"He made a reference to billionaires, okay?" Scott said of Hawley. "I don't know when in this country it became a negative to make money. But somehow, if you've made money, you're supposedly — I think Senator Hawley suggests — you shouldn't be serving, because you might trade stocks."
"Anybody want to be poor? I don't." Scott continued. "Right? So this idea that we're going to attack people because they make money is wrong. Is absolutely wrong. We should cherish all of our different backgrounds. ... So, I think it's disgusting what is going on here."
This is Republican Sen. Rick Scott by the way.
Seems like he's using some form ad hominem to distract from the actual purpose. The purpose is not to prevent congress from getting rich. The purpose is to remove conflict of interest. Congress can have insider info on individual stocks. For example, knowing that Oracle will get approval to buy Tiktok early can change Oracle's stock price. That's insider info.
I think only allowing congress members to buy and sell index funds is fine. Not individual stocks. Or if they want to trade individual stocks, make them declare 1 month earlier and make it public.
I support the idea, but I don't think it will make much of a difference because there are bound to be too many loopholes to be effective. I think stock market reform would be more effective - ban calls and puts and other forms of speculation. Speculation invites manipulation and incentivizes unethical actions, especially when paired with power and information. The best, but least realistically possible, thing would be to fix the problems with regulatory capture in the SEC and other oversight and enforcement agencies that are supposed to be punishing politicians.
> The measure, originally called the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments (PELOSI) Act, would prohibit members of Congress and their spouses from trading or holding individual stocks
I genuinely laughed out loud at the bill's original name.
A categorical ban is way better than past efforts to subject Congress to insider trading laws. That gives way to much power to the executive branch to go after members of the legislative branch for political reasons. We should also raise congressional salaries to $1 million a year. Voters don’t like the idea, but if you ban stock trading high quality candidates will just become lawyers and lobbyists instead.
> Hawley also said the legislation would ban the next president and vice president from holding or trading individual stocks while in office, meaning the legislation wouldn't affect President Trump
Banning stocks will not do anything. Most congressman lose money when they sell. There is an incorrect notion passed by there loud people on twitter that congress people got rich while in congress. Oh contrare, they were already rich. They had be to run for office.
The title makes it appear like a bipartisan move when every republicans but one voted against the proposal. We all know where the GOP's true interests are, no need to whitewash them. A better title would have been "GOP representatives massively vote against insider trading regulations".
I just want to point something out that has irked me since it happened, and continues to fuel a mythos to this day.
Nancy Pelosi and the infamous insider trading of Nvidia.
A few weeks before the CHIPS act passed congress in July 2022, Nancy Pelosi made a large purchase of Nvidia shares. This made headlines everywhere as obviously she was going to pass the CHIPS act, obviously Nvidia stands to benefit, so of course she loaded up knowing these things.
But the media, who will readily obscure any nuance that can kill a story, only mentioned that she executed call options to purchase nvidia shares. Which to 99% of the public is technical babble that is ignored.
But what actually happened? Well Pelosi, looking at her trading history, likes to buy deep ITM LEAP calls and hold them to expiry. This means in the simplest terms, that she signs a contract 1yr+ before a date, where she gives herself the option (hence the name) to purchase a set number of shares at a set price. So when Nancy purchased Nvidia shares in June 2022, she had set the contract in motion to do that at least a year prior.
But even worse for the inflammatory story, because she purchased that option over a year prior, and Nvidia was down ~15% in the last year (remember 2022 was a bad year for stocks), she actually would have lost money on the trade.
So here we have the foundational story that set this whole thing is motion, which is based on public ignorance of how stocks and options work, where Pelosi was vilified for a trade she lost money on, because the execution date of a contract she signed at least a year prior happened to be within a few weeks of the CHIPS act.
If she likes to hold them to expiry like you pointed out, then isn’t it odd to not have let the nvidia options expire? I’d need to see her full trading history to make sense of whether or not she is using insider information to influence her trading patterns. Given her net worth of over 100 million dollars I am a little suspicious, but lacking details it’s hard for me to make a judgement and I assume you are correct.
Or we can ban members of the government from trading stocks and investing while they hold office and then not have to have this discussion. I hate all politicians republicans democrats and Bernie’s (not picking on Mr. Sanders but I don’t know if there’s another registered independent in high level government) if they even have a sniff of engaging in fuckery, the job should be too important to show any possible signs of impartiality. That boat seems to have sailed away though minus their being an actual grassroots populist movement to overhaul government. And those keep seeming to dissipate or get co-opted when they do start to foment, like the occupy Wall Street type things that in my life seem to keep popping up, gaining traction, and then becoming something no one hardly talks about anymore.
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[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 31.0 ms ] threadSeems like he's using some form ad hominem to distract from the actual purpose. The purpose is not to prevent congress from getting rich. The purpose is to remove conflict of interest. Congress can have insider info on individual stocks. For example, knowing that Oracle will get approval to buy Tiktok early can change Oracle's stock price. That's insider info.
I think only allowing congress members to buy and sell index funds is fine. Not individual stocks. Or if they want to trade individual stocks, make them declare 1 month earlier and make it public.
I genuinely laughed out loud at the bill's original name.
Nice little carve out for the big guy.
A stock ban is some nice grandstanding but if they were truly serious, they'd remove money from politics.
Ban money in politics. Overturn citizen v united.
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2012/06/a-radical-fix-for-th...
Nancy Pelosi and the infamous insider trading of Nvidia.
A few weeks before the CHIPS act passed congress in July 2022, Nancy Pelosi made a large purchase of Nvidia shares. This made headlines everywhere as obviously she was going to pass the CHIPS act, obviously Nvidia stands to benefit, so of course she loaded up knowing these things.
But the media, who will readily obscure any nuance that can kill a story, only mentioned that she executed call options to purchase nvidia shares. Which to 99% of the public is technical babble that is ignored.
But what actually happened? Well Pelosi, looking at her trading history, likes to buy deep ITM LEAP calls and hold them to expiry. This means in the simplest terms, that she signs a contract 1yr+ before a date, where she gives herself the option (hence the name) to purchase a set number of shares at a set price. So when Nancy purchased Nvidia shares in June 2022, she had set the contract in motion to do that at least a year prior.
But even worse for the inflammatory story, because she purchased that option over a year prior, and Nvidia was down ~15% in the last year (remember 2022 was a bad year for stocks), she actually would have lost money on the trade.
So here we have the foundational story that set this whole thing is motion, which is based on public ignorance of how stocks and options work, where Pelosi was vilified for a trade she lost money on, because the execution date of a contract she signed at least a year prior happened to be within a few weeks of the CHIPS act.
Or we can ban members of the government from trading stocks and investing while they hold office and then not have to have this discussion. I hate all politicians republicans democrats and Bernie’s (not picking on Mr. Sanders but I don’t know if there’s another registered independent in high level government) if they even have a sniff of engaging in fuckery, the job should be too important to show any possible signs of impartiality. That boat seems to have sailed away though minus their being an actual grassroots populist movement to overhaul government. And those keep seeming to dissipate or get co-opted when they do start to foment, like the occupy Wall Street type things that in my life seem to keep popping up, gaining traction, and then becoming something no one hardly talks about anymore.