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Today, we are seeing a resurgence of the insider trading of the 1980s. The United States is again experiencing "merger mania." By mid-August of this year, takeovers and acquisitions orchestrated by Wall Street already totaled $1.2 trillion dollars, compared to $920 billion in all of last year.6
The American notion that insider trading is wrong was well-established long before the passage of the federal securities laws. In 1909, the United States Supreme Court held that a director of a corporation who knew that the value of the stock of his company was about to skyrocket committed fraud when he bought company stock from an outsider without disclosing what he knew.7 But this condemnation is not universal, even in the United States.
Those who oppose prohibiting insider trading advance many arguments, most of which fall on their own weight.
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