It’s a very similar statute - in purpose and effect - to the executive branch statute,” Nagy says. “Judges can’t have a financial interest in matters before their courts. Donna Nagy, a law professor at Indiana University-Bloomington who focuses on insider trading, notes that rules governing members of Congress don’t “impose any type of conflict of interest restraint on members of Congress akin to the anti-conflict legislation that is enforced for the executive branch and judicial branch. There’s much to chew on there as well, but I’m going to focus on members of Congress because there’s plenty enough to explore in those hallowed, and slightly sordid, halls.Īnother reason to focus on Congress is that the laws there are relatively lax.

Federal judges, as well as Federal Reserve officials are being scrutinized and in some instances have taken recent falls. It’s not just members of Congress who’ve come under the microscope btw. How often has that happened in human history? Let’s remember the people who would write the stricter rules would be theoretically financially disadvantaging themselves. I urge you to temper your expectations however. (Yahoo Finance produced three articles this week on the subject here, here and here.)

It’s a debate that has come to the fore this week two competing bills were introduced on Wednesday, and that plus a flurry of articles could foster some real change here.

Intriguingly, there are high-profile members on both sides of the aisle, and on both sides of the issue, i.e., both Dems and Repubs who are pro stock trading by members and both who are con. But in this case, it’s much closer to home for lawmakers, specifically, that oh-so tawdry practice of stock trading by members of Congress. Here too the common ground is about stock trading. this past week and you could almost feel the strife in the brisk January air, with the endless squabbling over President Biden’s stalled Build Back Better plan being Exhibit A.Īnd yet I did find instances of bipartisanship, featuring some strange bedfellows the likes of which I hadn’t seen since Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ted Cruz briefly aligned on Twitter last year during the meme stock brouhaha - before AOC kicked Ted to the curb, 67 minutes later.

Yahoo finance nvda call options