by ARWA MAHDAWI
Feminism isn’t about championing women like Nancy Pelosi just because they’re in high-powered positions: it’s about fighting for a more equal society
Nancy Pelosi: Queen of Stonks
Here’s a thorny philosophical quandary for you: if you’re a politician who shapes policy and is privy to confidential information that will impact the stock market, should you and your immediate family be able to trade individual stocks?
For most people the answer to this is “hell no”. Allowing lawmakers to buy and sell individual stocks raises glaringly obvious conflict of interest issues: America may be divided on a lot of things but the country is incredibly unified on this. A recent poll found that found that 76% of voters believe that members of Congress and their spouses have an “unfair advantage” in the stock market – just 5% of respondents approved of members trading stocks.
Were those 5% of respondents related to politicians, I wonder? Because the people on Capitol Hill sure seem to love playing the market. In the early days of the pandemic there were multiple scandals about well-timed stock trades by Republican and Democratic lawmakers. In one of the most egregious examples, Senator Richard Burr and his brother-in-law dumped $1.6m in stocks in February 2020 a week before the market crashed; Burr’s brother-in-law reportedly sold his holdings one minute after getting off the phone with the senator. There were the usual internal investigations into all these trades but nobody faced any meaningful consequences. Eventually the issue faded from the headlines.
Now, however, political stocks are back in the spotlight. On Wednesday two Democratic senators (Jon Ossoff from Georgia and Mark Kelly from Arizona) introduced the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act, which would prevent congressional lawmakers and their immediate families from picking stocks. Spotting that this would clearly go down well with the public, Republicans immediately got in on the act. Josh Hawley announced a competing proposal to limit stock trading just hours after. On Friday it was reported that Ted Cruz might introduce his own legislation. “Hawley and Cruz want to one-up each other,” a source told On The Money. “They don’t want to let the other one own the issue … they’d never join the other senator’s bill because it would mean they couldn’t be the star.”
The Guardian for more