On whether Congress members and their spouses should be banned from trading stocks while in office signal to the American people that we should do as the politicians say, but not as they do.
What is essentially occurring with congressional members is insider trading.
A specific form of securities trading that is outlawed and governed by the SEC. Don't let Pelosi or other congressional members pull the wool over your eyes, make no mistake, the information and reports that Congress receives is de facto material insider information and should preclude them from making trades to their own personal benefit.
What about the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, or STOCK Act., which was passed in 2012 to prevent this exact type of trading? Despite the language and intent of the act, the STOCK Act has largely just been lip service to addressing the problem.
If you or I were audited for insider trading and found to have used information similar to that which is used by members of Congress when trading securities, we'd have a court date and would be facing potentially 20 years in federal prison.
Their duties are to write and enact laws that improve the lives of Americans, not to write laws that line their pocketbooks with dubiously timed security trading.
We as a people need to demand better from our politicians, and if our politicians don't want to give up trading securities, then maybe they should consider another line of work - but that would require an honest introspective look into one's own ethics, something that is hard to come by in the vast majority of Congress.
https://spectator.org/insider-trading-and-congress-a-love-story/
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