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'Previous Orders Excluded • Body Massage • Body Facia! • Body Care for Dry Skin $100.00 Offer good Feb. 20-April 10 102 Pierce Birmingham 48011 Mi. 40 Friday, February 20, 1987 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS compassion to the world?" Kelman speaks about the emphasis in Jewish tradition on being a mensch. On asking oneself, What does a decent human being do in this situa- tion? On acting without the expectation of a reward. I asked Rabbi Kelman to address the moral and religious questions of secretly taping conversations — a strategy that has simultaneously helped the indicted men to lower their fines and sentences and the S.E.C. to widen its net. His response: "Being an informer is con- temptible." And then, more softly, he adds, "But, of course, it depends on the motive. If it's to help bring in someone, like a drug dealer, who is disobeying the law, I might do it myself, if I had the courage. On the other hand, if it's only to benefit oneself . . ." During a telephone conversation, Hillel Levine and I discuss what the Jewish com- munity's response to such events as the in- dictments might be. "First, we have to raise questions simultaneously about both our position in the American economy and our Jewish values," he says. He suggests that Judaism hasn't sufficiently developed values for living in a modern, pluralist, capitalist society. "Should there be a Jewish position on arbitrage?" he asks. Answering himself with a forceful "Yes!" he outlines some of the issues that would underly this position. Does arbitrage lead to greater centralization of wealth? Does it lead to greater worker productivity? Does it put people to work? Does it provide liquidity at moments when the economy needs it? "These are all questions rabbis should be raising," he says. Obviously, though such questions are in- teresting and might be useful in getting people to think about their lives, it is unlikely that they would generate a com- mon Jewish point of view. Though some contemporary Jewish scholars read the ribrah as the first model for socialism, others, equally devout, are certain that it supports all the basic elements of free enterprise. - Even the question of whether specula- tion by those with special knowledge and advance tips really hurts anyone is open to opposing viewpoints both within and out- side the Jewish community. In "Merger Mania, Ivan Boesky claims that "the func- tion of merger arbitrage is to make sec- urities markets work more efficiently." (Not surprisingly, Boesky's book pays little attention to the source or timing of infor- mation used by the person who speculates on mergers.) Moreover, according to Boe- sky, the speculation of an arbitraguer on- ly forces up the price of the target company "closer to what is, in his opinion, its realistic value." On the other side, the statement made by John Phelan, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, before the insider-trading hearings last June, represents a more com- mon point of view about the effect of in- sider trading. "There are those who see this as a victimless crime," he said. "They are . . . mistaken. Three out of every four Americans are vulnerable because they have a stake in the securities market, either as individual investors or as share- holders participating through institutions such as insurance and pension funds." Robert Lekachman observes, "It must appear to the people playing around that these are victimless crimes. Even the small investors are getting some money — and why should amateurs expect to make as much as pros?" The burgeoning of M.B.A.s has created a new type of Wall Street professional: a person trained in "number crunching," though not necessarily in humanities or the arts. Though in every discussion stockholders were invariably identified as the "victims" of insider trading, I didn't hear much about the effect of insider trading on the companies themselves — including the people who work in them. When I asked Lekachman about it, he said, "Well, of course, insider trading also affects the in- dustry and its employees. Because money will be needed to pay these shareholders something, what might have been used to redo a plant or provide new jobs simply won't be there. "It's a victimless crime only ia the sense that it's hard to identify who exactly is hurt," he says. "There are large numbers of people potentially harmed: some are in- vestors, others are workers using outdated equipment, still others are among the unemployed who might otherwise have jobs." ❑ Carol Ascher's novel "The Flood" will be published this spring. She is a previous con- tributor to Present Tense, from which this piece is adapted with permission. ©Copyright 1987. Present Tense. All rights reserved.