NYT Magazine – How much time should Raj Rajaratnam spend in prison? Rajaratnam is the hedge fund founder who was convicted in May of trading on illegal stock tips — tips that produced fantastic results for his Galleon Group. Federal authorities compare him with notorious white-collar crooks like Bernie Madoff and Jeffrey Skilling, and they argue for a long time behind bars.
His lawyers, however, say Rajaratnam is a lesser-order felon — “not . . . as culpable as a defendant who affirmatively steals,” as they put it in a pre-sentencing memorandum. The lawyers raise a problem of culture and law: Is insider trading merely an illicit version of a common American cleverness, trading on gossip from a colleague or friend that helps the trader and hurts no one? Or is it the quintessential Wall Street crime, one that has undermined Americans’ faith in the markets?
