Congressional Term Limits/Insider Trading

I believe congressionally elected officials should have term limits just like has been established for the POTUS. Corrupt politicians are destroying government. And they’re doing it sometimes for over 40 years.

I also believe congressionally elected officials should be banned from doing any stock trading. This should include all direct family members. Corruption is destroying and bankrupting this country. If we want to avoid the attempted takeover of our democracy that is currently occurring, from ever happening again, we start with this.

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J.D. Wilson - I agree to a certain extent. I think perhaps banning all isn’t necessary. But I’ll share my experience.

I worked at a Private Equity firm in NYC. We had a sister company that we shared HR & IT with. That sister company had a hedge fund department. Because of that hedge fund, my company (again I had no direct contact with the hedge fund and limited contact with the rest of the company) had to participate in the sister-company’s Compliance standards (for SEC purposes).

The compliance required:

  1. Pre-clearing all investments outside of company sponsored 401k program. Meaning we submitted our intended trades, waited ~3-4 days for a response that it wasn’t in the realm of what the hedge fund was doing, then we could make the transfer/investment.
  2. Annually submit our bank account statements (Which felt like a huge invasion) to show we didn’t have an unexpectedly large balance (ie signally insider trading/fraud).

I’m not sure how other companies do it, that was the only place I worked that worked like that. But if the private sector works like that, why can’t government? Why are people regulating industries and investing in companies that they regulate especially if they’re on the subcommittee for that industry/company.

So maybe not a complete ban on trading, but certainly for those that they regulate. AND pre-clear NOT disclose after the fact. That will eliminate most advantage since 30 days via the STOCK act is way too long.