Vatic Note: Gee, sounds like the Health Bill where our congressmen who voted for it, voted against an amendment to include them. Remember? In fact, congress has been voting conflict of interest even during both bailouts, one under Bush and two under Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Kerry and others should have refused to vote on the AIG bailout due to a blatant conflict of interest, which was illegal at one time, but not now. So what is new.
Solution: Do a referendum nationally to force Congress to abstain from such activities while in congress and make it criminal for them or any of their friends or relatives to engage in conflict of interest votes if they own shares in such companies.
(Vatics new policy is to not only give the news but attending suggestions for action and solutions to correct the problem, and ask each to both visualize these being in place and taking action to make it happen in your state or local area and work with others to do the same).
Congress Refuses to Outlaw Insider Trading For Lawmakers
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/congress-refuses-to-outlaw-insider-trading-for-lawmakers-478701.html?tickers
Posted May 05, 2010 01:04pm EDT by Peter Gorenstein in Investing, Banking, Politics
Even a cynic can find Washington's hypocrisy shocking at times. The Wall Street Journal reports http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704866204575224631314927058.html today a House bill that would force lawmakers to make greater disclosures on financial transactions and disallow them from trading on nonpublic information is going nowhere fast.
That's right. Members of Congress are currently allowed to profit on insider trading!
The bill, which has been languishing in the House for four years, would require elected officials "to make their financial transactions public within 90 days of a purchase or sale" and "prohibit lawmakers from trading in financial markets based on nonpublic information they learn on the job," the WSJ reports.
It seems they're above the transparency they've been calling for on Wall Street.
This comes a day after the same newspaper reported several lawmakers profited by betting against the housing and stock market in 2008. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703871904575216491495135642.html And some did it using derivatives they've recently been railing against.
As our colleague Henry Blodget wrote Tuesday, http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/congressional-hypocrites-were-betting-against-stocks-as-country-collapsed-477789.html?tickers=gs,xlf,spy,%5Edji,%5Egspc,%5Eixic,qqqq "If you're going to complain about how awful short-selling is and how evil and venal people are for doing it, you should probably abstain from the practice yourself."
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