Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 229 posts

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

#91

Post by mgkimsal »

DavidPeiffer wrote: post #76
leesalminen wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bernie Sanders is worth $3 million and has never worked outside of politics in his entire life. Maybe that seems like not a lot to the SV types, but it’s far, far more than what most people I know have to show for a lifetime of actually hard work. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rich-bernie-sanders-210000864...

He's also 80 and still working. $310/month invested over 60 years is about $3 million at 7% annual growth. Or assume he had nothing until being elected to the senate in 2007, then started putting 60k/year into an S&P 500 index fund. That also gets you to about $3 million.

I mostly take your point(s), and really... $3m is not a large amount for someone who's worked and been moderately diligent about finances. You don't need to have insider knowledge or bend the rules to have saved $3m over 60 years. BUT... $310/month back in 1950 was a lot of 'savable' income for most working people. Most manufacturing workers in mid 1950s were earning under $2.50/hr - even assuming some overtime, monthly earning might be $500.

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

#92

Post by kube-system »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #84
kube-system wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

...assuming they're not already dead by then.

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

#93

Post by tusslewake »

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...

If it's reasonable to assume that someone like a Fed president is aware of the perils of market timing, of information asymmetries, of the disadvantage that an individual investor has against institutional funds, etc.--is there any plausible explanation for his trading individual stocks outside of being in possession of some kind of insider information that gives him an edge on the market?

Surely he can't just claim that he doesn't know what he's doing.

And could a Fed president be in a position to have legal insider information that gives him an edge on trading individual stocks, or is any insider info that he could trade on illegal to do so by definition?

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

#94

Post by WaitWaitWha »

merrywhether wrote: post #90
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.

Apologies, but I am unclear if you are facetious or serious. (not native English writer.) Can you explain what you mean?

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

#95

Post by whatever1 »

If we did not force every single wannabe pensioner to play in the stock market casino, we would not care about the players count cards or have bribed the croupier.

But here we are. In a casino. Us the dumb speculators against the skilled players.

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

#98

Post by rsynnott »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #3

And their partners, parents, children, friends? This problem looks unsolvable to me.

I mean, this isn't a new problem. If the kid of the CEO of BigCorp Ltd buys shares in MediumCorp Pty and then BigCorp buys MediumCorp the next day, the regulators will absolutely take an interest in that.

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

#99

Post by logicchains »

realce wrote: post #61
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #55

I'm completely fine with politicians being paid significantly more if them, their partners and their relatives faced serious prison time is they did the sort of insider trading that is considered completely normal and weirdly they're allowed to do but it's illegal if the lowly plebs do it. End of the day these people are paid very little on paper for the amount of pressure and responsibility yet if you follow their f…

Here here! I think we need to deeply reexamine how much we pay officials. Senators/Governors should probably get triple their current pay with severe penalties for any financial fraud. This was one of the better Andrew Yang points too. Reps have very little financial incentive to do the "right thing" and we could help them realign that incentive by just paying them more.

> Here here! I think we need to deeply reexamine how much we pay officials. Senators/Governors should probably get triple their current pay with severe penalties for any financial fraud.

Singapore is an example of why this doesn't work. It pays the prime minister $5 million/year, in theory to prevent corruption. However he got around this by making his wife CEO of Temasek, Singapore's national investment company which everybody is mandated to invest in via the central provident fund. And it's all perfectly on the books and legal, because the PM creates the law, in spite of the fact that in any other context it'd be considered corruption.

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

#100

Post by rsynnott »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #21
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #3

And their partners, parents, children, friends? This problem looks unsolvable to me.

> 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?

Quite a lot of historical nations had most civil administration operated by eunuchs, for exactly this reason. Obviously not foolproof, as eunuchs have friends and family, and probably not practical to implement today, of course :)
Post reply on HN