Re:Former Equifax Executive Charged with Insider Trading
by candiodari on Friday March 30, 2018 @07:52AM
(#16715344)
You forgot the addendum:
No member of congress, the administration or closely related shall ever be punished for anything. For instance, for taking legal action to protect the very company this is about:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/24/congress-votes-to-disallow...
And I'm sure there were zero financial interests behind that decision.
You might say : this is not insider trading. I agree, this is much worse: this is taking legal action to protect their own financial interests after they were legitimately punished by the market. That's far, far worse and explicitly not what the legislative authority should be used for.
Systems fail, so you have to ask which way you want it to fail.
We go by Blackstone's formulation: "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer". The founding fathers often quoted this and it is an integral part of American law.
Yeah, it often sucks and many guilty people go free. I'm sure you can think of specific topics where it is particularly difficult. But we chose to fail this way because we value freedom so highly. So the prosecutor has the burden of proof. This is often why trials go for so long and it takes a long time to form a case.
tldr: It is purposefully a pretty high bar.