By: Sarah JonesApr. 15th, 2013 What could make the House pass something in 30 seconds that the Senate also passed? What would motivate them to put aside their alleged “differences” and act in the best interest of the people? The answer is when they are not acting in the best interest of the people, but rather, in their own best interests. To that end, late last week, your congress quickly approved a measure that modified (aka, killed) a part of the STOCK Act (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act ), which was only enacted a year ago. The STOCK Act was supposed to address shady stock trades based on insider information. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) is taking credit for sponsoring the measure, but clearly he got no pushback from either side of the aisle. Check out the fast movement of this bill, and tell me if you’ve seen anything fly through like this in recent years, sans committee referrals and Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) deep debate over what he can even allow for a debate about a vote: 4/11/2013 Introduced in Senate 4/11/2013 Passed/agreed to in Senate: Introduced in the Senate, read twice, considered, read the third time, and passed without amendment by Unanimous Consent. 4/12/2013 Passed/agreed to in House: On passage Passed without objection. 4/12/2013 Presented to President. On Tuesday the 15th, the President signed the legislation. http://www.politicususa.com/congress-acts-quickly-kill-bill-aim-shady-insider-trading.html
No one has a problem with this? Here's more - The Sunlight Foundation notes that the amendment passed with unanimous consent, though many members had gone home already. Huh. This doesn’t seem to work for measures that protect the security of the American people, like say, jobs. The Sunlight Foundation also pointed out what might be seen as a precursor of times to come, “The bill was not available to the public on the Library of Congress website until after the vote.” NPR noted that it took the House all of 30 seconds. “NPR’s Tamara Keith tells us the House procedure took exactly 30 seconds.” The STOCK Act took aim at insider trading and insider information, and also required some 28,000 federal employees from the congressional and executive branches post their conflict of interest disclosures online. It followed “a ’60 Minutes’ report on how many members of Congress are making money on stock trades that are illegal for everyone else, correspondent Nancy Cordes reports a bill to ban lawmakers from insider trading is now on the fast track.”
As if yesterday wasn't enough to dishearten a person. Good thing we have Mr. Rogers' advice to "look for the helpers." Although, I don't think he meant it in the context of "helping those that help themselves to our money..."
When the law was first passed, congressmen said that such a law shouldn't apply to them. They have a duty to perform on whatever committees they sit. Technically, they never were able to trade on insider information (that was always illegal). Obama signed the gutting of the legislation. http://blogs.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2013/04/15/obama-signs-stock-act-rollback-into-law/
Shoot, yeah, I have a huge problem with it. It's absolutely ridiculous and it makes me mad. The company I work with had a rogue employee that did insider trading -- it had a lot of painful ramifications. There should be no loophole for it.
There needs to be a simple law passed: "Congress and all members of the Executive Branch are subject to all laws passed, with no exceptions."
When I worked in investment banking, each week we were given a new book of companies in which we were not allowed to personally invest. It was every single company that was represented or pitched by the company in the previous five years. Do you have any idea how many companies a bulge-bracket investment bank contacts? It included thousands of companies. It was also updated constantly, so if you wanted to invest in a company, you had to look up to see if you could. Most of the time, you were banned. If you violated the book at all and either the investment bank or the SEC found out, you were banned from the industry, fired and faced a stiff penalty. If you invested in a company and your I-bank later pitched it, you had to divest of that stock. The result was that no one personally invested in ANY stock. You just sent your money to a manager and they invested it blindly. Congress should be no different.
Isn't blind investing what Mitt Romney claimed to do and everyone laughed about it as a BS way around the law?
