I’ve seen calls for resignations and investigations…
I …don’t see anything illegal done. I’m fairly sure the virus was public knowledge when they sold. As for 'had private meetings with experts who warned them" SO?
Lots of people could have extrapolated that info around Jan.25th.
“Hey the energy sector is already hurting and this could slow it down more. Could even be a pandemic. Besides your stocks already are at near highs and this can’t last forever.”
NOW if they had inside info that Saudi Arabia and Russia were going to go into a oil war…thats a little different but also conceivable.
The virus itself didn’t cause the financial markets to collapse - it was the government’s inept response.
So, being a member of the government makes you privy to information that the public doesn’t have - you are an insider.
So, I say - they must resign, and should be prosecuted.
I love Fox News’ headline on this… “Dianne Feinstein, 3 Colleagues sold stocks before Coronavirus crash”…
One out of 4 was a Democrat, so the only one named. The others were Richard Burr (NC), Kelly Loeffler (GA), and James Inhofe (OK).
Like Dale Sams, I don’t see how this is even remotely shady, let alone illegal. Had I been the type of person to have millions of dollars in the stock market, I would likely have offloaded in January as well.
To the extent that they had access to Administration briefings that us hoi polloi didn’t (true for Burr and Loeffler, don’t know about Imhofe), and that contributed to their decisions, damn straight it’s illegal.
And illegal or not, it’s skeevy as hell to personally profit from your government position, regardless of which branch of government. That’s banana-republic shit.
Each house of Congress may expel a member of that house by a 2/3 majority vote. Since the Senate is controlled by Republicans, this won’t happen to Burr and Loeffler. But it should.
Me too! But then, I wouldn’t have been a Congressman who’d just been briefed about how bad the disease was going to be and then gone on to assure the public that it wouldn’t be all that bad, so I could sell my stock for the highest price possible.
No, it’s illegal. The specific law is the STOCK Act ie the Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 (don’t look at me like that, I didn’t name it). It prohibits “Members of Congress and employees of Congress from using nonpublic information derived from their official positions for personal benefit.”
Note that Feinstein and husband sold stock in a biotech company. The stock value of this company went up - they had a paper loss. The others sold off stocks which dropped precipitously and locked in profits/gains up to that point.