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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, I don't agree with that. The amount of corruption in the USA right now is simply off the scale.

It's not, you're just watching CNN too much.

or maybe you're watching Fox News too much?

Nah, it’s just more visible. It’s not that much of a sea change. And it’s ridiculously naive to pretend that the major countries in Europe don’t have their own mechanisms to regularly and effectively bypass any democratic inconveniences when necessary. They regularly push through things that no constituent would ever want or vote for.

Nah, it’s worse now than ever.

You're right, just the other day our MP lined his pockets to the tune of a couple of billion, pumped his shitcoin, tipped off his friends about about the stock market movements he was going to cause, sent a couple of good deals to his kids and threatened war on a couple of countries just to please his buddies. And that's just the last couple of months... /s

Oh, and will sell you access to his market-moving tweets for $100K a month, so you know and can get your stock trades set before the plebes do.

Meanwhile the President sits in the Oval Office and says, in a televised interview, with absolutely no shame, that all of his kids and family are insider trading, all the time.

Meanwhile in Germany insider trading is completely legal for politicians. Well, not insider trading - but it's definition supposedly doesn't extend beyond internal business information.

(At least that's what people keep telling me, im not a lawyer)

Insider trading is it course not legal for politicians in Germany, as you could have found out without being a lawyer. That being said, transparency/reporting duties for members of parliament/ministers can and should definitely be improved.

The point was that the definition of insider trading does not extend to politicians buying/selling from their "insider knowledge" as it's not internal business knowledge. Hence it is legal (in Germany) for politicians to buy/sell right before passing laws which influence the valuation of companies.

Which I may add: you could've easily found out yourself too if you looked up what I wrote.

Which laws get passed under complete secrecy that politicians can trade based on? They are usually debated for months/years. Even if something is rushed through fast (like during COVID?) it is public knowledge.

The issue in America is the president has more power to act unilaterally (maybe to address his/her own interests, maybe not) than any European politician.

> Hence it is legal (in Germany) for politicians to buy/sell right before passing laws which influence the valuation of companies.

Are you sure about that? European legal theory for insider trading implicitly covers more cases than the US without needing to explicitly enumerate them as far as I understand (in a nutshell, trading on insider information is illegal regardless of the source or whether any fiduciary duty was breached), and I'd be surprised if this case were not covered.

Trump just dropped the part of his lawsuit against the BBC where he claimed it damaged his business because he would have to expose what his business is.

The Trump regime a way more corrupt than anything currently seen in Europe.

He currently attempting to steal Greenland so he can strip it of mineral assets for fucks sack.

No politician in Europe is starting wars for personal gain.

Only Trump and Putin.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly5wyynv9zo

> No politician in Europe is starting wars for personal gain.

Isn't that that basically the history of Europe? A short French or German or English or Roman dude starting a war for personal gain?

Not recently though. Unless you count Putin.

That's the history of every country and every empire, not just Europe.

Is that the standard we're holding Trump to though?

Do you really think it's OK for him to invade other countries for personal enrichment because historic tyrants also did the same?

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