Robin Carnahan: “my amendment requires that when corporate insiders, such as CEOs, trade the stock of the companies they manage, they…”

“my amendment requires that when corporate insiders, such as CEOs, trade the stock of the companies they manage, they must take reasonable steps to disclose those transactions to their shareholders. Current law requires that insiders file disclosure forms with the Securities and Exchange Commission. However, almost all of these forms are filed on paper and average investors have no practical way of seeing these disclosures. My amendment requires that these disclosure forms be filed electronically and that the SEC make these disclosures available to the public over the Internet. This amendment also requires that corporations disclose insider transactions on their own Web sites. Investors have a right to know if corporate officers are dumping their stock. However, it is meaningless to require these disclosures if investors have no practical way of ever seeing these disclosures. Without this amendment, the disclosure forms simply sit in a file cabinet at the SEC in Washington. My amendment ensures that investors have access to this important information. In the 3 years leading up to its bankruptcy, as Enron's top officers touted the company's stock, they sold more than $1.1 billion worth of their own holdings. Ken Lay alone sold more than $100 million worth of Enron stock while telling others to buy it. Enron's vice president of human resources, Cindy Olsen, was asked by employees if they should invest 100 percent of their retirement funds in Enron.”