The congressional bastards wrote the book on insider trading. They are thieves, crooks, and hypocrites. Read on!
House members in the know score ‘abnormal’ stock profits, study says
washingtontimes.com
excerpt:
It's no secret that members of Congress qualify as political insiders, but a new report strongly suggests that they also may be insiders when it comes to trading stocks.
An extensive study released Wednesday in the journal Business and Politics found that the investments of members of the House of Representatives outperformed those of the average investor by 55 basis points per month, or 6 percent annually, suggesting that lawmakers are taking advantage of inside information to fatten their stock portfolios.
"We find strong evidence that members of the House have some type of non-public information which they use for personal gain," according to four academics who authored the study, "Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives."
To the frustration of open-government advocates, lawmakers and their staff members largely have immunity from laws barring trading on insider knowledge that have sent many a private corporate chieftain to prison.
The watchdog group OpenSecrets.org said on its blog Wednesday that the findings suggest "that U.S. House members are using their powerful roles for more than just political gain."
The professors reviewed more than 16,000 common stock transactions carried out by about 300 House members as revealed in the members' financial-disclosure forms from 1985 to 2001.
In a 2004 study, the same professors found that U.S. senators also enjoy a "substantial information advantage" over the average investor — and even corporate bigwigs — when it comes to picking stocks. The latest study shows that members of the Senate outperform their House colleagues by an average of 30 points per month.
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Oh, and lest we forget...
Congress Refuses to Outlaw Insider Trading For Lawmakers
finance.yahoo.com
excerpt:
Even a cynic can find Washington's hypocrisy shocking at times. The Wall Street Journal reports today a House bill that would force lawmakers to make greater disclosures on financial transactions and disallow them from trading on nonpublic information is going nowhere fast.
That's right. Members of Congress are currently allowed to profit on insider trading!
The bill, which has been languishing in the House for four years, would require elected officials "to make their financial transactions public within 90 days of a purchase or sale" and "prohibit lawmakers from trading in financial markets based on nonpublic information they learn on the job," the WSJ reports.
It seems they're above the transparency they've been calling for on Wall Street. |
