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Fed to ban policymakers from owning individual stocks

cnbc.com

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Re: Fed to ban policymakers from owning individual stocks

#171

Post by buu700 »

pessimizer wrote: post #110
awb wrote: post #7

The relatively low salaries compared to the huge amounts of power is almost begging for insider trading, influence peddling, etc. > The salary of a Congress member varies based on the job title of the congressman or senator. Most senators, representatives, delegates and the resident commissioner from Puerto Rico make a salary of $174,000 per year. https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/pay-salary/congressman-... Then a…

This is an example of the "you can pay people not to be corrupt" argument. It relies on people who are both willing to be corrupt, and happy to leave money on the table. It's exactly the same argument as paying for media not to include advertisements. What we should do is stop filtering for trash by having jobs that pay $174K require multi-million dollar application fees (i.e. a campaign.) That's exactly how you woul…

What if we substantially raised salaries — let's say to $100m/yr for the president, and lower but proportional amounts for all other major officials at the federal level — while on the other hand treating corruption-related crimes for those officials as tantamount to light treason?

(Just a thought experiment, not something I'm seriously proposing.)

Re: Fed to ban policymakers from owning individual stocks

#173

Post by throwaway0a5e »

gremIin wrote: post #162
pessimizer wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an example of the "you can pay people not to be corrupt" argument. It relies on people who are both willing to be corrupt, and happy to leave money on the table. It's exactly the same argument as paying for media not to include advertisements. What we should do is stop filtering for trash by having jobs that pay $174K require multi-million dollar application fees (i.e. a campaign.) That's exactly how you woul…

> The best a centrist can do is wait for the courts to fix it. That is not how corruption is fixed.

No he's right. The courts will fix this. After the people "come up with a solution" that doesn't involve going through the courts. The courts hate that.

Re: Fed to ban policymakers from owning individual stocks

#174

Post by MatmaRex »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #156

If you read past the headline to just the first bullet point, you don't even have to go past there: > The Federal Reserve announced sweeping new rules for its top officials Thursday, banning trading in individual stocks and bonds. The top officials of the Fed. not congress people. The comments thread here is making me wonder if all HN comment threads are made up mostly of posters who haven't read beyond the headline.

You should assume that no one read the article. I certainly did not before coming to read the comments (although I have enough restraint to not comment myself on the substance of it when I do that).

For better or worse, the title and the link is just a discussion prompt. The guidelines all but state that you're not expected to read it before commenting:

> https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."

In this case, someone should probably edit the title.

Re: Fed to ban policymakers from owning individual stocks

#175

Post by fennecfoxen »

pphysch wrote: post #95
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively - maybe it's not so great that government is so big and central and has so much power. Politicians are gonna find ways to corrupt that power no matter what. The same could be said for megacorps. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. China and Chinese SOEs are going to be big and powerful and centralized for the foreseeable future no matter what - and if we don't have anything to oppose them -…

Deliberately getting rid of "big government" just leads to even more unaccountable megacorps filling the void. That's been the lesson of America for the past 40-50 years. If you want any chance of competing on the global stage in the 3rd millennium, the solution is to embrace big government and do it right. It is possible to implement anti-corruption mechanisms. Like any security measure, they will never be infallibl…

Meh. It’s a lot easier to hold big mega corps to account with small government than it is to hold big government to account by any means whatsoever.

Besides, in practice big government rather prefers doing business with a few big companies and national labor unions who will pay for the politicians’ campaigns and talk up their agenda — applying discretionary enforcement to hobble enemies, and big-time regulation can be a major barrier to entry that reduces competition for your friends. Perhaps you don’t believe me? For a trivial example in recent memory about how government is happy to oppress its enemies by “holding them to account”, consider Operation Chokepoint.

It’s a valid concern, mind you! I’m just skeptical of the remedy. You need a hell of a lot of faith in the policies of the next several decades to think this is a good idea. I don’t.

Re: Fed to ban policymakers from owning individual stocks

#176

Post by buu700 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #156

If you read past the headline to just the first bullet point, you don't even have to go past there: > The Federal Reserve announced sweeping new rules for its top officials Thursday, banning trading in individual stocks and bonds. The top officials of the Fed. not congress people. The comments thread here is making me wonder if all HN comment threads are made up mostly of posters who haven't read beyond the headline.

I was noticing the same thing. Got confused at the comments talking about Congress and thought maybe I'd missed something.

Re: Fed to ban policymakers from owning individual stocks

#177

Post by baby »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #156

If you read past the headline to just the first bullet point, you don't even have to go past there: > The Federal Reserve announced sweeping new rules for its top officials Thursday, banning trading in individual stocks and bonds. The top officials of the Fed. not congress people. The comments thread here is making me wonder if all HN comment threads are made up mostly of posters who haven't read beyond the headline.

dang, title should probably be changed :o

Re: Fed to ban policymakers from owning individual stocks

#178

Post by _3u10 »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #156

If you read past the headline to just the first bullet point, you don't even have to go past there: > The Federal Reserve announced sweeping new rules for its top officials Thursday, banning trading in individual stocks and bonds. The top officials of the Fed. not congress people. The comments thread here is making me wonder if all HN comment threads are made up mostly of posters who haven't read beyond the headline.

This is perfect policy, the Fed affects macros not individual stocks so it sounds like the government is doing something when it’s ensuring that Fed officials are only investing in indexes / macros which is where Fed policies are likely to affect markets the greatest.

In startup parlance the fed is the rising tide.

Re: Fed to ban policymakers from owning individual stocks

#179

Post by _3u10 »

buu700 wrote: post #171
pessimizer wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an example of the "you can pay people not to be corrupt" argument. It relies on people who are both willing to be corrupt, and happy to leave money on the table. It's exactly the same argument as paying for media not to include advertisements. What we should do is stop filtering for trash by having jobs that pay $174K require multi-million dollar application fees (i.e. a campaign.) That's exactly how you woul…

What if we substantially raised salaries — let's say to $100m/yr for the president, and lower but proportional amounts for all other major officials at the federal level — while on the other hand treating corruption-related crimes for those officials as tantamount to light treason? (Just a thought experiment, not something I'm seriously proposing.)

More income means more leverage.

Re: Fed to ban policymakers from owning individual stocks

#180

Post by robbmorganf »

whimsicalism wrote: post #109
robbmorganf wrote: post #102

For the Fed, this doesn't seem enough. Their policy has a predictable effect on the whole market, so I think they should not be trading in the couple of weeks leading up to a Fed announcement.

Or just require them to plan their trade and publicly disclose like at least a week in advance. If you become known for being uh.. "corrupt", the market will price out your gains.

This is a much better idea than the one I had.
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