Insider trading is “rampant and routine and this criminal behaviour was known, encouraged and exploited by authority figures in several investment funds.”

So sayeth the US attorney for Manhattan. More on the FBI’s Operation Perfect Hedge can be found here in this FT article. And this one.

I have an investor who is concerned this particular era on Wall Street has become just like the 90’s in professional baseball. He believes both major league ball back then and the current scene on Wall Street resemble social experiments that began with the question, “What sort of behavior would you be willing to engage in if we threw tens of millions of dollars at you?”

In baseball, the answer seemed to be, “I will repeatedly inject myself in the butt with copious amounts of steroids.”

On Wall Street, the answer seems to be stuff like this.

Hard not to agree with him.