Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/07/08/the-stock-act.html
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Yeah, well, if we don’t gut Obamacare we wind up paying tens of billions in subsidies to United, Aetna, Humana etc. so it works out either way.
This is the sort of corruption that is untouchable by “campaign finance reform” of course.
I would be so on board with a national movement whose only goal would be to wipe out corruption and the revolving door between government and industry, I am sure that it would get strong grass roots support from left and right both.
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More and more brazen.
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Because there’s nobody with the power to stop them.
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Fucking scumbags
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Christ, what late stage capitalism!
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How are these ‘people’ not in prison?
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Those who write the laws are able to tailor them to suit themselves. Aka, “theft and corruption are illegal as long it’s not me or my friends benefitting”.
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Well, aren’t they special.
A: yes
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Yeah, really. How is this not blatantly illegal? Is it like the ethics rules that govern the president, which turn out to be more “suggestions” that have no regulatory teeth to them? Because I thought people had been convicted for doing things like this in the past… but maybe that was just in the private sector?
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Technically speaking them buying shares would be speculating not insider trading. So reprehensible. Yes. Illegal. No.
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It would be insider trading by any reasonable interpretation of insider trading.
The reason it’s not illegal is because congress is explicitly exempts themselves from almost all laws relating to their work. Similarly, blatantly taking a bribe to vote on a law is illegal, but irrelevant: taking campaign contributions and accepting a tidy sinecure after leaving office is perfectly legal.
The rules on federal employees, of course, are not so kind.
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That would be great - I’m behind apple pie and single payer health care.
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It’s not insider trading. It’s not information that will directly force the stock to go up or down knowingly.
Believe what you want. It’s only my job.
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They’re given up on even pretending that this is about somehow improving the American health care, instead of massive tax cuts and general wealth transfer to the rich, while everyone else gets screwed, haven’t they?
I’m curious as to how long the not-rich Republican voters keep on voting these bastards in; at what point does the personal hurt overcome the tribalism, the racism, and the vacuous rancor at “urban liberals”?
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I am going to acknowledge that my specialty is accounting systems, not the legal aspects; so this is a serious, honest question:
My training in insider training (which was focused on making sure that I didn’t accidently insider trade due to information that I have about the accounting systems of the companies that I work for/with) always defined insider trading as reacting to nonpublic information that would reasonably be expected to alter the stock price of a company.
Presuming that the husband and wife spoke, and that the husband spoke of expected results of the vote based on non-public sources such as personal polling and party leadership estimations, why wouldn’t this be insider trading? And while he is probably immune, wouldn’t she have criminal liability since she is the person who was on record as having bought the shares?
I am a computer person, not a lawyer, accountant, or auditor…
(Edited to add: I think my current office even specifically included pending non-public government actions in the list of insider information…)
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That’s small-scale corruption these days.
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Subsidies that go directly to paying for the medical treatments of the worst afflicted. So, no, its not the same thing.
In fact, the reason the health insurance lobby isn’t doing jackshit to fight repeel and replace is because they know the results will increase their profits. Same reason their share prices keep going up. The stock market is a great short-term predictor of profitability.
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