I've been collecting and sharing (@QuiverCongress on Twitter) data on stock trading by U.S. congressmen for the past couple years.

While there is currently legislation that requires congressmen to disclose their financial dealings, enforcement around it is incredibly weak.

Congressmen are supposed to disclose stock transactions within 45 days of when they are made, but in practice there are dozens of violations of this rule which result in hardly a slap on the wrist. I've seen a couple cases of politicians conveniently waiting till after election cycles to disclose controversial trades.

While I'm generally pessimistic about the odds of congress voting to regulate itself, I'm still hopeful that something comes from this push. There's certainly a lot of room for improvement.