Pelosi rejects stock-trading ban for members of Congress

21–22 of 22 posts

Re: Pelosi rejects stock-trading ban for members of Congress

#21

Post by nescioquid » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 4:38 AM UTC

nescioquid wrote: post #13

parineum wrote: post #4

> "The speaker does not own any stocks," said Hammill. "As you can see from the required disclosures, with which the speaker fully cooperates, these transactions are marked 'SP' for spouse. The Speaker has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions." lol

Indeed. With a so-called "chinese wall" that only happens to work in one direction (husband has access to info from his wife, but he is careful not to tell her about his/their trading), this might not be a fib, but would certainly be a shining example of equivocation and corruption.

I apologize for responding to myself, but I want to point out that I don't know the specific laws that may govern whatever account under which Pelosi's husband is executing trades. As I understand it, all property between spouses (in Minnesota, at least) is considered implicitly as "joint tenants in common" between spouses, but this may not be the case in California.

If all property in California is considered joint tenants in common between spouses, then this gives the lie (not mere equivocation) to the statement that "...the speaker does not own any stocks".

Can anyone shed light on this matter?

Re: Pelosi rejects stock-trading ban for members of Congress

#22

Post by xboxnolifes » Thu, Dec 16, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

SteveNuts wrote: post #11

sschueller wrote: post #2

No surprise there as she is one of the ones that has made a lot of money on trades. Especially her husband who seem to have a sixth sense on when to trade... Maybe an alright ban isn't "fair" but then the SEC should have the power to look very closely at possible insider trading. This also include insights into closed hearings that produced information that was traded on. However, a ban would be so much easier, yet w…

Stupid question, but is it still considered insider trading if the information gleaned is not directly from a company insider? I mean, if a senator gets wind of upcoming legislation that may affect a specific company or sector, and they act on that, it's not insider information coming from someone within the affected company, so is that still considered insider?

I'd argue the knowledge of upcoming legislation itself is the insider information. It's not insider as in "inside the company's organization" but it is insider as in "inside the legislation organization". When it's your job to make decisions that can impact entire economic sectors, a lot of what you touch would be considered far more powerful insider information than most things that are considered insider information in a company.

Maybe it doesn't fall under current definitions of insider information (I'm not sure), but maybe it should.

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