Don't sell the SEC short unless you work there

"In short, it appears that SEC employees continue to take advantage of non-public information to trade profitably in stocks under their regulatory purview."
Mind you this is the same agency that sent Martha Stewart to prison for insider trading. Technically the SEC investigated Stewart but the US attorney lost the case but managed to send her to jail for lying to the FBI. Anyway it's the thought that counts. It's only wrong when non SEC employees trade on inside information. I wonder if Lois Lerner helps them file their tax returns.

No one is currently charged with insider trading at the SEC. Two scholars, Shivaram Rajgopal, a professor of accounting at Emory University, and Roger White, a doctoral student in accounting at Georgia State University have authored a study that shows SEC employees have an uncommon ability to predict when their employer is about to bring an action against a publicly traded firm and dump their stocks accordingly. The study was constructed using data the authors obtained from a FOIA request. They did not have access to individual account information but where able to discern a strong statistical inference of wrong doing. The researchers could not tell how much certain employees were earning in profits or whether employees with certain kinds of jobs or at certain levels of power were able to make more money.
The table below compares the actions of SEC employees compared to the entire market, in various run-up periods ahead of an enforcement action. The disparity is striking. Thirty days or less before an announcement, for instance, more than 74 percent of trades by employees were sales, versus just half in the total market.

In administrations past we would expect to hear that an immediate criminal investigation had been launched but this is the Obama administration. No ethics, no problem.