Tom Ferguson: Congress is a “Coin Operated Stalemate Machine” Readers may recall that we discussed a Financial Times op ed by University of Massachusetts professor of political sciences and favorite Naked Capitalism curmudgeon Tom Ferguson which described a particularly sordid aspect of American politics: an explicit pay to play system in Congress.
Congresscritters who want to sit on influential committees, and even more important, exercise leadership roles, are required to kick in specified amounts of money into their party’s coffers. Top Favorite Stock Holdings of Congress. Why aren’t congressional members required to put all of their stock holdings into a blind trust?
Why can’t insider trading by Congressional members be banned? How can elected officials do “the people’s business” when they are too busy running around trading on the votes they are about to cast? How one earth can we ever get fair outcomes of issues involving finance, healthcare, or energy when the members so personally have a monetary stake in an outcome they may or may not be in the public interest? Why aren’t these people in jail? 1. Members invested: 75 Total value of holdings (max.): $11.41 million Total value of holdings (min.): $3.58 million Top Congressional Investors Darrell Issa (R. 2. Members invested: 62 Total value of holdings (max.): $39.42 million Total value of holdings (min.): $8.72 million Top Congressional Investors Rodney Frelinghuysen (R. 3. Congress insiders: Above the law? Martha Stewart went to jail for it.
Hedge fund honcho Raj Rajaratnam was fined $92 million and will go to jail for years for it. But members of Congress can do the same thing -use non-public information to make stock trades -- and there's no law against it. Steve Kroft reports on how America's lawmakers can legally make tidy profits on information only they know, simply because they won't pass a law against themselves. The report will be broadcast on Sunday, Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Lieberman, Cantor defend Capitol Hill’s inside traders. “Send me a bill that bans insider trading by members of Congress,” President Obama told the assembled members of the House and Senate in his State of the Union address last week, “and I will sign it tomorrow.”
If only it were that simple. The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, a bill that prohibits legislators and federal officials from knowingly profiting off of nonpublic information related to impending legislation and regulatory decisions, looks certain to pass the Senate this week. On Monday, senators overwhelmingly approved a motion to cloture on S.2038 preventing the bill from being filibustered. Congress Considers New Limits on Insider Trading - NYTimes.com. Ethically Challenged Congress Needs Law or Code Banning Insider Trading. Comparing the promises made in the Geneva agreement on April 17 to the actions on the ground in the ten days since gives a good idea which side is the bigger liar.
DONETSK, Ukraine -- In the war of words between Washington and Moscow—a rhetorical clash that is descending to personal insults – both sides are determined to prove they are in the right in an information war waged at a Twitter-driven speed that would have made the heads of their Cold War predecessors spin. But who is telling the truth? Below is The Daily Beast’s checklist on the Geneva agreement that is the closest thing we have as a touchstone for gauging reality. Diplomats drawn from Russia, Ukraine, the United States and the European Union hammered out the accord on April 17. They agreed to “initial concrete steps to de-escalate tensions” in Ukraine with all sides saying they would “refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions.” Rep. Bachus faces insider-trading investigation. The Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent investigative agency, opened its probe late last year after focusing on numerous suspicious trades on Bachus’s annual financial disclosure forms, the individuals said.
OCE investigators have notified Bachus that he is under investigation and that they have found probable cause to believe insider-trading violations have occurred. (Washington Post investigation: Capitol Assets) Infographic: What's the Cost of Getting Into Congress? (Scaling) Follow the ... Lawrence Lessig and Mark McKinnon: How to sober up Washington. The following op-ed, co-written by HLS Professor Lawrence Lessig and Daily Beast contributor Mark McKinnon, appeared in the Apr. 6 edition of the online publication. by Mark McKinnon and Lawrence Lessig Washington is hopelessly addicted to money and thus to the status quo; drunk with power and incapable of getting sober and fixing itself.
It’s time for an intervention—by the states. Politically, we two disagree on just about everything. But the one thing we do agree on is that the institutions of government in Washington have become corrupt, held hostage by well-funded special interests. And so too many throw up their hands and say, “We give up. The Best Congress the Banks’ Money Can Buy. Here we go again.
Another round of the game we call Congressional Creep. After months of haggling and debate, Congress finally passes reform legislation to fix a serious rupture in the body politic, and the President signs it into law. But the fight’s just begun, because the special interests immediately set out to win back what they lost when the reform became law. Former Gov. Buddy Roemer: Washington is not broken, it's bought. Money in politics..