Members of Congress Violate Insider Trading and Conflict of Interest Law | Hacker News Reader

Members of Congress Violate Insider Trading and Conflict of Interest Law

businessinsider.com

Bi-partisanship is alive and well when it comes to circumventing rules to enriching oneself.

I keep beating this drum; The consequences for not accumulating wealth at every moment feels too high. This society is horribly sick with a case of prisoner's dilemma.

If you trade stocks during a blackout period, you're a criminal and will be punished. If you're a senator, you just pass a law to exempt yourself from the rule and then you can do insider trading as much as you want.

They forgot the absolute champion of them all - Nancy Pelosi. There is actually a Twitter account @NancyTracker that shows how her husband has been pulling over 1000+% gains for a number of years. Absolutely stunning.

That account seems to spend most of its time on opinion. Any particularly interesting data it points out?

> shows how her husband has been pulling over 1000+% gains for a number of years.

How many years? You don't have to start with much or go for long for 10x yearly gains to mean you own more than the total wealth of the universe. Is there some hyperbole here?

It only looks that bad if you point out the winning trades and ignore the losers.

They're investment positions.

Not odds for slot machine you can keep pulling the handle on all day.

Then what does "pulling over 1000+% gains for a number of years" mean _exactly_?

I took it as an allusion to increases in net worth/total portfolio.

Then it's just not at all interesting, if it's just once over an unspecified time period then _many_ investments satisfy that and it's not noteworthy.

A year or so ago I went down the rabbit hole of her stock trades and some of the people making those claims. And I found the claims of outsized returns to be rather dubious. And that was me coming in with the assumption that she was cheating.

“well, why shouldn’t i trade these stocks? i’m a member of congress after all.”

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