Nobel laureate condemns: Trump's group doing this is equivalent to treason

Author: Observer Network Wang Yı

Right about 15 minutes before U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw attacks on an Iranian power plant, citing “productive talks with Iran,” oil futures with a total value of about $580 million quickly changed hands. This “coincidence” has fueled growing doubts about insider trading. Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences laureate Paul Krugman, winner in 2008, said bluntly: this is an act of treason.

On March 24, local time, Krugman wrote in his personal Substack column: “When corporate executives—or their associates—use confidential information to profit for their own personal financial gain, that is insider trading—this is illegal; but for those who possess state security confidential information, such as plans about whether to bomb another country, and then use that information to make money, we have another word: treason.”

Krugman explained that doing so violates the most basic principle of trust for government officials, and that officials and their acquaintances should not be allowed to use their positions to seek personal gain when making decisions that involve national security. He noted that insider trading based on national security decisions is not only unfair, but also creates strategic risks: “When you can infer the same intelligence from the futures market, who still needs to bribe people inside the government?”

Krugman said that the line between making profitable trades using national secret information and directly selling secrets to the highest bidder is actually not that big—once the “no profiting from highly confidential information” line is crossed, the difference between the two becomes blurred. “In fact, I very much want to know who was making these trades yesterday morning. Was it someone directly in the know, or a billionaire or trader who paid to obtain the information?”

Around 6:50 a.m. on the 23rd, New York time, the trading volume of the S&P 500 electronic mini futures (S&P 500 e-Mini futures) traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange suddenly saw a solitary spike, clearly deviating from the relatively calm pre-market trading environment beforehand. Almost at the same time, about 6,200 contracts of Brent crude oil and West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures, with a total value of about $580 million, changed hands, breaking the previously calm state of the market. Then at 7:04 a.m. on the 23rd, Trump posted to announce a pause in attacks on Iran.

A few minutes before Trump’s post on March 23, abnormal trading surged in the oil market. Chart by Yahoo Finance

“Such a sharp and isolated surge in trading volume is especially unusual.” Krugman analyzed that at the time there were no major news events that could drive such a sudden burst of large trades; the only reasonable explanation is that someone close to Trump knew about his actions in advance and used that inside information to reap huge immediate profits.

According to a report on the website of U.S. magazine Fortune on the 24th, oil market analyst Rory Johnston said that even if there is currently no definitive evidence of selling state secrets, this trading pattern itself is hard to ignore: “Every analyst, every oil-market trader is questioning the downward pressure on prices,” regardless of whether there is direct manipulation of the market by Washington—the government’s statements alone have already made traders avoid trades that would otherwise have been based on supply and demand. “I think it may have played a very big role.”

In fact, this is not the first time the Trump administration has been questioned for manipulating the stock market. The Financial Times in the U.K. said on the 23rd that several hedge funds pointed out that in recent months, such cases of making large trades before the U.S. government officially released announcements are actually far from rare.

A trader at a large hedge fund said that energy consultants recently noticed several large transactions, whose timing was unusually odd. Another portfolio manager said that a series of large-scale trades with very precise timing has led to a kind of “frustration” among investors.

Before the U.S. attacks on Iran and Venezuela, the prediction market platform Polymarket also saw large suspicious trades. They generated huge returns by betting on when the U.S. would launch attacks on Iran and Venezuela.

In April last year, just a few days after Trump imposed “reciprocal tariffs” on nearly all U.S. trade partners, he suddenly paused the implementation of tariffs for 90 days. And as it was exactly 4 hours before he announced this change in tariff policy, Trump called on social media to buy stocks; stocks on the U.S. market jumped that day, and the shares of companies under Trump’s umbrella also rose sharply—by roughly twice the amount of the broader market’s increase.

Regarding the recent market volatility, White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai insisted: “The only focus that President Trump and officials of this administration have is to do everything possible to secure the greatest benefits for the American people.”

He also claimed: “The White House will never tolerate any government official using inside information to illegally profit, and any suggestion—without evidence—that officials are engaged in such activities is groundless and irresponsible reporting.”

However, on the evening of the 23rd, Iranian Islamic Consultative Assembly speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf posted on the social media platform X to puncture the U.S. falsehood. He denied that any negotiations had taken place between Iran and the U.S., and said Trump’s “purpose in spreading fake news is to manipulate financial and oil markets, and to try to help the United States and Israel get out of the quagmire they are deeply stuck in.”

Krugman also said that in this incident, Iran’s credibility actually exceeded that of the U.S. president himself: “Is he lying, or is he living in a fantasy world? No matter which possibility it is, it is unsettling.”

He criticized: “You can’t expect a corrupt government to protect national security. And our government is now completely corrupted: from the president to ordinary officials, it’s hard to find anyone who treats public office as a major responsibility rather than an opportunity to seek personal gain or to line their own pockets.”

“Moreover, a thoroughly corrupt government is often not good at fighting, no matter how much they extol ‘warrior spirit’ and ‘lethality.’ When we look back at the reasons for Iran’s disastrous war outcome, arrogance and ignorance will still be near the top—yet serious corruption will follow right behind,” Krugman said.