Cramer- "Wasksal's Crime Just a Symptom of Our Apathy&q
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Cramer- "Wasksal's Crime Just a Symptom of Our Apathy&q
Aqui fica mais um interessante artigo do Cramer sobre o "inside trading", depois de ontem ter sido divulgada a notícia de que o CEO da Imclone tinha comprado "puts" da sua própria empresa antes da saída de uma notícia que se sabia seria desastrosa para a empresa.
Ulisses
"Wasksal's Crime Just a Symptom of Our Apathy"
By James J. Cramer
03/12/2003 08:48 AM EST
"Sam Waksal may be our industry's Pete Rose. Worse -- he bet against his own team. The revelation that Waksal bought puts on ImClone when he was denied the chance to sell stock after he learned that his drug would be rejected just makes me sick to my stomach. This guy was the CEO of a major company, for heaven's sake. He had negotiated a big deal with a real company, Bristol-Myers . How could he have shown such reckless disregard for the insider-trading laws?
Somehow, I have to believe that he could do that because we stopped being vigilant about white-collar crime in this country. We simply stopped caring. We decided that nobody gets caught and if they get caught it doesn't matter so what's the problem, you give up the gains and you walk away.
To put it another way, Sam Waksal became a one-man walking Securities and Exchange Commission violation, because Al Dunlap, after ripping out the eyes of his shareholders, was still yachting in Florida. Waksal could commit the most heinous financial crime that the boardroom offers because Tyco had managed to buffalo the SEC into giving it a clean bill of health by trading on the reputation of Mark Belnick, a former Paul Weiss partner, even though they were thick as thieves at Tyco. Maybe Waksal decided, what the heck, make a quick buck, because he had read about all of the unprosecuted scams that Herb Greenberg had dug up over the last few years. Or maybe because Mark Rich, a serial financial scamster, got pardoned because his ex-wife gave a lot of money to Clinton. Or maybe Waksal felt that it was OK to buy puts on his own garbage because we decided that white-collar "crime" was like a traffic violation; you paid your ticket and maybe you got some points -- as if all that happened was that your auto insurance went up. Whatever.
How did we let things get so out of control that Waksal even thought he could get away with buying puts? And what broker wouldn't call all of his clients with the news if the CEO of a company was buying puts, telling them they better get the heck out of the stock? What broker worth his salt wouldn't do that? If someone is going to go to the outrageous length of buying puts, don't you have to tell your people to get the heck out of the stock? Oh man, this stuff is unbelievable to me.
For years I have argued that stocks aren't a mug's game, that there simply aren't enough crooks out there to make me feel that stocks are rigged. But when I read this story, I realized what a bunch of chumps we all had become. If a major CEO could buy puts on his own stock through a major firm, what wouldn't fly?
As far as I am concerned, we can't put guys like this away long enough. If we don't, you know what? Milton Friedman is right. Legalize everything. Have no rules.
Because that's what we had in this country when Waksal put that order in. No rules that anyone paid any attention to.
Except us chumps, that is. "
(in www.realmoney.com)
Ulisses
"Wasksal's Crime Just a Symptom of Our Apathy"
By James J. Cramer
03/12/2003 08:48 AM EST
"Sam Waksal may be our industry's Pete Rose. Worse -- he bet against his own team. The revelation that Waksal bought puts on ImClone when he was denied the chance to sell stock after he learned that his drug would be rejected just makes me sick to my stomach. This guy was the CEO of a major company, for heaven's sake. He had negotiated a big deal with a real company, Bristol-Myers . How could he have shown such reckless disregard for the insider-trading laws?
Somehow, I have to believe that he could do that because we stopped being vigilant about white-collar crime in this country. We simply stopped caring. We decided that nobody gets caught and if they get caught it doesn't matter so what's the problem, you give up the gains and you walk away.
To put it another way, Sam Waksal became a one-man walking Securities and Exchange Commission violation, because Al Dunlap, after ripping out the eyes of his shareholders, was still yachting in Florida. Waksal could commit the most heinous financial crime that the boardroom offers because Tyco had managed to buffalo the SEC into giving it a clean bill of health by trading on the reputation of Mark Belnick, a former Paul Weiss partner, even though they were thick as thieves at Tyco. Maybe Waksal decided, what the heck, make a quick buck, because he had read about all of the unprosecuted scams that Herb Greenberg had dug up over the last few years. Or maybe because Mark Rich, a serial financial scamster, got pardoned because his ex-wife gave a lot of money to Clinton. Or maybe Waksal felt that it was OK to buy puts on his own garbage because we decided that white-collar "crime" was like a traffic violation; you paid your ticket and maybe you got some points -- as if all that happened was that your auto insurance went up. Whatever.
How did we let things get so out of control that Waksal even thought he could get away with buying puts? And what broker wouldn't call all of his clients with the news if the CEO of a company was buying puts, telling them they better get the heck out of the stock? What broker worth his salt wouldn't do that? If someone is going to go to the outrageous length of buying puts, don't you have to tell your people to get the heck out of the stock? Oh man, this stuff is unbelievable to me.
For years I have argued that stocks aren't a mug's game, that there simply aren't enough crooks out there to make me feel that stocks are rigged. But when I read this story, I realized what a bunch of chumps we all had become. If a major CEO could buy puts on his own stock through a major firm, what wouldn't fly?
As far as I am concerned, we can't put guys like this away long enough. If we don't, you know what? Milton Friedman is right. Legalize everything. Have no rules.
Because that's what we had in this country when Waksal put that order in. No rules that anyone paid any attention to.
Except us chumps, that is. "
(in www.realmoney.com)
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