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Many believe it's time to do away with lawmakers making stock trades

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Re: Many believe it's time to do away with lawmakers making stock trades

#81

Post by lastofthemojito »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #54
bastardoperator wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's widespread, republicans seem to be doing it more though https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/us/politics/david-perdue-... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/19/doj-will-not-charge-sen-rich... https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/11/rand-paul... https://tulsaworld.com/news/u-s-sen-jim-inhofe-responds-afte...

I wouldn’t make it a Republican/Democrat thing since that’s guaranteed to start a flame war, Pelosi’s husband is the highest profile culprit but as you said corruption is widespread.

Pelosi's husband isn't a lawmaker himself though ... which makes me wonder, if there was a ban on lawmakers (and their spouses) actively trading, I wonder if we'd see divorces of convenience. "Oh sure, my ex-husband (and now boyfriend) trades stocks, but that's none of the public's business". Gotta think people who have an edge that can help them get rich(er) will do anything within the letter of the law to keep that edge, rather than you know, comply with the spirit of the law.

Re: Many believe it's time to do away with lawmakers making stock trades

#82

Post by Denvercoder9 »

andrewla wrote: post #77

Regulation is a poor substitute for criminal prosecution. Law enforcement at the Federal level needs to investigate and prosecute cases where members of Congress have even apparently abused their position for personal profit. Banning stock trading will just push things into more indirect methods; giving law enforcement the power to enforce the law means that the very fact that they attempted to use indirect methods a…

You can only prosecute after it has been made illegal, though.

Re: Many believe it's time to do away with lawmakers making stock trades

#83

Post by mylons »

this gets brought up every few years. it’s basically click bait at this point. the only way we see change on this is if the corrupt people who can make millions doing almost nothing vote against their own financial interests. there could be riots in the streets but they still wouldn’t restrict their power.

Re: Many believe it's time to do away with lawmakers making stock trades

#84

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

kube-system wrote: post #28
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This problem looks unsolvable to me. Elect only people with no living relatives, and execute them after term's end. I vaguely remember some fantasy novel I've read many decades ago with this premise... The Goblin tower?

Sounds like a good way to elect leaders that have no disincentive for staring a thermonuclear war.

Ok, provision A: in the event of the thermonuclear war, the elected leader should be taken to a protected bunker, where he should be killed in the slowest and most painful way.

Re: Many believe it's time to do away with lawmakers making stock trades

#85

Post by spaetzleesser »

rajin444 wrote: post #56
andrew_ wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a word for ignorance based on tribalism? Legitimate question; I'd like to add it to my vocabulary, and it would perfectly describe the parent comment.

Politics.

Especially American politics. It seems to be a very american phenomenon for voters to find bad things only on the "other" side and totally ignore the same thing on "their" side.

Re: Many believe it's time to do away with lawmakers making stock trades

#86

Post by chapium »

mylons wrote: post #83

this gets brought up every few years. it’s basically click bait at this point. the only way we see change on this is if the corrupt people who can make millions doing almost nothing vote against their own financial interests. there could be riots in the streets but they still wouldn’t restrict their power.

In the US at least, the courts can check this power. In theory.

Re: Many believe it's time to do away with lawmakers making stock trades

#87

Post by [deleted] »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #11

Particularly bad violations have been the Fed presidents making multimillion dollar trades with personal accounts, and Nancy Pelosi’s husband apparently directly trading on privileged information. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/16/fed-chief-powell-orders-ethi... https://fortune.com/2021/07/08/house-speaker-nancy-pelosi-hu...

[deleted]

Re: Many believe it's time to do away with lawmakers making stock trades

#88

Post by ramblenode »

Before the STOCK Act passed, Congress outperformed the market by 20%, with some senior Republican leaders doing as well as 35% [0,1].

Before the pandemic began in the US, 4 US Senators were picking up medical stocks after closed-door briefings. Investigations were opened by the DOJ, but they were all dropped.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/congress-i...

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/fire.12180

Re: Many believe it's time to do away with lawmakers making stock trades

#89

Post by Consultant32452 »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #81
camjohnson26 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t make it a Republican/Democrat thing since that’s guaranteed to start a flame war, Pelosi’s husband is the highest profile culprit but as you said corruption is widespread.

Pelosi's husband isn't a lawmaker himself though ... which makes me wonder, if there was a ban on lawmakers (and their spouses) actively trading, I wonder if we'd see divorces of convenience. "Oh sure, my ex-husband (and now boyfriend) trades stocks, but that's none of the public's business". Gotta think people who have an edge that can help them get rich(er) will do anything within the letter of the law to keep that…

Courts are pretty good at not letting people get away with these sorts of "loopholes." Judges tend not to interpret the law like an autistic person.

Re: Many believe it's time to do away with lawmakers making stock trades

#90

Post by merrywhether »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #72

term limits I think term limits would hamper development of long term relationships with lobbyists, and similar and in turn reduce the occurrence of these trades.

Or give lobbyists more power over the revolving cast of lawmakers who each want to cash in during their short window of opportunity.
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