Political Quotes

“with the passage of the STOCK Act last year, Congress made an important statement: When it comes to insider trading laws, there is no special exemption for Congress. If anyone in government provides confidential information to someone for the purpose of trading on it, that is insider trading. It is illegal if the information is both material and nonpublic. The word ``material'' means a reasonable investor would want to know it before investing. ``Nonpublic'' means the information has not been released to the general public. To violate the law, the person making the disclosure must have a duty to keep the information secret. Frankly, there is very little information in Congress that must be kept secret. Of course, that is a good thing. Unlike the executive branch, most of what Congress does is public immediately. But disclosing material nonpublic information can be a crime. Even if it is done intentionally, people might be investigated before getting a chance to clear their name. And there is a big difference between material nonpublic information and an expert's educated guess about what a government agency might do. We now know that Wall Street has been harvesting expertise and tidbits of information from Washington, DC, for years while keeping us largely in the dark. In fact, the political intelligence industry is so big and so opaque that the Government Accountability Office was unable to quantify it or judge its size despite 1 whole year of investigating.…”