https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/24/...tures-trading-commission.html?ref=todayspaper This is exactly what led to the implosion in 2008 (and the smaller one in the late 1980s) http://www.newsmax.com/finance/StreetTalk/krugman-reagan-crisis-caused/2009/12/17/id/343594/
Prevention and punishment of insider trading, among the many ways to lie and cheat, is of course a function of oversight. Working in our favor: financial criminals are often rational and calculating - unlike many street and violent criminals, financial criminals are reliably deterred by a credible threat of jail time and loss of wealth. So law enforcement can be very effective in financial crime prevention - avoiding the injury itself, the highest goal of law enforcement. We see this in the orgies of financial crime that burgeon in the wake of deregulation and cutbacks of oversight.
Isn't there some form of law and order that can be enforced? The principle seems to apply more to civil crimes rather than financial ones.
Because financial crimes are so often calculated, planned, "rational" actions committed by people in control of their behavior, enforcement is quite efficient - it only takes putting a couple of famous guys in jail to get massive reductions in financial crimes. Financial laws and regulations actually prevent crime, prevent then injury, with even minimal enforcement. Big bang for the buck. And big cost if the buck is not tendered. We see that fact in the major increases in financial crime that follow the removal or non-enforcement of such regulations, and characterize financial systems operating without them. And that is the situation we are in now.
