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Do you oppose congress critters trading stocks?

Should congress critters be allowed to trade stocks?

  • Yes

    Votes: 17 40.5%

  • No

    Votes: 25 59.5%
  • Total voters
    42
blackangst1 said:
I dont. They are people like anyone else. Is the potential for abuse there? Of course; however, there are safeguards in place. Congress critters desrve to take risks and reap rewards like the rest of us.

Pelosi agrees with me:

Pelosi Opposes Ban on Lawmakers Trading Stocks as Her Family Makes Millions on the Market (msn.com) [Newsweek]
Click to expand...
So true. What she needs to do instead is pass a law that makes all corruption of any kind illegal. That way her family can be put in jail and her for telling them what stocks to buy, not to mention wiping out all other forms of crime.
 
Moonbeam said:
So true. What she needs to do instead is pass a law that makes all corruption of any kind illegal. That way her family can be put in jail and her for telling them what stocks to buy, not to mention wiping out all other forms of crime.
Click to expand...

So in other words, make illegal things illegal?
 
As long as they are not privy to information not available to the general public I have no problem with stock trading.

Also what HTTTP said
 
At the very least they should be able to invest in the overall US economy via broad index funds such as SPY. Probably a good idea to not trade individual or foreign stocks to avoid even the appearance of insider trading or conflicts of interest.

TBH congressional pay is pretty shit for how much work the job is and for having to maintain two residences. The last thing we need is only old rich people taking the job and otherwise young talented people taking other career paths because they get paid better elsewhere and can’t even save for their futures in Congress.
 
How about blind trusts for everyone while in office? Realistically, there should be limits for legislators in terms of how much stock of a single company they can buy, sell or short while in office (proportional to their total portfolio).
 
It's amazing how all Congress members become millionaires if they're not already after taking the job. Must be something in the DC water.
 
blackangst1 said:
I dont. They are people like anyone else. Is the potential for abuse there? Of course; however, there are safeguards in place. Congress critters desrve to take risks and reap rewards like the rest of us.

Pelosi agrees with me:

Pelosi Opposes Ban on Lawmakers Trading Stocks as Her Family Makes Millions on the Market (msn.com) [Newsweek]
Click to expand...
No, I strongly disagree. There are lots of financial rules other people who interface with finance must follow and they have a lot less control over stocks than congressmen do. Pelosi is 100% wrong here, I think all stock trading by congressmen should be banned.
 
I lean towards freezing them out completely, they should at least be able to obtain a security clearance. That said, blind trusts or index funds are acceptable in my opinion, but I'd lean towards locking them out completely all things considered.

The standard absolutely should be "not even the appearance of impropriety", and hardly anyone lives up to that.
 
Index funds I'm cool with, especially if you prohibit shorting or leveraged positions. It's the ultimate pay for performance and should help keep things from getting gamed in short terms.
 
Trade stocks, sure. Get away with insider trading, hell no.

In an ideal world, if members of congress could be prosecuted for this kind of insider trading, then the fact that they often find themselves with insider knowledge could be a feature instead of a bug, where we can weed out the bad apples who succumb to temptation.
 
And yes, stock trading platforms can certainly limit activity types and positions you are allowed to hold. There's no need to reinvent the wheel there.
 
Congress members need to be held to the same legal bindings as corporate executives when they trade stock. If a company executive can't dump their shares immediately prior to an abysmal earnings report, then Congress members can't dump their shares prior to publicly available information. If I am not mistaken, executives normally have to schedule when they sell company stock, usually months in advance of when the transaction occurs. Are these same rules not imposed for Congress members? If not, can't we impose the same rules for Congress members?
 
Wasn't there some rules to this effect, like way back in the Reagan days? Something like you couldn't hold stock/ownership stakes in companies your family owned or something to that effect.

You know some old regulation that got wiped away many years ago.
 
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