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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

#121

Post by deelowe »

Causality1 wrote: post #106

Holding any elected position should come with a lifetime ban against holding stock in any publicly traded company, full stop. Congressman, president, sheriff, county commissioner, I don't care. Either you're a public servant or you aren't. My position in the government wasn't even an elected one and I still believe the oath I took is fundamentally incompatible with holding stock.

That's terribly easy to get around. The rich don't operate as sole proprietorships. Instead, it's a family business with money held in trusts and word of mouth contracts. "Falling out of favor with the family" is a euphemism for violating some form of an agreement. And when you hold public office, there are plenty options to deal with dissenters.

Placing restrictions on what investments a person holding public office can hold is a very naive solution. Instead, acting on material nonpublic information is what should be against the law.

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

#122

Post by nine_zeros »

neom wrote: post #108
ramblenode wrote: post #88

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/1…

Is there a Congress ETF?

Whoa whoa slow down there, what are we, a free market?

That's only for HNWI and hedge funds.

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

#123

Post by giantg2 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #111
giantg2 wrote: post #35

It's the most blatant example of insider trading. Company insiders might have inside access to a single company. Lawmakers have access to inside information that can affect the entire industry or market. It's a perfect example of how we do have class stratification in society and that rule of law and equality are laughably distant ideas in a sea of hypocrisy.

I think the cleanest law here is to change the law to clarify that non-public information gained by public servants and representatives that can have an affect on a stock's price should be treated as "material non-public information." Then the SEC can do their jobs like they do with other insider traders. Remember that ONLY elected congresspeople are exempt from rules like that. Other public servants are not. This is…

I'd go a step further and restrict them to index funds. Even just holding a stock could affect their judgement. So they might not trade it to their benefit, but they might make the wrong policy decision for the country.

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

#124

Post by naveen99 »

If I were supreme, I’d make all publicly traded trades public. Publish the identities of the trading counterparties along with the volume and price of the trade. I mean these markets are supposed to be public. You get better price discovery and less stealing from insider information… to know your counterparty is like rule number 1 in any business. Somehow in the ambiguously public, public markets, it’s private.

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

#125

Post by nzrf »

leesalminen wrote: post #48
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...

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...

Let’s say Bernie is saver. He could have easily a massed 3 million by his age. This if he had started at younger age let’s say 20. Compounding interest is a pretty powerful force over years . Bernie is not quite a young guy and has been working his entire life.

3 million isn’t exactly a lot of you live within your means and save.

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

#126

Post by njx »

barbazoo wrote: post #34
Pxtl wrote: post #25

Honestly, pay them more. In every major country, if they're running orgs that have multi-hundred-billion-dollar budgets per year, and you have a few hundred of these people, you can pay them well-enough that sneaking around isn't really profitable. It would not be unreasonable to allocate 0.1% of your budget to compensating the people who control the budget, in exchange for them abandoning their conflict-of-interest…

I'm not sure their greed can ever be satisfied. How about electing people with a functioning moral compass instead of these muppets clearly only looking out for themselves. Oh wait, that's not possible, then you'd have to vote "for the other side" every now and then.

This is it. Greed has no boundaries!

++ "electing people with a functioning moral compass"

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

#127

Post by ArchStanton »

I have no problem with lawmakers making stock trades, but you can certainly argue that it is immediately made public. To be fair, there are probably edge conditions where a congressman has direct control over the financial realities of a publicly related company.

I think the more heinous cases are lawmakers becoming lobbyists and (worse) lawmakers making huge bucks on public speaking which is a very thinly veiled bit of influence peddling. Believe me, the Clintons didn't get paid $153M to give short speeches. (https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/hillary-clinton-bill... )

I suppose when you get down to it, as government becomes more powerful it becomes more gameable.

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

#128

Post by bjourne »

When discussing doping in sports people are generally receptive to the following argument: Athletes will do everything they can to dope because the benefits far outweighs the drawbacks. It is probable that many of the world's top athletes are doped.

However, when discussing financial trading people are generally not receptive to the following argument: Stock traders will do everything they can to exploit inside information because the benefits far outweighs the drawbacks. It is probable that those who consistently outperform indexes exploit inside information.

Why the discrepancy? Do people believe that successful stock traders in general are more honest and law-abiding than top athletes?

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

#129

Post by InitialLastName »

logicchains wrote: post #99
realce wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whic…

I don't know that Singapore (effectively a single-party state whose PM has dictatorship levels of power) is the best example of how this works in a republic (or sub-republic) with separated powers.

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

#130

Post by Denvercoder9 »

andrewla wrote: post #104
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It is illegal [1]. The phrasing is very broad: > (a)Except as permitted by subsection (b) hereof, whoever ... participates personally and substantially as a Government officer or employee ... in a judicial or other proceeding ... in which, to his knowledge, he ... has a financial interest— Shall be subject to the penalties set forth in section 216 of this title. All that is lacking is the willingness of law enforceme…

I'm no lawyer, but I would read that quote as only prohibiting the participation in proceedings when you have a financial interest in the subject matter, but not the other way around: using the knowledge you gained from participating in proceedings to create financial gain afterwards.
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