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Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

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Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#161

Post by ckardat123 »

smcin wrote: post #101
ckardat123 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The list on the homepage just shows recent transactions. You can search for individuals on top to see their full transaction list. Lummis bought up to $100K of Bitcoin in 2021: https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/politician/Cynth...

I had already searched your site and found nothing. But that was because I misspelled her name as 'Loomis' not 'Lummis'. Anyway when I search under correct name, I only find 2 trades, from 2021. She really had no other trades?

Yeah looks like it.

Here's where you can search for the source disclosures - only seeing two trades on her periodic transaction reports: https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#162

Post by pc86 »

toast0 wrote: post #132
BurningFrog wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of any other situation when one person getting a job puts legal obligations on their spouse, but I haven't looked into it.

My spouse was an elected official in California, which came with reporting requirements for stock transactions and gifts for both of us[1] But then, in a community property state, we don't have separate stock transactions and gifts, valued economically, aren't usually seperable either (there's exceptions or at least higher gift limits from family gifts, which are likely sources for seperable gifts) For us, it was eas…

I wonder if states can require this type of disclosure from federally elected officials or it violates some other law.

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#163

Post by jakelazaroff »

carabiner wrote: post #130
rwmj wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does a "Congress tracker fund" make money? What with all the rumoured insider trading ...

AOC claimed the insider trading is an open secret in Congress because: * Congress members don't get paid much and like money. * They are often old with healthcare issues. Their govt health plans are not great. * They maintain two residences, one in DC and one in their home state. AOC rents an apartment in NYC that she never lives in and one in DC. This is a huge expense. Closing this privilege might have other uninte…

These are different problems, right?

> Congress members don't get paid much and like money.

They're paid $174,000 per year. [1] That's 3–4x the median US salary. I know it's not, like, lucrative, but if they wanted a lucrative salary they should have gotten a different job!

> They are often old with healthcare issues. Their govt health plans are not great.

Fix the government health plan. Or better yet, make it a public health plan available to everyone!

> They maintain two residences, one in DC and one in their home state. AOC rents an apartment in NYC that she never lives in and one in DC. This is a huge expense.

There are only 541 of these people (plus aides, etc). The government should have an official building for sitting Congresspeople to live in. Like a dorm, but for electeds!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_members_of_the_Uni...

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#164

Post by ng12 »

_ea1k wrote: post #4

In practice, how would this work? A requirement that they only use index funds? But then wouldn't that bias them to support the companies that are the major movers in that index? Indexes are often heavily weighted to a small subset after all. TBH, it seems like an idea that sounds good on the surface but has practical issues in implementation that would make it irrelevant

For the record this is basically the system for finance employees. You can only freely trade open-ended index funds. You can buy individual securities but only after a compliance review and with restrictions against short-term/swing trading.

If we believe this to be effective for individuals on Wall Street I'm sure it's a good start for Congress.

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#165

Post by ghaff »

datavirtue wrote: post #136
vinceguidry wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would this solve the problem? They're still incentivized to make decisions on behalf of the nation in their own financial interests. The conflict of interest in the financial industry is with the companies they work with and for. For lawmakers it's with the whole country. They should absolutely not be allowed to benefit personally from legislating.

I wish we just called people up like we do for jury duty.

That basically devolves all the power to full-time congressional staffs because the representatives themselves would be even less educated on issues before them than they are today.

(Though this is already close to being the case in some states that only have part-time legislators who are paid next to nothing.)

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#166

Post by pc86 »

mcpackieh wrote: post #126
tivert wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> To less of a degree, when applying for law enforcement jobs, family members and sometimes friends have to surrender a lot of personal data. I had to [hand] over my SSN along with pretty much all my PII and do interviews on behalf family members when they applied to be cops. I tried to say no, but at the end of the day they're holding their jobs hostage until I comply. Hate it. > What, the cops are actually doing a…

> preventing infiltration by organized crime Sounds like they're trying to weed out some of the bad apples then, aren't they? Would you rather they not be doing this? It doesn't address all the ways in which a cop might be bad, but you shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Nothing they said even remotely suggests they're against this type of background check, just that checking up on your wife's credit and social circle says nothing about whether you are a "bad apple" yourself.

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#167

Post by kjkjadksj »

capital_guy wrote: post #10
_ea1k wrote: post #4

In practice, how would this work? A requirement that they only use index funds? But then wouldn't that bias them to support the companies that are the major movers in that index? Indexes are often heavily weighted to a small subset after all. TBH, it seems like an idea that sounds good on the surface but has practical issues in implementation that would make it irrelevant

This is a ridiculous take. Imperfect is better than bad. Right now you have the Speaker of the House's husband buying $5million worth of Alphabet call options. That's not a good system.

Plenty of people do that. Asking someone to hang up their hat on their career due to the optics of their spouses career alone is kind of stupid.

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#168

Post by kjkjadksj »

thedangler wrote: post #11

Have you seen how much wealth a lot of congress have gained over their careers. There is no way someone can look at those numbers and come to the conclusion that they did become multi millionaires without inside information. It should be banned out right or every position they take is public knowledge within 1 trading day or less. "Representative Nancy Pelosi has made up to $12.5M off of Microsoft stock so far this y…

Nancy Pelosi is married to a fund manager. Most congressional returns underperform the market.

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#169

Post by tiltowait »

mschuster91 wrote: post #95
skizm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To less of a degree, when applying for law enforcement jobs, family members and sometimes friends have to surrender a lot of personal data. I had to hand over my SSN along with pretty much all my PII and do interviews on behalf family members when they applied to be cops. I tried to say no, but at the end of the day they're holding their jobs hostage until I comply. Hate it.

What, the cops are actually doing at least something to weed out the bad apples now? Sarcasm aside: interesting how far they go for a simple copper on the street now. Here in Germany, that level of background checks (Sicherheitsüberprüfung Ü2/Ü3) is only done for higher level (i.e. leadership) cops and IT staff. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicherheits%C3%BCberpr%C3%BCfu...

A friend applied for a state police job. They wanted references and interviews not only from immediate family members, but also a number of friends, his adjacent neighbors, multiple current coworkers, his current supervisor, and all past supervisors he was able to get ahold of (with detailed explanations if he was unable to comply with the last).

And then, when they interviewed me, they asked me for further references for him.

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#170

Post by ghaff »

datavirtue wrote: post #148
Brian_K_White wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wife may be privy to the banks customers activities, and the husband must be considered privy to all the same, simply by proximity regardless of her honesty or intent. The wife may have knowledge about $bigco buying or selling $bigthing, and the husband may gain that same knowledge from her, even if she's honest and never intentionally disclosed it. (people aren't perfect and clues can slip, or he simply has acce…

I worked at a publicly traded company where everyone internal had knowledge of product releases with Apple. It was a trading frenzy with open discussion of trading decisions that predictably paid off. I remember it distinctly because it was right after company-wide training on insider trading with talks of prison time etc before our discounted stock grants. All it did was teach people how to conduct insider trading.…

While I don't know the specifics, product releases tend to have a whole lot less to do with stock movement than the details of financial performance. And during much of the last couple of decades it has been pretty hard for investments in Apple not to pay off.
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