The Eddie Murphy Rule is a Clash of the Titans

More Eddie Murphy content!  In 1983, Eddie Murphy starred in his second feature film, Trading Places.  The title applies to several aspects of the movie.

At the most literal level of "trading places," two wealthy brothers swap the lives of a young commodities broker in their employ (Dan Aykroyd) with Murphy's character, a poor con man.  So Aykroyd becomes homeless and Murphy get his money, job and apartment.  Hilarity ensues.

Second, and as you can see from the end of that clip, the two old wealthy guys are up to some shenanigans enabling them to corner the frozen orange juice market using confidential information from the USDA.  Suffice it to say that 1983 was a simpler time.  Anyway, Murphy and Aykroyd concoct a plan to intercept the information and swap it out with a fugazi document.  The confidential information is itself trading places, and Murphy and Aykroyd trade places with the two brothers from an inside information perspective.

Third, this ruins the two wealthy brothers, rendering them homeless, while Aykroyd and Murphy become fantastically rich.  The brothers get their come-up five years later in Coming to America.

Fourth, "trading places" also refers to the exchange floor on which Murphy and Aykroyd execute the final steps of their scheme.  In a nutshell, they know that the orange crop is large (based on the USDA report they stole) while their enemies think it will be small (based on the fugazi report they planted).  The brothers aggressively buy OJ futures, driving the price up.  Other traders see what the brothers are doing and, assuming the bros are sharps, start buying as well and further increase the price.  Meanwhile the heroes sell OJ futures and make a profit.  Once the real crop report is released everyone realizes the futures are worthless and hurriedly sell, cratering the price.  This all happens at the "trading place."

This plot may seem far-fetched, but in 2010 (almost 30 years later!) the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission testified before Congress that the movies' market manipulation scheme did not violate the Commodity Exchange Act.  You could do that!  In response, Congress amended the CEA to prohibit insider trading using information misappropriated from the government.  This is commonly referred to as "The Eddie Murphy Rule."  I shit you not.

via GIPHY

I thought of this while reading about DJ Trump's latest grift.  For $100,000 a month, you can get early access to his bleats on Truth Social and that price is worth it given that these Diet Coke and Big Mac addled missives move markets.  The press release admits as much:

“Markets already move on Truth Social posts,” said Kevin McGurn, Interim Chief Executive Officer of TMTG. “Truth API delivers a direct, licensed, real-time feed of the platform’s most market-moving Truths while advancing our strategy to monetize proprietary assets through a high-margin, recurring revenue stream. As adoption grows, we expect Truth API to become a meaningful, ongoing source of revenue for the company, creating lasting value for shareholders.”

The president's company is publicly promoting a subscription to "proprietary" information that moves markets and touting their ability to "monetize" this information to form a "recurring revenue stream."  They are admitting, out in the open, that you can buy confidential government information from the president to make money in financial markets.  And every financial services company will need to subscribe simply to keep pace with everyone else.  As one of my favorite writers put it, "Donald Trump is an innovator in the field of corruption."

All of this seems to run completely afoul of the Eddie Murphy Rule though, and enforcement would bring about a clash of two titans of 1980s culture: Eddie Murphy and Donald Trump.  Release the Kraken, indeed!