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Comment by 10g1k | Hacker News Reader

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Sounds like he lost money on the deal, no? How is this a scam? Or am I just feeding a troll?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) revealed in regulatory filings Tuesday her husband Paul Pelosi sold millions worth of stock in chipmaker Nvidia at a loss a day before the Senate passed a multibillion-dollar bill aimed in part at boosting U.S. chip manufacturing that sent Nvidia shares surging, a decision Pelosi’s office says was to avoid further “misinformation” about the couple’s investments.

Drew Hammill, Nancy Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, wrote in a statement to Forbes: “Mr. Pelosi decided to sell the shares at a loss rather than allow the misinformation in the press regarding this trade to continue.”

Why are Congresspeople even allowed to own individual shares, or manage their own investments? If they're allowed to manage their own investments at all, they should be limited to investing in broad index funds.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62482141

https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians/P000197

Or you could trust the person profiting from the act.

Did any of that money go to Nvidia? They don't have fabs.

Deception detected? Don't deny, deflect.

what is the technical term of silicon chip sand?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_dioxide#Semiconductors

How deep do you want to go?

Sand is silicon plus other stuff.

Silicon is silicon plus other stuff.

Silicon used for chips comes in different grades for different purposes, with different levels of impurities and refinement.

am pretty sure Chinese silicon sand aren't used for silicon chips... they had to import those as well

Silicon.

silicon dioxide

FYI, that timelines is incorrect and so is the itinerary for her [2].

She visited TSMC NOT Nvidia (NVidia are based in California). She did plenty of other things in the (very short) visit. China announced it was halting sand exports (and other trade) the same day [3]

He sold his Nvidia shares (Options actually, sold for a loss) more than 2.5 months after all of this (Oct 17th [1], she visited on Aug 2nd). He also sold his Micron Tech holdings at the same time (which benefitted hugely from the CHIPS act) so he traded exactly the WRONG way if he'd known what was coming.

Whoever gave you this narrative is lying to you.

Sources and quote:

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-speaker-pelosis-husban...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_visit_by_Nancy_Pelosi_to_...

After departing Malaysia, Pelosi's delegation arrived without incident in Taipei, Taiwan, at 10:43 pm National Standard Time on the evening of August 2 via a US Air Force transport plane and was received by Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu and Sandra Oudkirk, Director of the Taipei Office of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT).[6][29] Pelosi tweeted that her visit was a sign of the United States' "unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan's vibrant democracy."[1][30] Upon Pelosi's arrival, both the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and opposition Kuomintang endorsed the visit[31] and Taipei 101 illuminated a welcome message for the delegation.[5] The delegation stayed overnight at the Grand Hyatt Taipei.[32]

(...)

Following a breakfast meeting at the American Institute in Taiwan on the morning of August 3, Pelosi visited the Legislative Yuan with her delegation.[36] While there, she was received by vice president of the Legislative Yuan, Tsai Chi-chang and addressed the legislature in a short speech, saying Taiwan was "one of the freest societies in the world". She advocated further US economic cooperation with Taiwan with the CHIPS Act, and in areas relating to climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and democracy.[37][38]

She proceeded to the Presidential Office Building and met with President Tsai Ing-wen, who awarded her the Order of Propitious Clouds (with Special Grand Cordon).[39][40] A closed media session was held afterwards with only Taiwan's Central News Agency, Bloomberg News, and Japan's Asahi Shimbun in attendance.[41] Pelosi expressed her views that China's anger at her visit was due to her being a woman and not because of her rank as the highest-level American politician to have visited Taiwan in 25 years.[42]

At noon, President Tsai hosted a banquet at the Taipei Guest House to entertain Pelosi's delegation. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company founder Morris Chang, chairman Mark Liu, and Pegatron vice chairman Jason Cheng were invited to attend.[43][44]

The delegation's final activity was a visit, at about 2:40 pm for an hour, to the National Human Rights Museum at the Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park documenting the White Terror period in Taiwan. During the visit, they met with Wu'erkaixi, a former student leader of the Tiananmen Square protests, Lam Wing-kee, a dissident Hong Kong bookseller, and Lee Ming-che, a Taiwanese activist who was imprisoned in China[45][46] and Kelsang Gyaltsen Bawa, the representative of the Tibet Office in Taiwan.[47]

In a press release, Pelosi declared that the visit "in no way contradicts longstanding United States policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, US-China Joint Communiques and the Six Assurances. The United States continues to oppose unilateral efforts to change the status quo."[48] NSC representative Kirby reiterated this perspective at a press conference held during the visit saying, "The Speaker's visit is totally consistent with our longstanding One China policy."[49] Pelosi departed Taiwan for South Korea after 6:00 pm on the evening of August 3.[50]

(Personal opinion: that's a lot of work for an 82 year old woman...)

[3] https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-speaker-pelosis-husban...

Nvidia and TSMC are probably the two most important semi-conductor companies on Earth. Semi-conductors is probably one of the most important geopolitical issues. Not saying there isn’t corruption, but it’s unsurprising that there’s a lot of overlap.

The two most important companies are TSMC and ASML.

In July 2021, Thierry Breton European Commissioner, visited ASML and announced a goal of at least 20% of world production of semiconductors in Europe by 2030, and support via a European Alliance on semiconductors.[9] After reporting earnings in July 2021, the company said they had a near monopoly for machines used by TSMC and Samsung Electronics to make the advanced chips.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding

Nvidia is disposable. Intel, AMD, Google, Apple can pickup their market. There is no replacement for TSMC.

May be yes. May be no. But it looks suspicious enough to appoint a special prosecutor and investigate the allegations.

Does it? A lot of the events involve China’s influence over Taiwan and the impact on the semi-conductor industry. E.g. China disrupting the chip supply chain in Taiwan and the U.S. responding by supporting the domestic chip industry. What is the conspiracy there exactly? That Pelosi conspired with China to create the pretext for a bill that would support the domestic chip industry to profit off the stock market?

> China disrupting the chip supply chain in Taiwan

The US started the trade war and 'sanctions'. Just like the long-running low key trade war it started against the Eu in 2005. Its not China doing anything.

The US even violated or rejected many of the WTO rules it previously backed in enforcing on all other countries when it had the market advantage. Which is one reason why practically every single country outside various European ones are converging around China, India, BRICS etc - they see the US and its satellites as unreliable partners who would renege on any word anytime its convenient for them.

The conspiracy is that Nancy Pelosi is doing insider trading.

Though at this point, I'm not even sure "conspiracy" is the right word anymore. There is nothing "secret" with the situation.

Insider trading is not a conspiracy. I think insider trading is bad, and the laws should be amended so that congress is forbidden from insider trading. But if the only “smoking gun” is insider trading then this is a non-issue. It’s legal for members of congress to trade with non-public information, and many members in both parties do it.

Clearly people find it distasteful when politicians do legal but immoral things. It's a non-issue legally speaking, but one wonders why this gaping source of misaligned incentives remains.

I agree. But it’s not something that requires a “special prosecutor to investigate the allegations”, which is the statement that started this conversation.

If the point of allowing trading is better price discovery, then banning insider trading doesn't make all that much sense, because the insiders are contributing information by improving the price.

(Also makes you wonder why analysts bother meeting with CEOs since the CEOs can't share non-public information.)

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