Posted on 01/23/2004 12:33:04 PM PST by presidio9
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:50:55 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, we are here today in the Court of Public Opinion to hear of heinous crimes committed by Martha Stewart, the Dictator of Domesticity. I ask you to set aside any old-fashioned prejudices you may have in favor of self-improvement, and forget any qualms you have about blaming a complete stranger for your own feelings of inferiority.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
What are they picking a jury for?
And please spare me the "She isn't being charged with INSIDER TRADING" line. Who cares? Certainly I didn't invoke those magic words. She IS going to trial and then the evidence will be presented and a jury will decide.
That's nonsense. Someone bought the stock she sold, possibly based on non public information. Yes, if insider trading were proved, the purchaser has recourse.
And please spare me the "She isn't being charged with INSIDER TRADING" line. Who cares? Certainly I didn't invoke those magic words. She IS going to trial and then the evidence will be presented and a jury will decide.
I was responding to your earlier response to someone's remark that she there is not enough evidence. Let me make this simple for you: You can not charge someone of share manipulation for claiming they are innocent if you are unable to prove they are guilty in the first place. The observation that there is not enough evidence here is entirely a valid one.
Let me make it simple for you: I'd like to hear the prosecution's case. That is all I said. No need to get in a dither and read more into people's posts and comments than is there. But you sure are protective of your Martha. Me? I'm neutral and waiting to see what they've got. And they have enough to proceed to trial no matter how many times you say they shouldn't be proceeding. They are.
It's not that simple. Lying to an FBI agent or the SEC is a crime, and within the financial it's taken quite seriously, a career ender. Even invoking your 5th amendment right could be near fatal to your employment. For a corporate officer I'm surprised she didn't plead this out, but I'm sure that would have been the end of her serving as an officer or on the board of any public corporation.
Harsh, maybe, though I don't think so, but I don't see it changing.
THIS IS NO WITCH HUNT!
Is it a " witch hunt " anaginst those involved in the Enron and other scandals. or is it only a " witch hunt ", when a wopman is the perp ?
As I mentioned earlier, that person was looking to buy Imclone stock at that particular time, anyway. If Martha hadn't been selling her stock, the buyer would have just bought it from somebody else who was trying to sell it at the time. Whether there had been insider trading or not, the person who bought the Imclone stock would have bought it anyway.
Yes, if insider trading were proved, the purchaser has recourse.
Even if they do, there's no reason for them to get recourse. They incurred no damages.
Yes, Martha wsas a broker and one for a BOILER ROOM outfit, long ago, but she was a MEDMBER OF THE NYSE BOARD, when she LIED about have a standing order, to sell ImClone at 60, with her broker, which she DID NOT and THAT is a fact. :-)
Harsh, maybe, though I don't think so, but I don't see it changing.
That's all well and good, but since Stewart is not employed by the securities industry, it is 100% irrelevant. On top of that, the lying is not the crime she is facing jail for. She is facing jail for the percieved share manipulation that occured when she professed her innocence.
Doesn't matter. IF (big if) Martha's trade was illegal, the trade gets busted. She gets her stock back, and a lot of legal aggrivation, the "lucky" buyer gets his money back.
Markets are to be as transparent as possible. It doesn't matter, but the buyer may well not have made his purchase given the knowledge Martha had. Actually, Waskal (the Imclone guy, right name?) is a much better example, since her knowledge is unclear.
Meanwhile, owners of stock in Martha Stewart Omnimedia got crushed by these trumped-up charges and the SEC has set a precedent that the law is whatever they say it is. I sure hope you find this trial entertaining. Oh, and I hope you never have your own company either. Because one day you could find this happening to you.
Perhaps I am confused, but I thought that the criminal charge that she might go to jail for is obstruction, and that the SEC civil case is the securities fraud.
Of course you couldn't get " her " recipes to work,because they're dreadful, NOT , for the most part HER recipes, but thosed she's gotten from others, never tested, and/or mucked over recipes frolm Julia Childs ( and others ) that she changed, here and there, and called her own!
I used to read her recipes, insytead of jokes. The one she had for YORKSHIRE PUDDING, would make a glop of goo And noithing more. OTOH, MY recipe for YP is THE best, this side of the pond. :-)
Martha is a fraud, a phoney, and a backstabbing itch on wheels. She's a liar, a user, and has always acted as though she's better than everyone else, when she isn't at all.
Let's say I dont. Enlighten me. What specific crime is she charged with? What are the circumstances? Does the SEC even have such codified guidelines? Is Stewart's Series 7 registration current? Has it been current in the past 20 years?
Fraud on the market is really the only basis for insider trading laws. I don't buy it- the only way the buyer of this stock could have been protected would have been if he knew all of the facts as to what was going on with Imclone at all times, which is impossible. Like I said, would this buyer have been any better off if Martha hadn't sold her shares?
Insider trading laws were created in response to a scam whereby a CEO of a corporation knew that his company's stock was going to go up, so he actively called shareholders and told them the stock was about to go down and that the company felt bad about it, so they wanted to buy their shares. The funny thing is, this type of behavior easily falls under fraud laws and could have been prosecuted.
The only real basis for insider trading laws is that people don't like company insiders to use their positions to make money.
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