A 2004 study of the results of stock trading by United States Senators during the 1990s found that that senators on average beat the market by 12% a year. In sharp contrast, U.S. households on average underperformed the market by 1.4% a year and even corporate insiders on average beat the market by only about 6% a year during that period. A reasonable inference is that some Senators had access to – and were using – material nonpublic information about the companies in whose stock they trade.”
With what I learned about the Congress floors me. They write some laws that they are exempt from, the very same laws that would toss you and i into prison for many years, as Martha Stewart. Better yet, Ask the former Speaker the House Nancy Pelosi. She has been breaking those laws that puts the average person in prison, yet her, and her husband gets filthy rich. I do mean filthy rich, as it is DIRTY MONEY, because a only people like her benefit from it, while you and I go to jail. Now that is a real pisser if you ask me.
Definition of insider trading: The illegal practice of trading on the stock exchange to one’s own advantage through having access to confidential information.
Is insider trading wrong? Most Americans would say that it is. In fact, some very wealthy and very prominent Americans (including Martha Stewart) have gone to prison for it. It just is not right for those with inside information that is not generally available to the public to make huge profits in the stock market by making key trades based on that information. But there is one group, members of the U.S. Congress, that can do all the insider trading they want and get away with it. That is because insider trading is perfectly legal for members of Congress. Yes, you read that correctly. So how would that work? Well, for example, a member of Congress may know that a law that is about to be proposed would have a very positive effect on a particular company and could buy up a ton of stock in that company a few days before that law is introduced. Isn’t that wrong? Of course. Is there any law against it? Not at all. Read Complete Story
Ladies and Gentlemen, when do we as American standup and say enough of the raping and pillaging of America, when is enough already. This behavior is just out right thievery. It was made legal by the the thieves themselves….OUR VERY OWN CONGRESS. Laws passed that would throw you and I into jail for violating the insider trading act, members of Congress are exempt. I guess they are exempt from State Laws as well. Who knows. I know that I busted my hump trying to make a suitable living for my family and lived by the laws of the land. To find out that that members if Congress are exempt from some of these laws is just plain wrong.
In early 2008, Nancy Pelosi and her real estate developer husband, Paul, were given an opportunity to buy into a Visa IPO. It was a nearly impossible feat–one that average citizens almost certainly could never achieve. The vast majority of purchase opportunities went to institutional investors, large mutual funds, or pension funds.
Despite Pelosi’s consistent railing against credit card companies, on March 18, 2008, the Pelosis bought between $1 million and $5 million (politicians do not have to report the exact amounts, only ranges) worth of Visa stock at the IPO price of $44 per share. Two days later, the stock price rocketed to $65 per share, yielding a 50% profit. The Pelosis then bought Visa twice more. By their third purchase on June 4, 2008, Visa was worth $85 per share.
How did Nancy Pelosi snag one of the most coveted initial public offerings in history? The facts are still emerging.
Yet according to Schweizer, corporations that wish to build congressional allies will sometimes hand-pick members of Congress to receive IPOs. Pelosi received her Visa IPO almost two weeks after a potentially damaging piece of legislation for Visa, the Credit Card Fair Fee Act, had been introduced in the House. If passed, the bill would have cut into Visa’s profits substantially by lowering so-called “interchange fees,” the 1% to 3% charge retailers pay Visa when customers use Visa cards for purchases. Interchange fees are a critical source of revenue for the four credit card companies–$48 billion in 2008, to be exact.
If the Credit Card Fair Fee Act had been passed into effect, it would have amended antitrust laws to require credit card companies to enter negotiations with merchants over interchange fees, and it would have given the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission the power to arbitrate if the two sides failed to come to an agreement. For that reason, Visa and the other credit card companies strongly opposed the bill.
The Credit Card Fair Fee Act was exactly the kind of bill one would think then-Speaker Pelosi would have backed. “She had been outspoken about antitrust problems posed by insurance, oil, and pharmaceutical companies,” Schweizer notes, “and she was vocal about the need for controlling interest rates individual banks charged to use their credit cards.”
Initially, the Credit Card Fair Fee Act cleared the Judiciary Committee on a 19-16 vote, and the National Association of Convenience Stores began lobbying for a vote on the floor of the House. “It is imperative to tell your Representatives to request a vote on the House Floor from Nancy Pelosi,” the association urged its members. Still, with at least ten percent of the Pelosi family’s entire stock portfolio invested in a single stock, Nancy Pelosi clearly had a vested interest in ensuring that Visa’s profits were protected. And that is exactly what she accomplished. Despite broad public support for the bill—77% in one study—Pelosi saw to it that the bill never made it to the House floor.
Shortly thereafter, a second bill limiting collusion by the credit card companies on interchange fees was proposed. The Credit Card Interchange Fee Act of 2008, while not as strong as the first bill, would have required greater transparency from credit card companies in informing customers how much they were paying in interchange fees. Yet again, reports Schweizer, “this second bill suffered the same fate as the first, never making it to the House floor.”
“By 2009, both bills had garnered even broader bipartisan support and were reintroduced. Under Speaker Pelosi, however, neither bill lived to see a vote on the House floor.”
Pelosi eventually supported something called the Credit Card Reform Act. Curiously, the all-important interchange fees went untouched by that legislation. Instead, the bill stated that the interchange fee issue should simply be “studied.” The bill’s other measures would not affect Visa but rather its client banks. In short, the Credit Card Reform Act ensured that Visa and the other credit card companies dodged a potentially costly bullet.
None of that, however, prevented Pelosi from grandstanding. She publicly declared that the Credit Card Reform Act sent a “strong and clear message to credit card companies” that they would be held to account for their “anti-consumer practices.”
In the wake of the bill’s passage, the Pelosis’ shares of Visa stock rose. Indeed, according to Throw Them All Out, “the IPO shares they had purchased soared by 203% from where they began, while the stock market as a whole was down 15% during the same period.”
Nancy Pelosi is hardly the only member of Congress to be given IPOs, but Pelosi has been especially “lucky” at landing them. She and her husband have participated in at least 10 lucrative IPOs throughout her career. In 1993, Pelosi purchased IPO shares in a high-tech company named Gupta, watched the stock price leap 88% in 24 hours, then seized the profits by selling the stock the next day. The Pelosis did the same thing with Netscape and UUNet, resulting in a one-day doubling of their initial investment. Other fast and lucrative IPO flips included Remedy Corporation, Opal, Legato Systems, and Act Networks.
Schweizer says Nancy Pelosi’s financial disclosure forms typically mask the precise dates of her stock buys. He cites the Pelosis’ December 1999 stock purchase of between $250,000 and $500,000 in shares from high-tech company OnDisplay. A few months later, OnDisplay was bought by Vignette, which resulted in up to $1 million in capital gains for the Pelosis. What was unusual about the transaction is that Vignette’s IPO was underwritten by a major campaign contributor and longtime friend of Nancy Pelosi, William Hambrecht.
Throw Them All Out also chronicles the Pelosis’ $100,000 IPO purchase of Clean Energy Fuels at roughly $12 a share. Schweizer alleges that as Speaker of the House, Pelosi pushed several bills beneficial to the company.
Similarly, in November 2007, Pelosi bought $500,000 in the IPO for Quest Energy Partners before proceeding to champion the natural gas-related legislation that stood to significantly benefit the company. When Tom Brokaw asked her whether her significant personal investments in natural gas represented a conflict of interest, Pelosi shrugged off the question by hiding behind the crony capitalist’s false credo: “That’s the marketplace.”
Her answer “That the Market Place” let me say this to Nancy Pelosi, straight out so there will be no misunderstandings; “You put YOUR PANTIES on just like every other hard working female in this country, “ONE LEG AT A TIME.” The exception here is, you have used your PRIVILEGED and EXEMPTED STATUS to abuse a law which puts every other American in jail, you use this EXEMPTION to benefit you and your family. There have been in the criminal world, the likes of Al Capones, Bugs Maran, and the John Gotti’s of the world, and you Madam, are no better than any of them, the exception is you and your congressional crooks, write and pass laws which gives you an exemption from prosecution.
You may be exempt from legal prosecution; however you are not exempt from public opinion. I just hope and pray that the opinions of you and your cronies sink to the bottom of the sea, along with all of the whale and fish droppings, as you and your cronies are now and have been unworthy of the American people’s trust which was bestowed upon you upon your election to the hallowed halls of Congress.
I end this post by saying the following; “it is a sad day, to know that most our elected Congressional leadership, do not have an moral or ethical bone in their body. This was proven by the very law they penned, concerning insider trading. I am sad and embarrassed that we have members in Congress that used the the laws to their benefit, for personal gain, knowing it may not be illegal but certainly unethical to the highest degree.”
You knew it when the law was passed, now the American people know it, I hope that your ejection from Congress will be as swift as it possibly can be. If it were left to me, you would be impeached. You are an embarrassment to our Founding Fathers and for what they stood for and valued, and without question you are and will be in my opinion a stain on the very fabric of our country for your actions and inaction’s. For this will not be forgotten.
I taught my son, right from wrong, and to work hard and do not expect anything extra in return for your services, other than what is due you for your services; do what is asked of you and do not ask for anything in return, you will sleep better at nights knowing that you do not owe anyone a thing.
Until the next time…God Bless Our Country..and as always, Walk Slow and Drink lots of water.
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