Martha Stewart Shares Drop 21% amid Controversy Over Stock Sale

Investors pounded Martha Stewart's namesake company Monday amid growing controversy surrounding her sale last year of ImClone Systems stock.

Now, the question of what Ms. Stewart knew, and when she knew it, has cast a new spotlight on the murky rules involving the use of nonpublic information by Wall Street brokers and their clients.

This is a Leona Helmsly sort of issue IMHO as Mean Martha has made some money and a lot of enemies thus she's gonna fall for that reason alone........

That's an astute observation. Prosecution based on whipping up inequality emotions in the little guys. Sure, the prosecution will make it all appear as just a matter of following the law. Most people wouldn't know bad law if it was staring them in the face. Why? Because they default on critical thinking and let an external authority do it for them -- let incompetents guide them. Propaganda on a platter.

Bill Clinton, when he was President sold inside secrets to the Chinese government. Now there's a real crime.
"The government picks the citizens' pockets taking half their money yet may of them think the government is looking out for their best interest and Martha Stewart's their 'enemy'." -- Zon

Politicians and bureaucrats are notoriously incompetent when it comes to solving real problems yet champions at creating problems where they need not exist.

Politicians and bureaucrats create and implement roughly 3,000 new laws and regulations each year. That number increases on average from one year to the next. Each year they tell us that the new laws are "must-have laws" that people and society can't prosper without. They do that to keep people from running society headlong into destruction. To that end lawyers are their greatest champions.

Yet how is it that citizens and the society they make up has managed to not only survive but increase prosperity when they didn't have this year's 3,000 new laws last year or for decades before. Likewise, how did citizens increase prosperity for decades prior to last year's 3,000 new must-have laws? And they do that despite a mountain of laws that they've already saddled with. Thirty new laws a year is probably overkill. But 3,000 is insane.

During Clintons eight years in the White House alone, there were 25,000 new laws and regulations created. How many of those laws did you break? With that many laws piled on top of the ones that already existed virtually every citizen is a criminal.

However, if in a day it was physically possible to apprehended even one quarter of those lawbreakers society would come to a screeching halt. Yet with all these supposed criminals on the lose prosperity continues to increase.

Seems obvious that lobbyists and special interest groups seeking to buy access to government power in order to gain unfair competitive advantages would be non existent if politicians weren't putting government power up for sale in the first place. They sell the "little guys" snake oil while they sell access to government power to their cronies.

Politicians and bureaucrats write and implement thousands of laws each year to justify their unearned paychecks and to usurp power that rightfully belongs to the citizens.

It seems obvious to this writer that politicians and bureaucrats think the citizens are as stupid as themselves and can't readily comprehend the bigger picture when given even a small amount of full-context facts presented honestly.

Government intervention into peaceful, private activity -- free association wherein any or all parties are free to walk away -- will make things worse rather than better.

Parasitical Elite vs. Prosperity Creators

If civilization had to chose between business/science and government/bureaucracy, eliminating the other, which is the better choice?

The first thing civilization must have is business/science. It's what the family needs so that its members can live creative, productive, happy lives. Business/science can survive, even thrive without government/bureaucracy.
Government/bureaucracy cannot survive without business/science. In general, business/science and family is the host and government/bureaucracy is a parasite.
Aside from that, keep valid government services that protect individual rights and private property rights -- military defense, FBI, CIA, police and courts. With the rest of government striped away those few valid services would be several fold more efficient and effective than they are today.

Underwriters Laboratory is a private sector business that has to compete in a capitalist market. Underwriters laboratory is a good example of success where government fails.

Any government agency that is a value to the people and society could better serve the people by being in the private sector where competition demands maximum performance.

Wake up! They are the parasites. We are the host. We don't need them. They need us.

A little biographical info on Martha's broker:

Peter Bacanovic was following a dream like any red-blooded all-American boy. About ten years ago he got himself into the brokerage business, the investment or money management business. By then he was an up and coming single man on the New York social scene. Dwelling in the corridors and drawing rooms of, among others, dowagers and debutantes, philanthropists and tycoons.

... His business had got very good. Like attracts like. More and more high profile and very rich clients saw him as the man Who Knows. He also made a good income as a result. He was sought after and popular – soothing if not always intoxicating ingredients for one’s spirits. And he was also conferred with authority. At least at Merrill Lynch and their clientele.

Rich people give their money to people they think can increase its number for them, and for no other reason. Often lacking the shrewdness themselves, they are easily attracted to investment people whose clients are also rich and/or well-known. It makes sense.

I don’t know how Peter Bacanovic and Martha Stewart came to know each other, although it may have been through Sam Waksal whom Bacanovic had worked for in the early 90s. It could also have been the other way around in this world of complex cross-connections, and one or two degrees of separation.

Now, because of that association, he’s on the hotseat. How he got there still befuddles friends and supporters who see him as innocent, and if anything, ignorant of wrongdoing. The idea that he would flaunt the law remains inconceivable. It’s been said that he had a number of clients in the ImClone stock besides Ms. Stewart and the Waksal family. It’s also been said that he was always very conscientious about protecting his clients assets.
full story.

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