Juggling Dynamite

No surprise here. A detailed new study out of the Stern Business School and McGill University, examining hundreds of stock option transactions from 1996 through the end of 2012 finds that 25% of all public deals may involve some kind of insider trading:

The professors examined stock option movements — when an investor buys an option to acquire a stock in the future at a set price — as a way of determining whether unusual activity took place in the 30 days before a deal’s announcement.

The results are persuasive and disturbing, suggesting that law enforcement is woefully behind — or perhaps is so overwhelmed that it simply looks for the most egregious examples of insider trading, or for prominent targets who can attract headlines.

The professors are so confident in their findings of pervasive insider trading that they determined statistically that the odds of the trading “arising out of chance” were “about three in a trillion.” (It’s easier, in other words, to hit the lottery.)

Meanwhile the financial firm directed SEC, the study notes, only litigated “about 4.7 percent of the 1,859 M.&A. deals included in our sample.”  See: Study asserts startling numbers of insider trading rogues.

It is a remarkable deja vu to behold: the Canadian stock market in June 2014 is once more within striking distance of its all time global-debt-fuelled-consumption-commodity-bubble-peak briefly seen 6 long years ago in June 2008. Four short months later, the index had lost 50% of its value by October 2008 (as it also did from its previous peak in the 2000 dot-bomb implosion). But Canada has much more going for it today than in 2007-08 right? With our top 3 world’s most expensive real estate markets, most indebted consumers ever and weakening global demand for our exports, surely this time will be different?

With WTI today about $107 and Brent about $112, it is fitting to review some basic facts about the unnecessary and crushing economic tax that is oil. The global economy was already slowing before the latest geopolitical tensions ramped fossil fuels to a renewed strangle hold on disposable income. This cartoons sums it up well.

On the other hand, everyday we can chose to stop the unnecessary pain, waste, conflict, and obscene environmental degradation and get serious about “retooling the fuel”. Free power is ours to take.

The following graphic reminds that all of the finite fossil fuels together pale in capacity to the free, clean, efficient sources like wind and solar that are endless and ample without any need for military control or poisoning the planet.