Political corruption

I'm really rather looking forward to this. Using the techniques of forensic economics (yes, this does involve our hero staring moodily into the camera, a la CSI, although with better acting and he gets the girls less often) we find that people have been making money out of predicting, or perhaps knowing, where the next CIA sponsored coup is going to be.

By tracking the stock prices of UFC and other politically vulnerable firms in the months leading up to CIA-staged coups in Guatemala, Chile, Cuba, and Iran, the researchers provide evidence that someone—perhaps one of the Dulleses, Cabots, or others in the know—was trading stocks based on classified information of these coups-in-the-making.

The next thing that happens in the American political system is that a few grandstanding senators will insist upon holding hearings and demand that the guilty are punished. Which of course is fine with me, it's just that I really would enjoy senators talking about profiting from inside information:
A report showing outsize portfolio gains for US senators is raising new questions about ethics and conflicts of interest for Capitol Hill power brokers. The study found that during the boom years of 1993-98, a majority of US Senators were trading stocks - and beating the market by 12 percentage points a year on average. By comparison, corporate insiders beat the market by 5 percent, and typical households underperformed by 1.4 percent. Financial experts interviewed for this story say the senators' collective achievement is a statistical stunner, too big to be a mere coincidence.

Delicious, no?

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