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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

#171

Post by pc86 »

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…

"We should allow members of Congress to trade stocks using insider information so that poor people can afford to run for Congress" (which costs a million bucks, give or take) is certainly an interesting take.

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

#172

Post by bee_rider »

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…

That seems like a good argument for raising their salaries. Increasing the candidate pool beyond the independently wealthy is good, but letting them do a little crime is a bad way of increasing the candidate pool.

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

#173

Post by minkzilla »

jakearmitage wrote: post #93
ckardat123 wrote: post #39

I started building out tools to track congressional stock trading in 2020. Since then, I believe there have been 9 other proposals similar to this one. None of them have been even called to a vote. It seem like Congress is pretty unwilling to regulate its own trading. Until they are, feel free to track the trading here: https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/

I wish there was a tool that allowed me to follow Congress as if it was an index. Automatically buying and selling what they buy and sell. Right from my Fidelity or something.

NANC and KRUZ ETFs track democrats and republican holdings respectively. A word of caution: there are articles online that have looked at individual senators and most of them unperformed compared to the SP500

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

#174

Post by j33zusjuice »

munchler wrote: post #83
harry8 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of thing, outsiders from both sides of government joining to try to get something done is the only way you will ever get any reform. Also why the insiders from both sides will be so scathing about outsiders on the other side and claim they are literally $evil_person_from_history

I'm scathing about Josh Hawley because he encouraged a coup against the US government, not because he's some sort of "outsider".

Hawley’s on the same level as Greene. They’re insane, incredibly stupid, or incredibly bad.

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

#175

Post by mcpackieh »

pc86 wrote: post #166
mcpackieh wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's a confusing comment because in one paragraph they say the practice doesn't weed out bad apples, but then in the subsequent paragraph they concede that it probably does. The only way to square these is if cops affiliated with organized crime aren't classified as bad apples, but that makes zero sense.

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

#176

Post by rsynnott »

dataflow wrote: post #151
rsynnott wrote: post #116

This seems completely reasonable; it's arguably surprising it hasn't been done before. The devil will be in the details; in particular it would likely have to extend to spouses.

This doesn't seem reasonable at all? Ban on trading while during office is one thing, ban on keeping preexisting ownership is quite something else.

There are plenty of jobs with rules about this; some of them are quite extensive and can cover spouses. There are rules about it for certain US government employees, for instance. Don't want to be subject to it? Don't take the job; no-one's forcing these people to run for election.

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

#177

Post by j33zusjuice »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #167
capital_guy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Rofl. Please don’t vote.

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

#178

Post by pc86 »

RajT88 wrote: post #103
philipov wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I recall someone doing that analysis and posting about it on HN, but I don't remember what the conclusion was.

There's been articles which did the math before. Several - really every few years someone takes another pass at it. They do well. Generally, retiring their tenure wealthier than their congressional salary would allow at a 100% savings rate.

Honestly a 100% savings rate isn't terribly hard when all your campaign costs are covered, your travel is covered, your office expenses are covered, and lobbyists or donors pick up the tab on a lot of miscellaneous things. Even assuming zero fraud/abuse/illegality, given that you typically already need to be at least moderately successful financially to run for federal office it's not crazy to think that most members of Congress probably already have paid off cars, paid off or close to paid off homes, etc. Not to mention spouses that probably also have very good paying jobs given the connections you're likely to already have by the time you're running.

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

#179

Post by legitster »

I think a complete ban on owning individual stocks would be a bit overkill. Perhaps, controversially, I believe members of the government should own some stock - I want them personally invested in the economic wellbeing of the country. I also don't want to limit the candidate pool artificially to just professional politicians.

But the fix here seems pretty easy. If you are an executive at a publicly traded corporation, you have to disclose any changes in your position of that stock months in advance. Just make politicians follow the same process for the entire stock market.

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

#180

Post by r3trohack3r »

neilv wrote: post #50

I would love for all lawmakers to be limited to market index investing. Say, asset allocation (other than their home and a Washington pied a terre) of 50% US stocks index, 20% non-US stocks index, 30% US bonds index. No stock-picking. No sector-picking. No real estate other than through the indexes. No private company ownership. No trusts. No circumvention. Alignment with ordinary people's retirement funds seems grea…

On the surface this seems pretty decent game theory wise, particularly if you implement annual or bi-annual trading windows with a delay in trade execution (I.e. a trade must be publicly declared 120 days before it is executed) and if those restrictions stay in place long after their tenure in office to discourage prioritizing short term returns over long term stability.

AFAICT, forcing lawmakers to invest in total market index funds (with only buy/sell and maybe stop-loss; where total market is defined as an index fund tracking every publicly traded stock in proportion to its value) where it is difficult to make short term trades with insider knowledge of major market moving events would align their incentives with both our retirement accounts and improving a major slice of the economy.

One might say law makers would circumvent this regulation by having friends and family make the trades on their behalf, an outcome Id welcome; it’s easier to catch them making illegal trades when they have to coordinate to make it happen.

I think it would also mean a significant portion of your compensation as a lawmaker is a direct result of developing the markets. In some ways, regulation like this looks like performance based compensation.

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