Time and again, top long-distance runners get popped for performance-enhancing drugs. As a running fan, I then get to read about how disappointing the whole thing is, how the governing bodies need to do more, and, most importantly, how immoral and devious the runner was for cheating.

So why is cheating so rampant? A big part is that the consequences of cheating are hilariously tiny relative to the reward of getting away with it. If you are from East Africa and can win 10x the GDP of your village by doping…I mean, is it even more immoral to cheat or not to cheat? And to get a chance at that reward, the risk you take is that you will be caught (hardly a given) and suspended from competitive running, which stinks…but not that much. For a first offense you can always come back.

Having consequences that adequately deter bad behavior is an important part of the glue that holds civilization together. Just trusting everyone to “do the right thing” is a ludicrous recipe for disaster. If the punishment for murder was a stern rebuke, there would be more murder. It’s not super complicated.

Markets work the same way. To function, participants have to believe that markets are fair. Why don’t investors from the largest economy in the world invest much in the stock market of the second largest economy in the world? Because, rightly or wrongly, a large swathe of US investors (and frankly Chinese investors) don’t think they are going to be treated fairly in the Chinese stock market. And because of that, the Chinese stock market suffers from much weaker demand. Over the last 10 years, the Chinese stock market has cumulatively grown less than the Chinese economy. Good luck finding another country with that badge of dishonor.

It is obvious that there has been rampant insider trading going on in oil markets since the start of the war. Here is one article if you aren’t up to speed on the lore. This week, the DOJ and CFTC said they are going to investigate. What will be the consequence of a 9 or 10 figure score? Will it be enough to deter this from happening again? I’m not holding my breath. Instead, I expect another small erosion in confidence that US markets are fair. Of course, this by itself isn’t going to cause a cataclysmic unwind of confidence in US markets. But we’ve already seen a piling up of reasons for investors - US and otherwise - to spread their bets more globally. Adding another to the mix is not helpful.