Regulators of Facebook, Google and Amazon also invest in the companies’ stocks

> An FTC spokesman said the agency officials had followed the law.

While I don't really want to see regulators owning any amount of individual stocks in companies they're directly regulating, the $15,000 individual stock limit limits the impact quite a bit. Even if someone did own $15,000 of an individual stock, the personal financial gain/loss of even major regulatory actions isn't a huge amount.

Also keep in mind that you can't buy basically any large cap mutual fund without owning significant amounts of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, and other large companies.

What did Bill Gates learn after the Microsoft antitrust case? Don't snub Washington:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/14/bill-gates-i-was-naive-at-mi...

> "I was naive at Microsoft and didn't realize that our success would lead to government attention," Gates said, referring to Microsoft's antitrust challenges from more than 20 years ago. "And so I made some mistakes — you know, just saying, 'Hey, I never go to Washington, D.C.' And now I don't think, you know, that naivete is there."

https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2002...

> For a couple of embarrassing years in the mid-'90s, Microsoft's primary lobbying presence in D.C. was "Jack and his Jeep." As the software giant's sole in-house lobbyist, Jack Krumholtz, then 33, had to battle endless traffic jams to get from Microsoft's suburban sales office to Capitol Hill. "Early on I spent most of the day in my Jeep Grand Cherokee on my cellphone," Krumholtz says. "I hit an all-time low on the day I was parked on a Capitol Hill side street reading through my mail with the laptop on the steering wheel."

> No longer. After the Justice Department filed its antitrust suit in 1998, Microsoft--a company famous for its disdain of government--undertook the largest government affairs makeover in corporate history. The company now boasts one of the most dominating, multifaceted, and sophisticated influence machines around, one that spends tens of millions a year. It's no great surprise that one of the country's wealthiest companies can bankroll a beefed-up lobbying operation when it faces a crisis. But what few people realize is that Microsoft has reached the very highest ranks of lobbying so quickly. Says David Hart, a lobbying expert at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government: "Microsoft has joined the top tier"--with such longtime heavyweights as Philip Morris, Lockheed Martin, and AT&T.

WSJ should publish this database, i.e., the data and disclose the software used. This is not a database of leaked information. It is all publicly available.

Instead, WSJ tells readers all about how they constructed it, like some sort of teaser. This reminds me of computer science papers that describe software the authors wrote but refuse to release. How can the reader be certain the software did not contain errors that affected the results.

There are some who believe researchers who publish findings about some object of study for the benefit of the public, e.g., an academic community or a newspaper readership, are "obligated" to supply the resources they used to other researchers so others can replicate or conduct further studies.

But allowing regulators to trade individual stocks that they regulate is unacceptable, at any dollar value. There is just no way to avoid conflicts of interest. If this rule means you can’t hire good people, the salary needs to increase.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-regulators-of-facebook-goog...

The fewer opportunities for conflict of interest, the better the outcomes in the general case.

That limit seems pointless at achieving its goal of minimising conflicting interests.