(FORTUNE Magazine) – Trading in the stock market on nonpublic material information is generally discussed these days as the crime of the century, or anyway right up there on a par with ageism. Ever since the Boesky bombshell, it has not been easy for folks like yours truly -- who basically believe insider trading does more good than harm -- to find kindred spirits out there in the world of public discussion. But now we have found not one but two discussants seeming to talk sense, and furthermore both of them were on the same program the other day. It was like hitting a quinella. Opening the program, which took place December 15 at George Mason University in Virginia, was Henry Manne. Henry is dean of the university's law school, author of Insider Trading and the Stock Market (1966), and definitely the big daddy of the view that insideism is good for you. Having stolen his ideas for years, we were scarcely surprised to hear him expound the case that insider trading increases market efficiency, meaning that it helps stock prices get rapidly to where they ought to be. (In case you are wondering, Henry does not defend Ivan, FORTUNE's Crook of the Year, because this person was egregiously bribing others to violate their plain duties and obligations.) We kept waiting for the second speaker to contradict Manne on the blessings of insider trading. Instead he agreed and praised Manne for being ''a very courageous and embattled proponent of taking a little more rational and economic-oriented look at insider trading, and trying to cut through the rhetorical and emotional debate.'' The speaker was himself extremely courageous. He was Greg Jarrell, chief economist of the Securities and Exchange Commission (which is, of course, at the center of the great crusade against insider trading). Well, fairly courageous. As he mentioned to the audience, he was planning to leave the commission in two weeks. One yearns to hear the views of his successor.