Something Happened Indeed

Mark Thoma points to an article by Ben Stein in the NYTimes:

Thanks to some fine reporting at The Wall Street Journal, we now know that right after 9/11, as the crushed bodies of heroic firemen were still being pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center, and the nation was in deep, bone-chilling mourning, the smart people who run some of America’s biggest and most powerful corporations may have already figured out An Angle.

Certain officers and directors at companies including UnitedHealth, Merrill Lynch, Teradyne, Black & Decker and Home Depot knew that their stock was way down because of panic about the attacks and whether more were coming. They also knew that their long-term prospects were excellent and that their stocks were a bargain. And right after the attacks, they quickly awarded themselves options priced to strike at the super-low prices their stocks reached when the fires at the Pentagon were still smoldering. In many cases, they went on to make serious money from those options.

That sounds dire, but I fail to see why I should be outraged here. Who did these people make money from? They didn't make money off of the victims of 9/11. They made money from people who, in the aftermath of 9/11 were dumping stocks in these American companies as fast as they could. This isn't some example of the greedy rich taking advantage of the little guy.