There certainly is a fair bit of partisan hype flying around, as there always is when issues with political manipulation potential emerge.
I do think some people are being a bit naive about all this, though. I mean, really. Take the political personalities out of this for a moment and forget we're talking about the President. Just imagine it's any old corporate figure. You hear about a guy with a major block of stock in a company that's losing big bucks. The guy is a member of the audit committee, and privy to most of the details. The guy sells his wad just before a major loss is announced. The deal is superficially investigated and quickly cleared by an agency where close associates of the person involved and his family hold prominent roles.
You're a cynic, as we all are. How could we not be? Take the personalities out of it, look at the story, and what do you conclude?
I think he got away with a shady deal. That said, I don't really care. That kind of deal was pretty common at the time, and I suspect that you wouldn't have to dig very far in that community to unearth a whole lot of similar dodges.
As an aside, I recall once discussing US insider trading rules with a very wealthy gentleman from Hong Kong, of Chinese descent. He was completely baffled by the whole idea. I remember him saying that only a fool would trade without inside information.
The only point is that it is such and obvious and natural thing to do, and so hard to prove other than circumstantially (assuming that inside information is communicated in private conversations) that it's practically inevitable. People don't sit down and type "better sell, dude, the shit's hittin' the fan" on company memo paper and put a copy in the file. They mention it over drinks at the club, and no records are kept. There is not going to be any evidence other than timing, and I'd bet that if you looked around you'd find a suspicious lot of cases where somebody just happened to decide to go liquid at just the right time.
The greatest discomfort I find in the whole story is not from the probability that rules were bent or broken. It's from being repeatedly reminded of just how undistinguished GWB2's business career really was. I used to be fond of pointing out that Bush, like Gore, would never have been a candidate for any public office if his father hadn't been politically prominent. I'm starting to think that he might have been in the poorhouse if not for the same set of connections. |
