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Significant officials at publicly traded companies are casually and cavalierly engaged in insider trading. Because insider trading has as one of its elements communication, it doesn't take rocket science to realize it's nice to have the communication on tape.

Insider trading tells everybody at precisely the wrong time that everything is rigged, and only people who have a billion dollars and have access to and are best friends with people who are on boards of directors of major companies - they're the only ones who can make a true buck.

I spoke bluntly about what I had seen in a little over a year as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. To the apparent surprise of many in the room, I observed publicly that insider trading appeared to be rampant.

Unfortunately, from what I can see from my vantage point as the U.S. Attorney here, illegal insider trading is rampant and may even be on the rise.

Insider trading is hard to prove. To be convicted, a person must have bought or sold a stock based on material information that is both unknown to the general public and likely to have had an important effect on a company's stock price.

I'm not an ultra-libertarian who thinks there shouldn't be insider-trading laws at all.

Insider trading by hedge funds has a long and distinguished history, dating to the days when people didn't know that there was such a thing as a hedge fund.

Securities fraud generally and insider trading in particular should be eminently deterrable crimes.

I think that the failures of Enron and WorldCom and other companies are partially failures of investors to recognize companies that are selling for a thousand times nothing, but chances are they may be worth only that.

I think most CEOs think their stock is undervalued, probably.