I hope that everyone responsible for this is enjoying every cent of what they get to pay at the pumps.
As if the people responsible actually feel the impact of their choices to that degree.
(Not to imply that many Democrat politicians aren't also owned by AIPAC and big business.)
We can’t just keep finger pointing at the other party whenever things go wrong. There are systemic issues and outside influences destroying this country. Some people think this will all be fixed when democrats take over again in November but they’re wrong and the cycle will continue just with a more presentable veneer of decency.
I'd just like to remind everyone that this guy got fired from Fox News for being too extreme an idealogue.
> I’m not defending their poor judgement of an infamous con artist
At some point you have to hold adult Republicans accountable for their actions. They were warned repeatedly; they chose to ignore the warnings.
> ask how it’s possible that such unpopular wars always seem to have bipartisan support
Americans love war and guns! This is like, #1 national characteristic as observed by other nations. Especially because America always wins in the movies! The reason Americans are complaining about the Iran war and not the illegal Venezuelan invasion or whatever is because they are losing.
(who on earth is Dave Smith?)
Education. Actually teaching people how to think critically about what they see and hear needs to start as soon as they get a phone in their hand, if not sooner. That education in critical thinking needs to come from family, school, social clubs and religious institutions. I don't think that'll ever happen in America though. Our economy depends on people not thinking critically.
US foreign policy is and has always been bipartisan. One side is a bit more restrained and has better manners, the other overtly says what is going on.
Yes, Tucker Carlson should have known what was going to happen because he has been in politics for so long. For the average voter who is busy with other things, it takes at least 8 years of intensely following one Democrat president and one Republican. The mainstream media is of little use, since they report daily statements and political theater.
You need to read the think tank papers and follow bipartisan hearings like the Senate Armed Services Committee where there is no difference between R/D except for blaming the other side for current events.
We all know how some cultures are violent and backwards to each other? some or like this, just different culture
That was just their nice-sounding excuse for voting for him. It's not like they are going to go out and say that they like him because of his jingoistic machismo authoritarian 'strong'-man bullshit.
They'll performatively grumble for a bit, but are all ready to vote for the guy a fourth time in 2028.
“Buy when there is blood in the streets, even if it is your own.” — Baron Nathan Rothschild
https://medium.com/@douglasp.schwartz/buy-when-theres-blood-...
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-probes-suspicious...
Isn't the FBI already raiding the homes of political opponents for intimidation?
The famed US constitution with all its 'checks and balances' they would never shut up about turned out to be papier mâché and completely trampled by the first person that tried.
If we're being completely honest, the checks and balances in the constitution ended within the first decade. They were only designed to work in the case that the three branches of government were truly separate and adversarial with one another.
The creation of political parties largely eliminated them, both because they cross-cut branches and because the first-past-the-post, winner-take-all electoral system virtually guaranteed the parties would have nearly even representation most of the time.
That it's greatest likelihood of collapse comes between 236 and 243 years later (depending on whether you count from the end of the revolutionary war or ratification of the constitution) is a goddamn miracle.
Plenty of other democracies have parties, including cross government branches.
What makes the US unique, and fragile, is that no party other than democrats and republicans can realistically exist.
It over emphasizes partisanship above anything (including honesty, morality) because career politicians in one party just have nowhere to go if they are dissident.
You can see that in plain sight currently, with republicans being in the total incapacity of contradicting their party line on anything, even the most obvious of lies.
In most other democracies, dissidents would have just created a new party and moved on, that wouldnt be "carrier ending" for them.
Give it time.
that is "too big to prosecute against extremely creative and well paid law firm" territory
They also allow some insights on future demand, which can help you plan production of your commodity.
The issue is that the odds aren't actually 50/50 on you buying either side of the trade; one half will look like a better deal (and given public information, it is a better deal) so you'll buy that half. Then when the market resolves, it'll turn out that insiders knew some piece of information that made the other half of the trade a better choice.
P(W | You're a sucker) = 0.5
hard to win at a game where 97% fail in the long run.
In the US, for some reason, if you are a danger to the President's friends, you can be fired/your department can just be shutdown executively and this isn't just about Trump, it is about a serious weakness in the systems of governance.
I would not rely on that. The Attorney General can withdraw prosecutions, and is a government minister (although not technically in the Cabinet).
Parliament can do anything, it just usually doesn't. This includes retroactive legislation to decide that you did not win a lawsuit that you actually did win (Reilly and Wilson v Secretary of State, although that itself was eventually ruled unlawful). The infinite delay of Bloody Sunday prosecutions is probably the biggest example in UK discourse.
No country is safe from this if enough authoritarian-collaborator political appointments are made (such as happened to SCOTUS). It should really be viewed as a form of coup.
What actually happened in the US is that "common norms and expectations" were thrown out the window, so instead of the question being "What is traditionally done?" it became "What can legally be done?" And, as it turns out, when you're only constrained by the letter of the law the executive branch is insanely powerful.
UK politics, more than most younger countries, is particularly susceptible to this. Norms, traditionally, and commonly understood standards make up a scary amount of constraints on the powers of government. If anyone gained power that only feels limited by the letter of the law (i.e. throws out norms, traditions, and standards), the UK is in serious trouble and Parliament hasn't moved to address it.
Somewhat ironically (given how unpopular it is), the Lords may be the best back-stop the UK has. Particularly the 30%~ which do not originate from politics.
It's not even constrained by the letter of the law. The current administration has done quite a few things which are blatantly illegal and unconstitutional.
Trump has done so, safe in the knowledge that the impeachment process can't work so long as the Republican party holds a majority in the House, and a conviction can't occur so long as the Republican party controls at least 41 seats in the Senate.
Furthermore, due to the presidential immunity power created out of thin air by the Supreme Court in US v. Trump, he is shielded even from investigation so long as it can be successfully argued any potential crimes were done as part of official duties.
Lastly, his advanced age virtually guarantees he'll die long before any such prosecution could clear the legal hoops required for conviction after leaving office (assuming he ever does), even in the rare circumstances a Democrat could be found with enough spine to actually move forward with one.
It's like every time you see a poorly run business and you think, how can they stay open? The answer is it's usually a laundering operation, a tax shelter, and who knows what else. The message to us poors is, nothing these people do is as it appears; there's always a bunch of stacked, leveraged advantages.
https://newrepublic.com/post/192244/trump-celebrates-destroy...
Oil crisis: Trumps friends profit on insider info, US oil industry (also his friends) profits, Russia profits because they are another big oil producer, USD dominance is harmed (also helps Russia), everyone else in the world eats the costs
Ukraine: Russia bleeds, Ukraine bleeds, arms industry profits, politicians in general get something to grandstand on in front of the voters. Personally I believe that this conflict has been artificially prolonged just to amplify the effects
Tariffs: US public eats the costs, Trump profits politically by appearing strong, Trumps friends profit on insider info
What I mean is Trump and Co probably spoke to oil execs before making the Iran decision to ask if they would raise production. Then they lied and said yes, while knowing they would drag their feet as prices rose.
Trump is a stoog. The folks around him treat him like an idiot. There's no way they weren't involved here. They've been around his entire presidency.
I think this sums it up.
Needless to say, though I consider Krugman to have failed at practically every prediction he made in his NYT columns, his point is very valid.
No one should stand for this. Unfortunately a very bad precedence has been set by many politicians in the US.
I find it hard to see that this would ever change if the governing authorities are as tame and neutered as they seem to be.
Ultimately it is a question of how to root out corruption. And it must be a path 90% agree on. I don't see it as helpful to become emotive.
The real curious part to me is why there are such large reactions when neither the US nor the Iranians seem to be truthful and seem to agree even on what they disagree on...
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-probes-suspicious...
- our laws, the ones that supposedly keep society stable and safe, don't apply to particular groups of people
- we can catch them, and maybe, just maybe, we will hold someone accountable for those people, though often they just distract and trick everyone from holding them accountable
- the majority of people are getting stolen from, treated like slaves and tricked and abused, and they will tolerate this abuse because of <fear???>
Am I to accept this frame of reality in which the universe and the earth, and the leaders currently making decisions for me and holding influence over the worlds' military powers, are this hostile towards me?
I refuse. I think we have more power than we think. In America at least, we still have an amendment that has yet to be repealed (created for scenarios in which abusers hold leadership positions and refuse to be accountable): the 1st amendment and parading guns legally, safely, and responsibly is a powerful reminder of what accountability and dignity looks like.
edit: I advocate for parading guns peacefully with an intention and purpose: go with a group standing for rights, safety and dignity
https://www.newsweek.com/premier-law-firms-spy-ring-11920914
This can be said about any negative price movement. You still get the same amount of oil you agreed to regardless of if the price goes up or down afterwards.
You'd buy oil futures at broadly the same price from someone else (maybe a worse price! Because the presence of the insider selling is already driving the price down). So how exactly do you lose?
The only people who lose out are those whose limit orders don't get filled because the insider outbid them. The counterparty benefits from trading with the insider.
If you think this tax is de minimis, great, glad to hear it, let's put a government tax of similar magnitude in there and resume the peanut butter rations to starving african kids that DOGE cut.
It also discourages speculators from entering trades if they suspect they’ll be run over by insiders trading on non-public information.
Fewer market participants leads to worse price discovery.
It’s probably bad.
Yes. Also a klepotocracy
And then we'll do nothing anyway because the wealthy and corrupt run every single country on the planet. Money talks.
And people are too easily preoccupied with trivial policy squabbles to care about how badly we've all been fucked by the last 50 years or so.
Yeah that's because IT's HIM.
Jesus how much more proof do you people need that the Trumps themselves are looting the country.
The fact that he is talking peace again now is just because he cannot attack before the meeting with Xi in mid May.
The real issue is US energy dominance and control of the sea routes. Which Krugman does not mention, because the effort is bipartisan and he probably likes it. The US literally has a National Energy Dominance Council:
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook-rema...
It is designed to subjugate and increase EU and Asian dependencies on US exports. The EU committed to buying $750 billion in US energy exports. LNG terminals in Alaska are being approved to make Asia dependent on US energy.
This process is accelerated by the emerging forever conflict that will keep Hormuz closed. It won't be a full scale war, just pinpricks so that shipping companies don't dare to cross Hormuz.
Maybe China is able to pressure Iran in a way that the US can no longer pretend it has the right to intercept Iranian ships. But Russia is another factor:
The closure of Hormuz benefits both Russia and the US and the EU is too incompetent to negotiate Trump-style and threaten (it does not necessarily have to happen) to resume Russian imports. In an ideal world it would also block US vessels from entering the Baltic sea, because since the Greenland and now the overt Gulf energy threats the US is no longer an ally.
There's at least two other belligerents in this war who get a say, as well as a large number of other countries which count as victims (everyone from Lebanon to UAE). No US decision can stop Israel and Iran from fighting.
He has operational control of the armed forces. This has never been disputed recently; he can order whatever shots he wants. The armed forces funding is in one whole pot which is guaranteed even against a "shutdown". He also has total legal immunity for official acts.
Whos gona prosecute america? Germans ar still waiting for somebody to go to jail for Dresden, and rightly so
1. The size of this market manipulation can be measured by the gap between spot or physical oil prices (which generally aren't public) and the future or paper price [2]. Historically these have tracked each other so close it was a non-issue. Now it's a huge issue;
2. Part of the gap can be attributed to the financial markets being in denial [3] and the market itself being in extreme backwardation. That simply means the spot price is significantly higher than the future price. It indiciates some sort of market dysfunction (or delusion). We saw this in the silver market last year.
All credit for this wanton insider trading goes back to the Supreme Court inventing presidential immunity out of thin air [4][5] and a Congress that has completely abdicated any kind of constitutional responsibility.
You might think there might be some kind of criminal prosecution or at least investigation by government agencies of the players involved. Well, sycophants and crackpots have put in charge of those agencies (eg Michael Selig of the CFTC [6]).
And if that fails, just buy a pardon [7].
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47955623
[2]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-interpret-wartime-oil-pric...
[3]: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Is-Reality-Finall...
[4]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/supreme-co...
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States
[6]: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/12/michael-selig-predi...
[7]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/05/04/donald-trumps-...
We're all familiar with some of the "defund the police" experiments that went too far in places like Portland and San Francisco and resulted in things like epidemics of casual shoplifting.
Well, what we just did is basically the white collar crime equivalent. We now have a wide open free for all for all forms of white collar crime. You can just insider trade, launder money, commit investment fraud, anything you want, the way you saw random people just walking into CVS drug stores years ago in SF and grabbing stuff and walking out.
But as usual when someone steals $100 worth of stuff on the street that's a national crisis and those people are scum, but when people steal billions that's fine cause they're wearing suits.
At my local CVS, they just started locking up the bulk candy. You don't take the the sales hit and the expense of those locking cabinets unless you have a real shrinkage problem.
They absolutely would.
Shrink has not gone up
The National Retail Federation, which publishes those numbers yearly, has stopped publishing those numbers to hide that fact.
There are real shoplifting problems but they are extremely local. Your local police department needs to stand up and do their fucking jobs to identify and take down the organized crime perpetuating it.
Walked into a CVS midday in SF. There were even cops not far away. Poor rent a cop in there is just yelling “police have been called” while three or four people are roaming around grabbing stuff and putting it in black bags.
The rest of the shoppers are going about their business, so I do too. I figure if the robbers mess with a shopper or anyone else that’s felony assault and that breaks the grift. The grift is to rip cheaper stuff they can resell but below certain thresholds. Was pretty sure they’d have no weapons too since that would make it a felony.
By the time I’m checking out with my melatonin gummies and toothpaste they’re taking off.
I can break one stereotype though. They were white. They were wearing masks but looked like probably white teenage dudes.
I mean why not. Teen hormones and free money.
It was surreal in a way I’m not describing well here. People were not even reacting.
Like how Cloudflare wants you to think every unprotected website gets DDoSed.
Something I'd disagree with is... enforcement will not help against what causes people to turn out and steal in stores. Fix widespread poverty, get people out of homelessness, help people legitimately get off of drugs, help them get jobs even when they have convictions on the book, and then they won't need to become members of what is, essentially, small and hyperlocal crime networks.
In contrast, insider traders and billion-scale fraudsters - they do not have the need for survival pushing them to do crime. It is just pure unchecked greed that drives them.
The idea poor people are somehow criminal is a myth that needs to be eradicated.
There is not such a strong distinction. Organized crime groups often use poor people who have few alternatives as the pawns of their theft and fencing operations. People with other better options don't usually take up petty crime as a vocation.
Yes and no. Enforcement deters career criminals by increasing the cost of doing business. Improving society means fewer honest people have to turn to crime.
> insider traders and billion-scale fraudsters - they do not have the need for survival pushing them to do crime. It is just pure unchecked greed that drives them
Right, so career criminals. See above.
But it can and will massively help against large scale white collar crime. When you got dozens of millions of dollars in wealth, now you have the means to make more out of it (honest or not), the incentive to make more out of it - and also, a lot to lose, should they get caught.
I'm a fan of an idea I ran across recently. Instead of calling Musk, Bezos, Zuck, Ellison, etc the richest people in the world, we should call them the greediest.
"Greediest man in the world Elon Musk promises robotaxis" hits different than the "Richest man" version
Don't say "Billionaire Jeff Bezos does <thing>", say "Champion of Greed Jeff Bezos..."
The losses of market participants and the gains from insiders is difficult for me to take seriously as a problem in commodities market
I read all of the cases in the article
There are people and institutions, such as oil producers, who will need to sell oil at a future date. They want to lock in the price today on those future sales. There are also people and institutions, such as airlines, who have a future need for oil and would like to lock in the price today.
Oil producers sell futures simply to ensure deliver of their oil at a certain date so that someone actually shows up to pick it up.
The rest of the market is speculation, and in particular short term movements have always been very speculative and also believed to be plagued by insider trading. Airlines and oil producers do not care about minute to minute changes.
https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/airline-fuel-hedging-iran...
Unfortunately they ditched the strategy last year, claiming the costs were no longer worth the benefits: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-southwest-airlines-finally-... and http://www.wsj.com/articles/airlines-pull-back-on-hedging-fu...
I bet they’re regretting that decision now.
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/jet-fue...
Metals (miners <> manufacturers) and agricultural (farmers <> food makers) futures are still non-speculative. There are industries that still buy materials from these markets, for delivery, as in they want to see the physical product in their hands. I was surprised to find that out as well
Some markets don’t have a futures market like hay, so people have to buy at spot prices and store it themselves.
Good for them, I guess.
- Paul Krugman, 1998
Excuse me if I take the Krug-o-tron's opinions with a grain of salt.
That personality type- highly verbal but able to produce talk to fit anything from a 5 second sound bite up to 2 hours, superficially bright but not actually thoughtful, full of spicy opinions, prone to predictions that sound interesting but don’t come true - is all over TV and now podcasts. Alex Jones is the same type.
https://www.southcoasttoday.com/story/news/nation-world/2005...
for a view of the internet's impact on the economy in 2005.
internet delivered massive value post 2005, but that is outside of the window K called out.
And every time an article like this is published, HN predictably goes into the same tirade.
What are you actually going to do about it? Nothing. So keep complaining and hoping things change without changing.
Discussing it is against this website's TOS and the law in most countries
So no you can't stop it, but knowing that does at least let you make decisions with more clarity in your own life
"There is a great deal of ruin in a nation" and all that.
We'll be watching it for the rest of our lives, mostly in slow motion with occasional rapid periods of decline like the one at the moment
edit: see my subsequent comment. I'm not saying corruption is good. The whole point of the article is that it's bad beyond just corruption, and that's the point I'm pushing back on.
Besides, as Matt Levine often says. In the US, insider trading is a matter of miss-appropriating information when you have a duty of confidentiality. Its not about trading when you know more than someone else. Its about trading when you know something your not supposed to share.
The article specifically argues that it's extra bad beyond just corruption. That's the part I'm pushing back on.
>The stench of corruption is overwhelming. Yet aside from the raw corruption, these incidents also raise a larger question. The insiders ripped off the parties who sold futures to them at what turned out to be very unfavorable prices to the sellers. What broader damage does this kind of unchecked insider trading do?
They are elected officials that are supposed to be working in our best interests, or at least the interest of their supporters.
Are they making decisions in our best interests or what makes their pocket book fatter? Poisons the whole system.
Looking at my local tourist helicopter place, a private custom flight is $1k per ~15m. That seems like nothing if it allows you be make millions with the information.
This is allowed because you've gotten that extra information through your own methods that in theory anyone else can get access to. The problem here is they're using information that nobody else could possibly have access to, therefore its "insider" trading and it's been illegal for a long time.
Politician are servants of the people, for the people. This involves sacrifice and following the law. (I realize this is a naive statement, but shouldn't we be jailing these law breakers?)
If the market wants to incentivize pumping and dumping the American economy by releasing a stream of fake news from the US President, that's bad.
We should tilt the arbitrary rules away from the bad things and towards the good things.
Unless the helicopter is dropping a bomb on a school on the way there (or back) I am not sure that the comparison is fair.
Modern tanks have floating lids. The lid is as much for keeping the volatiles in as keeping water out. Water gets into all sorts of places in oil refining anyway. It wouldn't really matter anyway since oil and water being famously good at mixing. You can just draw water off the bottom, filter it or boil it off depending on the situation and amount. Obviously they don't want more water (you're wasting money processing everything that you can't sell) but some isn't a big deal.
Instability is bad, but when the cause of it is market getting new information, it becomes ok: it is bad now, but it is good in the long term. But when the instability becomes a source of profits, when there are incentives and means to create the instability, then long term benefits go away.
> The real issue is never whether the trading was unfair to the people on the other side; it’s whether the information was misappropriated from its rightful owners
In this case the rightful owners are the American public in whose employ the leakers are. They got this information from their position of trust, and sold that information, to the disadvantage of the people they work for.
It's not, when the article is specifically arguing that the insider trading is bad beyond just corruption, and barely touches corruption. You don't get to tack on a weak claim on top of a strong claim, and then when the weak claim gets pushback fall back to the strong claim and say everything's fine because you're directionally correct, or claim the person pushing back is wrong because they're directionally incorrect.
Hell, being a congresscritter in charge of oversight of $industry allows you to cheat the public cause you know what's coming. How else do you see a senator making $174k/yr but net worth's of $100M? Its legal, only cause they carved their own exemptions and scam the public.