Free Martha Stewart

I hope Bubbette takes a huge strap on and pounds that wrinkled old pud

man, would that sell

The real losers here are the shareholders. I'm willing to venture that since her market is housewives, there is a significant population of housewives and homemakers that put their faith in her. Now that she's going to jail to punish her for ripping off and damaging the shareholders, the judge sentenced her company to death, thus damaging the shareholders he was trying to protect.

Nice decision.

I cant wait to see her twist on remodaling the prison

mike--you misinterupted what she did wrong--SHE DID NOT HURT ANY SHAREHOLDERS. She used info she got from her stockbroker to sell a stock before the news got to the public. She ended up saving 50k or so. Then she lied about it which is all she really did wrong...

"Insider Trading" shouldn't even be considered illegal.

It's a law based on jealousy.

After all, any actions taken by the insiders will be reflected in the next day's stock price.

What kills me is that the government admits Martha didn't even commit insider trading, but that she lied to them. If we could jail every government official who has lied to the American people, we wouldn't have a government left...

Best post ever on this board by someone other than myself.

Well I certainly don't thnk insider trading should be punishable by jail time.. I do believe it is illegal for a very good reason .. and that's to keep a publicly trading stock "public" .. preventing a certain select few who are not affilliated with a company from having an unfair advantage. I don't really think jealousy has much to do with it.

Either way I have mixed feelings about Martha Stewart. I respect her as an established business woman and have lots of respect for her in that regard....I don't know how I feel about her crimes .. I don't think it should go un-punished but on the other hand I think jail time is very severe. Maybe a fine ammounting to the value she saved by trading early .. 50k .. or even double or something .. but not jail.

OJ goes free, Martha does time. Gotta love America.

True. And Dubya would be facing some serious lockdown.

what happened to Enron?

what happened to Worldcom? (became MCI)

and a lot of other companies?

depends on who you are?


all the ceo's of those companies are crooks and still waliking the street

poor martha, but what a dumbass eh?

It will be interesting to see what she is sentenced to. Federal sentencing guidelines call for 12 months on the low end, although the judge is permitted to sentence her to a halfway house or even home detention. Just last year the DOJ was hot and heavy for the Federal judges to NOT downward depart from the sentencing guidelines, so much so that they were seeking removal of the judges that didnt follow the guidelines. With the pressure on the DOJ to show that it is serious about white collar crime, it is likely she will get some time in prison IMO.

Part of me wants Martha to go to jail, she was so smug about not being guilty that she even issued a press release AFTER conviction saying she did nothing wrong, which I also think was a mistake on her part. Lack of remorse is an element in sentencing.

The other part of me sees the core of what she did, trading some stock on information and saving some money as no big deal. Trading on inside information happens every day and for larger amounts. True it affects the confidence of the working joe who has his spare coin in the market, but realistically, the average joe is also not able to do comprehensive analysis on earnings and afford to get access to sales reports on a regional basis that the larger stock research firms do. Nothing is illegal about that, and yet this is also trading on information not available to the working joe. A good example of this was Carmax who recently restated their earnings forecast, but a stock research firm which spent good sums of money gathering data came to this conclusion many days before the Carmax announcement.

I think that the brand can and will survive. Look at the shoe company Steve Madden, who now sits in prison doing a nearly 4 year stint for penny stock manipulation. His company, while not exactly a fortune 500 company, still sells shoes like crazy.

One more thing I just thought of, a likely scenario from the sentence will be that she cannot serve on any public company in any capacity for a number of years. That ought to be interesting as I wonder what exactly her impact has been in the last few years creatively for MSO. It could be bad if people start viewing the product lines coming out as being made by a large corporation rather than the visions of a single person (Martha) implemented by her staff.

It's one thing for a large firm to do research on a business and then invest money accordingly. but that isn't inside information. That's doing your homework, thats gathering all of the facts it can, making a prediction and seeing if it comes true.

Insider infromation comes from the company itself before its public, before it has affected stock price. Its like cheating on an exam. Instead of figuring out the answer, you already know it.

And it is illegal, because it can certainly be abused. That doesn't mean that all cases are strictly illegal or should be treated the same way, but if there were no laws on the books things could get seriously out of hand. Just how not all companies are allowed to merge or buy others out to avoid creating monopolies, that doesnt mean all mergers are bad, but we need some kind of laws before hand to prevent a possibly serious situation.

I'd love to see Martha's Cell block...HAHAHAHA

She was only convicted because she's white.

My point was that information that is not public is legally traded on all the time, before that information has affected the stock price.

IMO there are blurred lines as to what she be termed a "level playing field" as so many these days are able to trade on information, be it research that cost tens of thousands of dollars, a broker watching key execs selling of their shares in mass, or a ceo telling his kids to buy more, good news is on the way. All are buying and selling on information that the avg joe has no chance of being privy to.

Yeah Free that lady

ehhh hem...Bill & George both come to mind on this one...




Presidents & congress can lie, I think they passed an amendment about it...