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At this point it's pretty much common knowledge that legislators engage in insider trading using nonpublic, oftentimes classified information and intelligence g

At this point it's pretty much common knowledge that legislators engage in insider trading using nonpublic, oftentimes classified information and intelligence gathered on the taxpayer dime routinely and with no fear of political or legal repercussions. They're not particularly motivated to close this loophole either, for reasons which should be obvious. This should be a much bigger issue, IMO. We the People need to make them understand this blatant self dealing will not be tolerated.

bamboozled 4y ago
While you’re at it, lobbying should be completely and utterly outlawed, anyone found taking money for political influence should be handed a hefty jail term or worse. It’s absolute filth.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  OK, so let's say you strongly believe in the mission of CampaignForFooBarForAll. You've raised money for them, you've been on the marches, you've done the phone tree. But you want to do more. Someone suggests you head to DC, and start talking to congresscritters (or their aides) about the message of CampaignForFooBarForAll. You'd love to do this. But you need to pay the rent, and for food, and other regular expenses. Someone in the campaign suggests that they could pay for you to do this for 1 month a year. Shall we send you to jail? Let's suppose that you say "yes". Now consider Jan Lobbier, who works for BigMega Corp. Jan is employed there full time, with various duties. Among them are trips and calls to DC to put the company's position in front of The People Who Matter. This is not Jan's only job, just a part of their job duties. Should Jan go to jail? What you're suggesting would mean that lobbying could only be done by the financially independent (i.e. can lobby because they don't need to work), and that seems like a bad idea for everyone.
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    I'm talking about politicians accepting donation money. Not the lobbyist themselves. If politicians didn't accept "donations" they wouldn't have a role. Politicians receive a salary, that should be enough, if the salary for a congress person isn't high enough, then we can talk about that at the next election, they also might be better at managing the economy and dealing with things like inflation because it would be a harsh reality for them, like it is for everyone else.
soulofmischief 4y ago
How do we make them understand? Practically speaking.
- nyc_data_geek1 4y ago
  Superpac to direct donations to politicians found not to be engaging in this behavior? Because electorally there appear to be no repercussions at the ballot box, so speaking the only language they really understand, that of the almighty dollar?
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  Vote them out. It's the only way.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    That doesn't really work; there's little to link a defeat with any one specific issue in most cases, and the replacement isn't likely to get in for any one specific issue either.
  - indigochill 4y ago
    Only to vote in the next round of special beneficiaries of this insider knowledge.
  - _jal 4y ago
    That only works for bad actors in an otherwise good system. Systemic incentives tend to make idealists into insiders. You can blame people for being human if you want, but you will keep getting the same results.
  - retzkek 4y ago
    Yes, punish them with a cushy private-sector job lobbying and/or on some corporate board, that'll teach 'em! This is not a game "we, the people" can win, any more than the pawns can win a chess tournament.
  - soulofmischief 4y ago
    Why hasn't this basic democratic tool worked for the last 150 years? Is it because We The People are completely brainwashed by our industrial puppetmasters at this point? The needle moves from voting to education. But how do I educate an entire generation about what they should demand from a government?
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> They're not particularly motivated to close this loophole either, for reasons which should be obvious. Agreed, but the ban on federal officials owning individual stocks is actually gaining momentum and I think has a good chance of passing, though what happens in November may change that.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  In this case, though, they were not buying & selling individual stocks. So we would need to ban them from owning any equities, even shares of S&P 500 index funds.
  - insanitybit 4y ago
    I don't see why they should be banned from being a part of a double blind fund.
    - elromulous 4y ago
      Double blind? Consider e.g. knowledge the Fed is planning on raising interest rates before the public has it. That affects the market as a whole, so they could short sp500 and have a leg up on us regular folks. The solution is simple. Being in office (or working for the federal government, or any level government for that matter) is a privilege, not a right. If you want to exercise that privilege, then you should have to give up the right to directly trade any stock/fund. Your broker whom you can't divulge any info to then has the same footing as the rest of us.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        "(or working for the federal government, or any level government for that matter)" I don't think this is right. My small town government isn't going to make any money on trading. Even if we contracted with a company big enough to be public, the contract would be too small to make any impact. Also, most in the military or civilian contractor positions have no real insight into the market moving deals. Nor do they generally have the capital to really take advantage. It's the high level officials and bureaucrats that need to be restricted, not the rank and file.
jorblumesea 4y ago
The thing is that "we the people" are busy fighting each other over every political issue under the sun. Good luck getting the American people to agree on literally anything. This is by design of course. "You don't want the gays using your bathrooms!" while they pillage the country.
- 23skidoo 4y ago
- gtirloni 4y ago
  If HN had a vote budget, I'd use it all on your comment. Right now my country is having federal elections and everything from bathrooms to what people do in their beds in private is being discussed, except actual plans for education, health and the economy. It's a celebrity shitshow and it seems to have infected most countries.
- PubliusMI 4y ago
  I think it's hilarious that you felt the need to exaggerate a genuine political conflict, transgender people using the wash facilities of their claimed sex, into the obvious strawman of not wanting homosexuals in bathrooms.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
iKevinShah 4y ago
I am not from US but I am pretty sure this is a common practice world-wide. Some places worse than others. But I used to work in Stock Exchange a few years back as System Administrator. And we were recommended to take permissions (which used to get approved quickly, within hours) to trade stocks. And all that info was available internally. Obviously, this was a "good to do" process rather than an absolute compulsion but even that small step stopped so many including me to not participate in Trading for my time there. Small steps can ensure transparency and maybe, just maybe, help with the problem.
anon291 4y ago
look up the history of the 27th amendment.
alistairSH 4y ago
Can't read the article (paywall)... is it discussing senior bureaucrats or legislators? If Congress, the STOCK act really needs update to have some teeth. Right now, they usually get a $200 fine (which is often waive) for what is effectively insider trading. Make that fine 6 figures and maybe that'll help. If bureaucrats, I'm not sure why existing insider trading laws wouldn't apply? It seems we just need the DoJ/SEC to do their job.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > the STOCK act really needs update to have some teeth. Right now, they usually get a $200 fine (which is often waive) for what is effectively insider trading This is not true. There is a fine for not disclosing. For actual insider trading, the FBI has subpoenaed sitting Senators' phones [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_congressional_insider_trading_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_congressional_insider_tra...
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    How did investigating their bosses go?
    - 8note 4y ago
      Isn't the president the FBI's boss, not senators?
      - alistairSH 4y ago
        Yes, but regardless, has any congressperson been charged with insider trading in the last decade?
- akudha 4y ago
  How would a six figure fine help? If I made 125k for a few mins of insider trading work, and I get fined 100k, I still made 25k profit, right?
DanG2Point0 4y ago
warinukraine 4y ago
I've long assumed that self-dealing is the reason why people go into politics anyway.
rgrieselhuber 4y ago
A lot more people used to speak about this, from all regions of the political grid. It almost seems as if a primary outcome of the Obama administration was to coopt the left into supporting the bureaucratic establishment at all costs, especially if any critique of it could be characterized as populist and icky.
- xxpor 4y ago
  That's probably more of a result of education polarization really taking off during his time. Who is the bureaucracy? White collar workers.
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    I would argue that it’s more the government and private sector partnerships, the revolving doors, etc.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  I'd say a lot of today's left got radicalized during the Obama administration as it became apparent that Obama valued pragmatism and continuity rather than risking political dislocation by bringing wars to an abrupt end or major restructuring of financial markets. This might have worked great with a less ideologically driven opposition. Unfortunately that radicalized sector has often drifted towards a kind of antipolitics because the center-left has been comparatively ineffective and unable to respond adequately to the startling rightward shift of the GOP. The Democrats tend to cling to a rules-based system as the basis of a political mandate while the Republicans have had a strategy of opportunistically rewriting the rules at the first opportunity since at least the Gingrich era. In a way I don't blame them, it keeps working for them and a lot of their voters just aren't as hung up on intellectual consistency/credibility as the Democrats. It's perfectly acceptable for political surrogates on the right to state openly and explicitly that they DGAF about anything other than winning.
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    I was definitely disappointed in that as well. The whole thing soured me on politics, in general, other than on a metapolitical / observational level. What has been strange to witness, in my view, is how the left was indeed radicalized during these years but, if anything, they seem to have moved in this weird direction of being part of the machinery of the establishment vs. their historical stance of being decidedly the opposite (at least in my view). The other weirdness between the left and the right is the pretension that the core of either party are actually going to do anything for their respective bases vs. just continue to do whatever it takes to perpetuate their own power / positions, and yet neither side can see beyond this to find what is likely a great deal of common ground.
shaburn 4y ago
The worst part about this is the orders of magnitude negative effects on the Country as a result. Politicians are cheap and they are not paid for no reason.
tosser99 4y ago
‘Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them…” FD
- nkingsy 4y ago
  Frederick Douglass (I had to look it up)
efsavage 4y ago
Legislators should be allowed to trade, but should be considered insiders for any companies affected by legislation they vote on (which would effectively be all of them). They could use things like 10b5-1.
colordrops 4y ago
We've had legalized bribery with lobbying for a long time now, so I'd be surprised if this ever gets addressed.
celtain 4y ago
>This should be a much bigger issue, IMO. We the People need to make them understand this blatant self dealing will not be tolerated. Compared to the impact they can have at their job (positive or negative), this just doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Obviously I'd prefer if they didn't do it, but I don't see why it needs to be a bigger issue. Insider trading causes two problems: * Undermines faith in, and thus reduces efficacy of, financial markets * Reduces the overall returns for everyone else a bit While it becomes a problem when rampant throughout the market, I don't think a few hundred members of congress would collectively have much impact here. I'm also a little wary of the kind of person who's willing to go into politics and isn't in it for the money. While there are a handful of truly dedicated public servants, most people who aren't in it for the money are either extreme ideologues or power hungry narcissists. I'll take a politician who's mildly financially corrupt over someone who wants to abolish either taxes or private property, and way over one who wants to become a dictator.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  This view assumes they actually do their job for the good of the people and also happen to profit off of what they privately learn in doing so. Instead of making decisions based on what can get them the better payout or preservation of their investments. To make it a programming analogy, to someone who has no clue about coding a yearly bonus to each developer based on lines of code written sounds like a good way to reward the more productive developers. But anyone with a couple days experience realizes how trivial that system would be to game.
  - celtain 4y ago
    A member of congress voting for $10B of useless defense spending because they're heavily invested in the relevant aerospace company isn't committing insider trading. Perhaps this is unnecessarily pedantic, but what you're describing is a "conflict of interest" problem, not an "insider trading" problem. You can have either problem without the other, and depending on how you crack down on insider trading, it could be completely ineffective at solving the conflict of interest problem.
- 4y ago
ProAm 4y ago
> We the People need to make them understand this blatant self dealing will not be tolerated. How? There are no term limits. The richer the get the more power the have. It's a self-sustaining circuit.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tootie 4y ago
That's not really what's implied in this article though. The term "insider trading" means something specific which is being inside a company. For Congress or executive branch employees that would accessing data that would typically be in an SEC filing before it's public. This is also not "self-dealing" which means appropriating official funds for your own purposes. Reading intelligence reports and selling mutual funds isn't the same thing. Not just on technicality but because there's no room for corruption. Insider corporate information can be exploited against people or even engineered to create opportunities. COVID was going to happen no matter what. And really COVID data wasn't really secret. Congress was having it shoved in their faces but the WHO and CDC were ringing bells in public disclosures for anyone savvy enough to understand. It's unsavory but it's not really a threat. At least not most of the examples listed in this article. There is likely some genuine corruption going on too. The SC just gave Ted Cruz (and everyone else) a pass to self-deal from his campaign fund.
- boxed 4y ago
  > The term "insider trading" means something specific which is being inside a company. I don't think it does. You can hear overhear information from someone in a bar and that is still insider trading. That's how I remember my training from working in fintech at least.
  - tootie 4y ago
    Yes, that's correct you don't need to be an insider yourself only having knowingly received information from an insider. But either way it refers only to companies. Having access to scientific observations is fair game. Legally speaking at least.
hedora 4y ago
They should either be forced to schedule trades 6-12 months out (during quiet periods where they cannot make public statements), or be forced to publicly disclose their trades in advance. (So NCNY and MTCH or whatever insider trading ETFs exist can let the public arbitrage in front of their insider trades).
partiallypro 4y ago
Democrats spiked the legislation that would make it illegal to do it after the elections...and it looks like they will not do well enough to pass it in the next term and will undoubtedly pass nothing in a lame duck. It's a joke.
bilvar 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

bamboozled 4y ago

While you’re at it, lobbying should be completely and utterly outlawed, anyone found taking money for political influence should be handed a hefty jail term or worse. It’s absolute filth.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
OK, so let's say you strongly believe in the mission of CampaignForFooBarForAll. You've raised money for them, you've been on the marches, you've done the phone tree. But you want to do more. Someone suggests you head to DC, and start talking to congresscritters (or their aides) about the message of CampaignForFooBarForAll. You'd love to do this. But you need to pay the rent, and for food, and other regular expenses. Someone in the campaign suggests that they could pay for you to do this for 1 month a year. Shall we send you to jail? Let's suppose that you say "yes". Now consider Jan Lobbier, who works for BigMega Corp. Jan is employed there full time, with various duties. Among them are trips and calls to DC to put the company's position in front of The People Who Matter. This is not Jan's only job, just a part of their job duties. Should Jan go to jail? What you're suggesting would mean that lobbying could only be done by the financially independent (i.e. can lobby because they don't need to work), and that seems like a bad idea for everyone.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  I'm talking about politicians accepting donation money. Not the lobbyist themselves. If politicians didn't accept "donations" they wouldn't have a role. Politicians receive a salary, that should be enough, if the salary for a congress person isn't high enough, then we can talk about that at the next election, they also might be better at managing the economy and dealing with things like inflation because it would be a harsh reality for them, like it is for everyone else.

soulofmischief 4y ago

How do we make them understand? Practically speaking.

nyc_data_geek1 4y ago
Superpac to direct donations to politicians found not to be engaging in this behavior? Because electorally there appear to be no repercussions at the ballot box, so speaking the only language they really understand, that of the almighty dollar?
Mikeb85 4y ago
Vote them out. It's the only way.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  That doesn't really work; there's little to link a defeat with any one specific issue in most cases, and the replacement isn't likely to get in for any one specific issue either.
- indigochill 4y ago
  Only to vote in the next round of special beneficiaries of this insider knowledge.
- _jal 4y ago
  That only works for bad actors in an otherwise good system. Systemic incentives tend to make idealists into insiders. You can blame people for being human if you want, but you will keep getting the same results.
- retzkek 4y ago
  Yes, punish them with a cushy private-sector job lobbying and/or on some corporate board, that'll teach 'em! This is not a game "we, the people" can win, any more than the pawns can win a chess tournament.
- soulofmischief 4y ago
  Why hasn't this basic democratic tool worked for the last 150 years? Is it because We The People are completely brainwashed by our industrial puppetmasters at this point? The needle moves from voting to education. But how do I educate an entire generation about what they should demand from a government?

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

> They're not particularly motivated to close this loophole either, for reasons which should be obvious. Agreed, but the ban on federal officials owning individual stocks is actually gaining momentum and I think has a good chance of passing, though what happens in November may change that.

rootusrootus 4y ago
In this case, though, they were not buying & selling individual stocks. So we would need to ban them from owning any equities, even shares of S&P 500 index funds.
- insanitybit 4y ago
  I don't see why they should be banned from being a part of a double blind fund.
  - elromulous 4y ago
    Double blind? Consider e.g. knowledge the Fed is planning on raising interest rates before the public has it. That affects the market as a whole, so they could short sp500 and have a leg up on us regular folks. The solution is simple. Being in office (or working for the federal government, or any level government for that matter) is a privilege, not a right. If you want to exercise that privilege, then you should have to give up the right to directly trade any stock/fund. Your broker whom you can't divulge any info to then has the same footing as the rest of us.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      "(or working for the federal government, or any level government for that matter)" I don't think this is right. My small town government isn't going to make any money on trading. Even if we contracted with a company big enough to be public, the contract would be too small to make any impact. Also, most in the military or civilian contractor positions have no real insight into the market moving deals. Nor do they generally have the capital to really take advantage. It's the high level officials and bureaucrats that need to be restricted, not the rank and file.

jorblumesea 4y ago

The thing is that "we the people" are busy fighting each other over every political issue under the sun. Good luck getting the American people to agree on literally anything. This is by design of course. "You don't want the gays using your bathrooms!" while they pillage the country.

23skidoo 4y ago
gtirloni 4y ago
If HN had a vote budget, I'd use it all on your comment. Right now my country is having federal elections and everything from bathrooms to what people do in their beds in private is being discussed, except actual plans for education, health and the economy. It's a celebrity shitshow and it seems to have infected most countries.
PubliusMI 4y ago
I think it's hilarious that you felt the need to exaggerate a genuine political conflict, transgender people using the wash facilities of their claimed sex, into the obvious strawman of not wanting homosexuals in bathrooms.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

iKevinShah 4y ago

I am not from US but I am pretty sure this is a common practice world-wide. Some places worse than others. But I used to work in Stock Exchange a few years back as System Administrator. And we were recommended to take permissions (which used to get approved quickly, within hours) to trade stocks. And all that info was available internally. Obviously, this was a "good to do" process rather than an absolute compulsion but even that small step stopped so many including me to not participate in Trading for my time there. Small steps can ensure transparency and maybe, just maybe, help with the problem.

anon291 4y ago

look up the history of the 27th amendment.

alistairSH 4y ago

Can't read the article (paywall)... is it discussing senior bureaucrats or legislators? If Congress, the STOCK act really needs update to have some teeth. Right now, they usually get a $200 fine (which is often waive) for what is effectively insider trading. Make that fine 6 figures and maybe that'll help. If bureaucrats, I'm not sure why existing insider trading laws wouldn't apply? It seems we just need the DoJ/SEC to do their job.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> the STOCK act really needs update to have some teeth. Right now, they usually get a $200 fine (which is often waive) for what is effectively insider trading This is not true. There is a fine for not disclosing. For actual insider trading, the FBI has subpoenaed sitting Senators' phones [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_congressional_insider_trading_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_congressional_insider_tra...
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  How did investigating their bosses go?
  - 8note 4y ago
    Isn't the president the FBI's boss, not senators?
    - alistairSH 4y ago
      Yes, but regardless, has any congressperson been charged with insider trading in the last decade?
akudha 4y ago
How would a six figure fine help? If I made 125k for a few mins of insider trading work, and I get fined 100k, I still made 25k profit, right?

DanG2Point0 4y ago

warinukraine 4y ago

I've long assumed that self-dealing is the reason why people go into politics anyway.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago

A lot more people used to speak about this, from all regions of the political grid. It almost seems as if a primary outcome of the Obama administration was to coopt the left into supporting the bureaucratic establishment at all costs, especially if any critique of it could be characterized as populist and icky.

xxpor 4y ago
That's probably more of a result of education polarization really taking off during his time. Who is the bureaucracy? White collar workers.
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  I would argue that it’s more the government and private sector partnerships, the revolving doors, etc.
anigbrowl 4y ago
I'd say a lot of today's left got radicalized during the Obama administration as it became apparent that Obama valued pragmatism and continuity rather than risking political dislocation by bringing wars to an abrupt end or major restructuring of financial markets. This might have worked great with a less ideologically driven opposition. Unfortunately that radicalized sector has often drifted towards a kind of antipolitics because the center-left has been comparatively ineffective and unable to respond adequately to the startling rightward shift of the GOP. The Democrats tend to cling to a rules-based system as the basis of a political mandate while the Republicans have had a strategy of opportunistically rewriting the rules at the first opportunity since at least the Gingrich era. In a way I don't blame them, it keeps working for them and a lot of their voters just aren't as hung up on intellectual consistency/credibility as the Democrats. It's perfectly acceptable for political surrogates on the right to state openly and explicitly that they DGAF about anything other than winning.
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  I was definitely disappointed in that as well. The whole thing soured me on politics, in general, other than on a metapolitical / observational level. What has been strange to witness, in my view, is how the left was indeed radicalized during these years but, if anything, they seem to have moved in this weird direction of being part of the machinery of the establishment vs. their historical stance of being decidedly the opposite (at least in my view). The other weirdness between the left and the right is the pretension that the core of either party are actually going to do anything for their respective bases vs. just continue to do whatever it takes to perpetuate their own power / positions, and yet neither side can see beyond this to find what is likely a great deal of common ground.

shaburn 4y ago

The worst part about this is the orders of magnitude negative effects on the Country as a result. Politicians are cheap and they are not paid for no reason.

tosser99 4y ago

‘Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them…” FD

nkingsy 4y ago
Frederick Douglass (I had to look it up)

efsavage 4y ago

Legislators should be allowed to trade, but should be considered insiders for any companies affected by legislation they vote on (which would effectively be all of them). They could use things like 10b5-1.

colordrops 4y ago

We've had legalized bribery with lobbying for a long time now, so I'd be surprised if this ever gets addressed.

celtain 4y ago

>This should be a much bigger issue, IMO. We the People need to make them understand this blatant self dealing will not be tolerated. Compared to the impact they can have at their job (positive or negative), this just doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Obviously I'd prefer if they didn't do it, but I don't see why it needs to be a bigger issue. Insider trading causes two problems: * Undermines faith in, and thus reduces efficacy of, financial markets * Reduces the overall returns for everyone else a bit While it becomes a problem when rampant throughout the market, I don't think a few hundred members of congress would collectively have much impact here. I'm also a little wary of the kind of person who's willing to go into politics and isn't in it for the money. While there are a handful of truly dedicated public servants, most people who aren't in it for the money are either extreme ideologues or power hungry narcissists. I'll take a politician who's mildly financially corrupt over someone who wants to abolish either taxes or private property, and way over one who wants to become a dictator.

squeaky-clean 4y ago
This view assumes they actually do their job for the good of the people and also happen to profit off of what they privately learn in doing so. Instead of making decisions based on what can get them the better payout or preservation of their investments. To make it a programming analogy, to someone who has no clue about coding a yearly bonus to each developer based on lines of code written sounds like a good way to reward the more productive developers. But anyone with a couple days experience realizes how trivial that system would be to game.
- celtain 4y ago
  A member of congress voting for $10B of useless defense spending because they're heavily invested in the relevant aerospace company isn't committing insider trading. Perhaps this is unnecessarily pedantic, but what you're describing is a "conflict of interest" problem, not an "insider trading" problem. You can have either problem without the other, and depending on how you crack down on insider trading, it could be completely ineffective at solving the conflict of interest problem.
4y ago

ProAm 4y ago

> We the People need to make them understand this blatant self dealing will not be tolerated. How? There are no term limits. The richer the get the more power the have. It's a self-sustaining circuit.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tootie 4y ago

That's not really what's implied in this article though. The term "insider trading" means something specific which is being inside a company. For Congress or executive branch employees that would accessing data that would typically be in an SEC filing before it's public. This is also not "self-dealing" which means appropriating official funds for your own purposes. Reading intelligence reports and selling mutual funds isn't the same thing. Not just on technicality but because there's no room for corruption. Insider corporate information can be exploited against people or even engineered to create opportunities. COVID was going to happen no matter what. And really COVID data wasn't really secret. Congress was having it shoved in their faces but the WHO and CDC were ringing bells in public disclosures for anyone savvy enough to understand. It's unsavory but it's not really a threat. At least not most of the examples listed in this article. There is likely some genuine corruption going on too. The SC just gave Ted Cruz (and everyone else) a pass to self-deal from his campaign fund.

boxed 4y ago
> The term "insider trading" means something specific which is being inside a company. I don't think it does. You can hear overhear information from someone in a bar and that is still insider trading. That's how I remember my training from working in fintech at least.
- tootie 4y ago
  Yes, that's correct you don't need to be an insider yourself only having knowingly received information from an insider. But either way it refers only to companies. Having access to scientific observations is fair game. Legally speaking at least.

hedora 4y ago

They should either be forced to schedule trades 6-12 months out (during quiet periods where they cannot make public statements), or be forced to publicly disclose their trades in advance. (So NCNY and MTCH or whatever insider trading ETFs exist can let the public arbitrage in front of their insider trades).

partiallypro 4y ago

Democrats spiked the legislation that would make it illegal to do it after the elections...and it looks like they will not do well enough to pass it in the next term and will undoubtedly pass nothing in a lame duck. It's a joke.

bilvar 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]