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Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

paulkrugman.substack.com

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Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#91

Post by selectodude »

leonidasrup wrote: post #57
selectodude wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, just come out and say you’re okay with them doing what they’re doing. Stop making arguments that are just verifiably untrue. > Amends the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to declare that such Members and employees owe a duty arising from a relationship of trust and confidence to Congress, the U.S. government, and U.S. citizens with respect to material, nonpublic information derived from their positions as Member…

"Members of Congress outperformed the S&P 500—sometimes by huge amounts" https://fortune.com/2024/01/03/members-of-congress-profit-fr... "Congressional Stock Trading: The Law, the Conflicts, and the Push for a Ban" https://govfacts.org/accountability-ethics/ethics-conflicts-... "The 2 ETFs That Track Congressional Stock Trades" https://www.morningstar.com/funds/2-etfs-that-track-congress... The insider trading on oil…

I’m happy to report I am able to hold both violations of the law and ethics rules in similar contempt.

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#92

Post by gizajob »

Lendal wrote: post #79
not_the_fda wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The problem is that everyone else on earth has to suffer the consequences of those choices.

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#93

Post by trollbridge »

mschuster91 wrote: post #77
api wrote: post #72

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, laun…

> 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 dru…

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.

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#95

Post by 5o3lad »

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.

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#96

Post by trollbridge »

arborescence wrote: post #49
gruez wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and fiduciary duty not to trade and not to disclose information. The people working in the US government have that obligation No they don't. They might have duties not to leak classified information, but not fiduciary duty.

They do not have a fiduciary duty that is enforceable in a court of law or equity. But the trusteeship model of representative government is basically how we've conceived of the duties of elected officials in liberal democratic republics since John Locke. As a normative matter, we feel that a public official who benefits their private interests at the expense of the public trust has violated their duties to the publi…

We’ve also decided the proper way to deal with this elections due to the obvious “who will guard the guards themselves?” problems of trying to enforce this against members of Congress or the President.

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#97

Post by hilariously »

gruez wrote: post #55
smallmancontrov wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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,…

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.

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#98

Post by smallmancontrov »

charcircuit wrote: post #3

>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.

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#99

Post by sailfast »

5o3lad wrote: post #95

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 literall…

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.

Re: Grand Theft Oil Futures: Insider traders keep making a killing at our expense

#100

Post by JackFr »

selectodude wrote: post #56
gruez wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Look, just come out and say you’re okay with them doing what they’re doing Don't put words in my mouth. Moreover I'm not sure how you can come to the conclusion that I'm "re okay with them doing what they’re doing", when I specifically acknowledged they have a duty not to leak classified intel. >Members and employees owe a duty arising from a relationship of trust and confidence to Congress, the U.S. government, and…

I’m not entirely sure if you understand what fiduciary duty actually means if you read federal ethics laws and don’t make the connection. Just because you can’t control+f “fiduciary duty” doesn’t mean the concept isn’t identical. Hell, there’s literally a law that bans insider trading futures on unknown information. Not “kind of like it”, literally named verbatim. And I’m not putting words in your mouth, I’m just cal…

You're simply not using the word 'fiduciary' correctly. You seem to have expanded it to mean any sort of legal or ethical obligation with respect to markets, and that's not what it means.
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