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Speaker 1: Billions is a Showtime series about a slick hedge fund

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Speaker 1: billionaire in the crusading US attorney who's determined to bring

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Speaker 1: him down. Bobby axel Rod played by Damien Lewis, and

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Speaker 1: Chuck Rhodes played by Paul Giamatti are out to destroy

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Speaker 1: each other, all the time maintaining the righteousness of their positions.

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Speaker 1: What have I done wrong, really except make money succeed?

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Speaker 1: All these rules and regulations arbitrary chalked up by politicians?

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Speaker 1: Have you infect the entire world? You throw the whole

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Speaker 1: system off balance, leaving chaos and poverty in your wake.

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg View column This Joe No Sarah wrote a column

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Speaker 1: what Billions gets right about insider trading, and he joins us, now,

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Speaker 1: thanks for being with us, Joe, thanks for having me.

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Speaker 1: You write about the moral ambiguity that pervades Billions. Tell

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Speaker 1: us what you mean? Well, what I basically mean is

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Speaker 1: that the that the U S attorney in the show

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Speaker 1: is not all white hat and the heads fund operator

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Speaker 1: played by Damian Lewis is not all black hats. So

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Speaker 1: you know the U S Attorney, Yes, he wants to

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Speaker 1: put the bad guys in jail, but he's also extraordinarily ambitious. Um,

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Speaker 1: he's fighting for his job at some points, and you

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Speaker 1: know he's also motivated by um rage as he comes

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Speaker 1: to hate this guy that he can't nail. Meanwhile, the

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Speaker 1: head fund guy, Uh, you know, he's a philanthropist. You know,

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Speaker 1: he's not a particularly nice guy, but he's a philanthropist.

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Speaker 1: He's a family man. You know, he's got, he's got

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Speaker 1: parts of his personality is a good and and more importantly,

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Speaker 1: the show never really shows you whether in fact he's

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Speaker 1: violating the law or not, And that to me was

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Speaker 1: the key thing. It's a very ambiguous situation. And in

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Speaker 1: my column I compared that to the situation with Stevie

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Speaker 1: Cohen and Creet Bhara, the U S Attorney for the

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Speaker 1: Southern District of New York who tried to get Hedge

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Speaker 1: Fund titan Stevie Cohen for years and years and ultimately

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Speaker 1: failed UM because however much he believed Cohen was an

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Speaker 1: inside trader, he couldn't he didn't have enough evidence to

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Speaker 1: bring a case. Joe, I'm a little bit of a

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Speaker 1: disadvantage because I haven't seen the show, But um, aren't

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Speaker 1: there plenty of situations on Wall Street where there are

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Speaker 1: people in the white hats and people in black hats,

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Speaker 1: and and uh, I mean I I did see the

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Speaker 1: movie Wall Street, and uh, does that at least reflect

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Speaker 1: some sort of reality that some people really are clearly criminals?

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Speaker 1: There are people who are really who are clearly criminals, um, yes,

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Speaker 1: and who do things that are clearly violating the law,

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Speaker 1: and quite often they get they get caught. Um pret

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Speaker 1: Bahara had an incredible winning streak um of going after us.

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Speaker 1: I think with some some seventy people he either got

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Speaker 1: the pled guilty or or were found guilty a trial,

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Speaker 1: I mean, all on insider trading charges. So yes. But

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Speaker 1: but then, h what happened in the real world is

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Speaker 1: that he then went after another group of hedge fund

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Speaker 1: greatest without wire taps or some of the evidence that

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Speaker 1: he had had in the first case, and he made

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Speaker 1: cases against um a number of people in an effort

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Speaker 1: to land you know the big one, which was Mr Cohen.

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Speaker 1: And what basically happened was although he got convictions, they

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Speaker 1: were overturned, and they were overturned in a way that

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Speaker 1: was where the where the second Circuit, the appeals Court

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Speaker 1: really came down hard on him and and said, look,

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Speaker 1: you know you are misinterpreting the law, and then you

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Speaker 1: went and found a judge who helped you misinterpret the law.

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Speaker 1: And these guys are not comping, and they overturned the

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Speaker 1: verdict and Bahara had to not only overturn those verdicts

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Speaker 1: or agree with that, but he then dismiss charges about

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Speaker 1: was about six seven or eight other people who were

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Speaker 1: also been ensnared by him in that second round of investigations. Joe,

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Speaker 1: what I find in talking about moral ambiguity, what I

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Speaker 1: find amazing about this show is that when you talk

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Speaker 1: to people who watch it, most of them like the

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Speaker 1: slick hedge fund billionaire and don't like the U S attorney.

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Speaker 1: It's true, Uh, the portrait, the way their portraite you,

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Speaker 1: you enjoy Uh Damian Lewis's portrayal of the headge fund titan, Uh,

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Speaker 1: who's definitely out to make money, nothing wrong with that,

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Speaker 1: and um and Chuck Rhodes wears his anger and his

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Speaker 1: ambition so much on his sleeve, and he seems so

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Speaker 1: driven to put somebody intail, whether they have evidence or not,

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Speaker 1: that you come you do come to have some distaste

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Speaker 1: for him. But would do you agree that when you

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Speaker 1: talk about moral ambiguity. You're not of the opinion that

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Speaker 1: insider trading is a crime without victims, as some people

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Speaker 1: think about thirty seconds here, You know, I don't. I've

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Speaker 1: thought about that a lot. I don't really know. I

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Speaker 1: don't really have a good answer to that. Um. You know, obviously,

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Speaker 1: if you're an inside if you're really getting stuff on

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Speaker 1: inside information, it does, you know, hurt perceptions of the market. Um.

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Speaker 1: And there is always going to be somebody on the

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Speaker 1: other side of that trade. However, as crimes go, it

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Speaker 1: definitely would not be high on my list. Thank you.

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Speaker 1: That's Bloomberg View columns Jonah Sarah. You can read his

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Speaker 1: columns by going to view go on the Bloomberg terminal.

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Speaker 1: Coming up on Bloomberg Law, the Fourth Circuit Court of

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Speaker 1: Appeals upholds Maryland's ban on assault rifles. Will this be

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Speaker 1: the case that reaches the Supreme Court?