It was interesting to see the latest hair on fire about congressmen, and women perhaps selling as buying stock on "inside information".
The good Senator Richard Burr, Kelly Loeffler and James Inhofe, David Purdue, as well as Dianne Feinstein have come under scrutiny of the Fourth Estate for making stock trades after US Senate committee briefings. Additionally over two dozen members of the House also engaged in aggressive stock sales in early February after various briefings. What are the odds?
Late last week, Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina briefly became the most detestable politician in America, at a time when public outrage toward politicians was at an all-time high.
Burr dumped hundreds of thousands (if not millions) worth of stocks after non-public briefings about the extent of the coronavirus crisis in the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The 60 Minutes piece noted that former Republican Dennis Hastert pushed through a $207 million earmark to help build a “Prairie Parkway” highway project through the Illinois countryside. Hastert had land adjacent to the project. He sold parcels four months after the bill, reportedly earning a profit of $2 million.
CBS likewise went after Nancy Pelosi, whose preferred financial activity wasn’t land dealing but the Initial Public Offering. CBS reported Pelosi was involved with as many as eight IPOs, including the purchase of 5,000 shares of Visa at $44 while a bill that would have hurt credit card companies was being killed in the House. The share price went up to $64 two days after her purchase.
Steve Kroft asked Pelosi if she thought the Visa deal was a “conflict of interest.”
“The— y- I- I don’t know what your point is of your question,” she answered. “Is there some point that you want to make with that?”
What a wonderful group of people! Great article by Rolling Stone.
On Friday, Mr Burr tweeted to say he "spoke with the chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee this morning and asked him to open a complete view of the matter with full transparency".
Doesn't this make you feel warm inside when a congressman steps up says they have ask to be investigated, me neither. That is because it's their club and they make up the rules including the rules of investigations. Further when you look at past investigations, say last year, your chances of an unfavorable outcome was 0.
The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 (the Act) calls for the Select Committee on Ethics of the United States Senate
Are Americans actually actually this gullible? You would have to be in an advanced state of denial to think that this many congressmen who's investments are managed blindly by third parties could be as accurate as a tomahawk headed to Baghdad about a virus us mere mortals were told was not a problem outside of China. And the WHO on January 14th Tweeting that the "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV)". Now why would any reasonable person sell stock in companies that would be harmed by a global pandemic?
Because they had inside information!
So for a moment let's assume this body of highly ethical individuates fell down in this moment of temptation and took the opportunities not only to protect their wealth by selling stocks that would later be crushed by the market, but who also took the time to invest in stocks that would benefit from a pandemic. That would be 20+ that we know of making a few bucks in a multi trillion dollar market. Based on percentages, whats the big deal?
But wait, who was it that informed them in the intelligence briefings? Those briefing are not put together by three nerds in the basement of the Pentagon. Those briefings are the result of integrating data from across the spectrum of America's alphabet agencies, compiled and reviewed by many departments, then watered down presented to congressman.
What are the chances there were many more trading on this information and if they were you can be assured it was not the first time. This is one of the worlds most highly concentrated group corrupt people on earth.
So for the serf class, keep paying your taxes, put a few dollars into your retirement account and hope for a 3 to 5 percent return over working life so that perhaps when your 65+ years old you will have enough money to reduce your lifestyle to that of a homeless person and stretch out those deflated dollars until you die.
And the west's view of what is holding back emerging nations in Africa and Asia, corruption.