Congressional Staffers Gain From Trading in Stocks

Wall Street Journal ^ | OCTOBER 11, 2010 | By BRODY MULLINS, TOM MCGINTY and JASON ZWEIG

[Thoreau]

...At least 72 aides on both sides of the aisle traded shares of companies that their bosses help oversee, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of more than 3,000 disclosure forms covering trading activity by Capitol Hill staffers for 2008 and 2009...

[Thoreau]

Insider Trading is legal for Congress and their staff. Is there any greater example that these guys are Robber Barons (both parties). That is your Pension, IRA and 401K they are stealing from and it is going directly into their pocket.

[puppypusher]

This is News?I can almost guarantee that most of the congress is doing the same thing.

[Paladin2]

Maybe we can reduce their inside trader capitalist suffering by firing them?

[dalebert]

insider trading and market manipulation

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

The entire, read entire, "Green" industry is a scam designed to make politicians money. Example; Governor Brown invested in windmills in California, the stock went up into the twenties, Brown sold at a profit, the stock collapsed.

Repeat: the "Green," "Climate Change" boom is the largest fraud in the history of man.

[Digger]

That’s your corrupt “Two-Party Cartel” giving us example # 3479 why we are the most corrupt democracy on earth.

[SmartInsight]

“Chris Miller nearly doubled his $3,500 stock investment in a renewable-energy firm in 2008. It was a perfectly legal bet, but he’s no ordinary investor.

Mr. Miller is the top energy-policy adviser to Nevada Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who helped pass legislation that wound up benefiting the firm.”

[SmartInsight]

wjs ping

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Thoreau.

Insider Trading is legal for Congress and their staff.

[TheOldLady]

*Yawn*

You woke me up for this? It’s just business as usual in a rat’n’rino congress.

[justiceseeker93]

That is your pension, IRA and 401K that they are stealing from.

Not necessarily. There are other investors who might well succeed in playing a stock (or another security) in a direction opposite to the way a government "insider" may play it. That's because there are many factors other than legislation and regulation that could have a bearing on a company's bottom line, while the government lackey would tend to be narrow-minded in his analysis, so narrow-minded that he may end up as a loser.

Also consider this: if these congressional staffers are such brilliant stock pickers, they are obviously in the wrong line of work!

[dljordan]

“rat’n’rino”

What a great name for a bar in DC.

[Thoreau]

perhaps, but according to this:
http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2010/07/insider-trading-inside-the-beltway.html

A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that that Senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on average underperformed the market by 1.4% a year and even corporate insiders on average beat the market by only about 6% a year during that period. A reasonable inference is that some Senators had access to – and were using – material nonpublic information about the companies in whose stock they trade.

[justiceseeker93]

Here's another thought: government hacks would tend to be bearish on the major companies in the "politically incorrect" industries, those which the leftist politicians love to denounce and regulate oppressively. Oil, tobacco, pharmaceuticals are some that come to mind. Yet some of those stocks have done rather well compared to the market in recent years. On the other hand, lefty media stocks have generally done poorly.

It's not a bad idea, generally speaking, to buy a stock after it has been artificially depressed by news emanating from Washington. There are usually gains to be had there as the stock recovers to its true value.

[April Lexington]

Wow! Talk about your basic detached government!

[April Lexington]

Wow! Talk about your basic detached government!

[April Lexington]

Wow! Talk about your basic detached government!

[Thoreau]

you can say that again!