Trading Thought Crimes - Never Trust the Discretion of a Prosecutor

It should be obvious by now: The kind of people who become prosecutors are not the kind of people who can be trusted to use their discretion. One of the few sensible business reporters, John Carney, explains why going after rumor spreaders, even if they are right, is a waste of time:

We think that this would be a terrible misuse of prosecutorial power. In
the first place, there's precious little evidence that the supposed market
manipulation even occurred. Instead of evidence there's just pure speculation.
"Where there's smoke, there's fire," might be a nice soundbite but its not
evidence. Before we unleash the hounds of war on rumor mongers, shouldn't we
require more than this?

What's more, the costs of such investigations would likely be worse
than the alleged wrong-doing. In order to catch wrong-doers, prosecutors would
have to subpoena the private emails, instant messages and testimony of lots of
people who did no wrong at all. Each of the investigated would face huge legal
bills and know that their lives could be ruined by a prosecutor or a judge who
misreads a bad intention into an innocent email.