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Nikolai Vladivostok's avatar

The average Congressman is 58, which ought to mean lower returns than the market due to holding more bonds, dividend stocks or other low-risk investments for imminent retirement.

On the other hand, American politicians never seem to retire and may be building generational wealth.

A tedious trope in this debate is that Congressmen can always protest that inside information didn't influence them because they were totally going to buy/sell that stock anyway. Forcing them all to hold a blind trust or similar eliminates the nonsense.

I know it's not your point here, but allowing a revolving-door of employment between the SEC and big banks, FDA and big pharma, or military top brass and weapons manufacurers is another example of an obvious problem that could be easily stopped. They don't want to fix it because they know they're doing wrong.

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hobbes's avatar

thanks for the followup post!

I'm not necessarily against congress members trading but I do think their transaction should be reported as fast as possible, at most within 3 days. I'm also a fan of not letting them or their immediate family members from trading as well. Cool with both but we all know either ain't happening.

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