5441

Tankies disgust me as much as Trumpies do.

5442

Recently independent, but previously a Democratic staffer

5443

Meanwhile on CNN, where she works:

5444

Technically Cupp is not liberal, I don’t believe. She used to be a conservative, and so now she’s kind of on the left because she wasn’t crazy.

Although this is certainly a position which would tend to be considered on the liberal side.

NOW I’M DOING IT

5445

This article is pretty dumb

5446

Ha ha, you read a Polygon thinkpiece on race/gender/sex!

5447

BOTH SIDES

5448

I fail to see how this is in the liberals say stupid shit thread.

Seems to me pretty sensible to ban lawmakers from trading in individual stocks. And, yeah, both sides have pols who do it.

5449

intended as a response to Pelosi specifically rejecting the possibility of such regulation last time…

5450

How do you stop lawmakers from owning and trading equities in a reasonable fashion? Honest questions because I can’t think of a proposed remedy that’s isn’t worse than the status quo.

5451

You require them to either be in a blind trust (for individual equities) in which the Congressperson has no ability to profit from legislating individual stocks (or even know its happening), or require them to hold their stocks in broad based index funds that are not susceptible to individual manipulation via legislation.

The point is not to ban the ownership of ALL equities by Congresspersons but to prevent Congresspersons from being able to profit (or to fear a loss) from specific legislation. Even a liberal like me is willing to allow for Congress to have index funds that can be boosted by economic stimulus but what I don’t want is to have the influence of individual business affecting Congress.

Note - I do make an exception for very small holdings. Nobody is going to get too bothered by a thousand bucks of random stock - it’s the bigger bucks that matter.

Edit - the reporting on this is often poor. Most of the bills I have seen ban the ownership of “individual” stocks (which means index funds are allowed) and also most of the bills allow individual stocks to be owned and managed in a blind trust setting. And yet the reporting ends up being “bill to ban ownership of stocks!!”.

5452

Bingo.

Index funds or things like the Vanguard target date funds? Perfectly fine. Trading on individual companies? Not kosher.

5453

Right, it’s not like owning stocks is a constitutional right. You just flat out prevent it, and if that’s a deal breaker for a candidate, then don’t run. They can sink their money into reasonable growth vehicles since most of us under a certain age are tied to the market for our retirements, but there’s no inherent reason that trading stocks is a necessary factor of living a comfortable life.

5454

I have no faith in the effectiveness of such a measure. If a congressperson can’t own individual stocks, how about their spouse? Brother in law? Close friend who is their “financial advisor” and incidentally about to be appointed to trustee? It just feels too easy to game around.

5455

That sounds so seductively obvious, sort of like term limits. And like term limits, it has broader unintended negative effects.

In this country rich people own equities. If we say that we don’t want our elected representatives to be rich people, then we force poor people to hold power. That’s problematic for a whole variety of reasons because what it really means is that only candidates are super rich people who aren’t interested in accumulating more bank and can live off the fortune they have, or really poor people who see elected office as a way to advance their career. But if elected office doesn’t pay well, what are they trying to advance to? And who will they end up beholden to in order to make that advancement? Do you really want legislation from people who see their legislative job as just a stepping-stone to something more lucrative later on?

The real solution here is to start paying US representatives and senators like $25M a year. We can afford it. Take it out of defense spending. The republic will be better off.

5456

Sounds like you’re saying since the law can’t be perfect, we shouldn’t even bother.

5457

Doesn’t the US already have detailed insider trading laws that exempt members of congress? Why not just remove the exemption? I don’t have much faith in regulators these days but these are laws that are already built out with enforcement mechanisms.

5458

Complete non sequiter. Barring owning individual stocks != barring all investment or barring rich people.

I do not think you have made your case.

Sure there are games people can play, but you are holding an absurdly unreasonable standard for detail on what is an informal proposal.

Barring trading of individual stocks is a reaction to a method of obvious conflict of interest and corruption. The purpose is to reduce, and possibly eliminate, most of this in appearance and in fact.

There are simple high level discussions going here, and your post is responding expecting a 600 page congressional white paper going over the effects and details.

High level the ban should obviously apply to direct family/ spouse. Your husband or wife is in federal government? Well you need to transfer all your stocks to some sort of managed or index fund. Like this is a painfully obvious part of the solution.

How far you extend? Well thats a different matter. There are already insider trading rules that should be enforced, lets look at those. And if people want to get ‘creative’ and transfer their assets to a third party and feed them information? Well that should be capable if being prosecuted under insider trading, as well as all sorts of tax regulations regarding gifting and such. I mean I doubt that such shenanigans look so appealing when each step on the transfer chain induces an income tax charge on it.

5460

I’m going to quote the first paragraph of the article here:

A coalition of advocacy and watchdog groups called on House leadership this week to support legislation that would bar members of Congress — as well as their spouses and dependent children — from trading individual stocks.

:D

You’re correct that bad actors could try different work-arounds to escape the law. This does make it more difficult to commit abuses of power though. Rather than just having a congressperson use insider-knowledge to make a stock purchase from Fidelity, now the congressperson needs to enter into a criminal conspiracy with a second party in order to make the trades. There are now people who need to stay silent, communications logs that need to be covered up, and fellow conspirators that can be flipped by the FBI. Also, the congressperson needs to trust their fellow criminal enough to give them control over their savings.

So even with its limitations, I think such a law could improve things by making abuse of power more difficult to carry out and cover up.

5461

Honestly I have few problems with them owning stock, it’s more around trading stock. Granted, if they own stock that can still be a temptation to try and pass legislation that helps that stock but if they have to hold it until they are no longer in Congress, the market smooths that out. Tortilla selectively quoted me, I would be fine with them having to move securities into a larger index fund and holding that, it would be much harder to manipulate. Most companies already do this with 401k choices, so it’s no burden for legislators to have to play the same game as their constituents.