Maybe we should change the name of Washington DC to Hypocrisy BB (Beyond Belief). We have Obama excoriating Goldman Sachs and BP Oil and it turns out that he has received almost a $ 1 million dollars in campaign funds from Goldman Sachs and $75,000 from BP.
We learn that Congress can profit from insider trading on information they learn in the course of their public duty doing the business of the people.
They are definitely doing “the business” but it ain’t for public consumption. Here is a post from Yahoo…
Even a cynic can find Washington’s hypocrisy shocking at times. The Wall Street Journal reports today a House bill that would force lawmakers to make greater disclosures on financial transactions and disallow them from trading on nonpublic information is going nowhere fast.
That’s right. Members of Congress are currently allowed to profit on insider trading!
The bill, which has been languishing in the House for four years, would require elected officials “to make their financial transactions public within 90 days of a purchase or sale” and “prohibit lawmakers from trading in financial markets based on nonpublic information they learn on the job,” the WSJ reports.
It seems they’re above the transparency they’ve been calling for on Wall Street.
This comes a day after the same newspaper reported several lawmakers profited by betting against the housing and stock market in 2008. And some did it using derivatives they’ve recently been railing against.
As our colleague Henry Blodget wrote Tuesday, “If you’re going to complain about how awful short-selling is and how evil and venal people are for doing it, you should probably abstain from the practice yourself.”
Liberalism is a tall tale, told by an illusionist, using smoke and mirrors, that captivates and magnifies the ignorance of people into believing that the United States is the land of the free… lunch
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