How to get Americans to trust Wall Street again

Regulating insider trading isn't easy. Good thing we have other options.

Wall Street
(Image credit: (REUTERS/Mike Segar))

To many Americans' eyes, financial markets have become a mercurial and opaque system in which money is frantically moved around for no particularly clear or good purpose for the common economy. Quite often the only beneficiaries seem to be the rich and powerful. No less than 64 percent of voters believe the stock market is rigged against them.

Take insider trading: profiting by shuffling stocks and securities around based on privileged information not available to the public. Even Wall Street professionals seem to think their industry is rife with it.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.