Stitch,
Story that might interest you, and others: last weekend I had a talk with the father of a friend, a very intelligent, polite, and wealthy gentleman of Chinese extraction. We talked about the crisis, and transparency, and the way markets are managed. An interesting point arrived when we talked of the rectitude of trading based on inside information. He simply could not imagine the possibility of trading without inside information. To him, the entire art of business is acquiring and acting on inside information, and the notion of trying to regulate it made no sense at all to him. Didn't really feel I had the stature to refute, given that my entire net worth is probably less than the value of one of the paintings on his wall, but I had to wonder where it would have led if we'd pursued it. Mutual incomprehension, probably.
Steve |
