcements that change prices in a purely speculative manner, but before doing this he buys futures, he is just creating instability on the market and he exploiting it. Instability is bad, the whole idea of futures is to deal with the risks stemming from the instability.
Instability is bad, but when the cause of it is market getting new information, it becomes ok: it is bad now, but it is good in the long term. But when the instability becomes a source of profits, when there are incentives and means to create the instability, then long term benefits go away.
Considering the very House, Senate, and connected buffoons with the presidency are all in on insider trading and corruption... Why shouldnt others?
Hell, being a congresscritter in charge of oversight of $industry allows you to cheat the public cause you know what's coming. How else do you see a senator making $174k/yr but net worth's of $100M? Its legal, only cause they carved their own exemptions and scam the public.
I think Matt Levine’s take on this is best, in that the problem here is _theft_: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-13/you-ha...
> The real issue is never whether the trading was unfair to the people on the other side; it’s whether the information was misappropriated from its rightful owners
In this case the rightful owners are the American public in whose employ the leakers are. They got this information from their position of trust, and sold that information, to the disadvantage of the people they work for.
This kind of "well eksuallyyyy" argument isn't very useful or good faith when a systemic harm is highlighted. It's just contrarian muddying of the conversation.
>This kind of "well eksuallyyyy" argument
It's not, when the article is specifically arguing that the insider trading is bad beyond just corruption, and barely touches corruption. You don't get to tack on a weak claim on top of a strong claim, and then when the weak claim gets pushback fall back to the strong claim and say everything's fine because you're directionally correct, or claim the person pushing back is wrong because they're directionally incorrect.
You keep saying this, when it is counter to the actual text of the article.
> Yet aside from the raw corruption, these incidents also raise a larger question....What broader damage does this kind of unchecked insider trading do?
That is what the article is about. It's saying that this is corruption, and discussing what the effect of this corruption is. "Beyond just corruption" is wholly your invention. I don't even know what it would mean?
Corruption is the cause. The article discusses the resulting effect.
The numbers are big enough that I kind of suspect it's the various funds that are doing it. They've probably have some legal gray area intel they're leveraging like paying a guy who knows a guy overseas who knows a guy who's a l33t h4x0r (i.e. someone who got erroneously invited to a group chat).