According to Larry Margasak of the Associated Press; later this week the Senate will pass a bill “prohibiting members of Congress from using nonpublic information for their own personal benefit or “tipping” others to information on which they could trade.” This activity is more commonly referred to as “insider trading.”
The bill comes on the heels of a “60 Minutes” expose ‘that shed light on the fact that members of Congress have been legally trading on non-public information for decades. Apparently this little known loophole has become quite a source of income for some of our elected leaders. Speaker Boehner, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Spencer Bachus were prominently mentioned in the piece. It’s no wonder that the Congressional approval rating is in the single digits and why 56% of those polled would like to replace all 535 members of Congress.
It would be nice to believe that our elected leaders would somehow police themselves out of a sense responsibility and fair play. But that would be like letting the fox into the henhouse and expecting him to leave hungry.
This story is just another example of the ever widening gap between the “haves” and the “have nots.” It also confirms that the most feared words in Washington are:
“I’m from 60 minutes…and I’d like to speak with you.”
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