Discussion

The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency

N_Lens: "Suspicions" doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

e2le: Despite the apathy of Americans, I continue to have hope that there will be consequences for all recent and past actions. It's unfortunate that recent events are only the tip of the iceberg, too many to even remember.

zx8080: What were the consequences after 2008 financial crisis?

amazingamazing: Given the scope of all government officials it should just be the case that you cannot trade individual equities, stocks or have any outside investments wholesale.Otherwise how could you stop it? It’s not like when you work at big co and you just stop trading their stock. You get access to information that clearly will be material potentially months in advance.

renewiltord: Why does making this rule matter? The pardon makes it all irrelevant.

amazingamazing: My hot take is that the presidential pardon will be eliminated in our lifetime.

ocdtrekkie: I suspect in the aftermath of this administration, the power of the President as a whole is going to be massively stripped back.

oatmeal1: Has not happened after other catastrophic administrations. Each party likes the power when they get hold of it.

arjie: I think it'll be interesting to see what the consequences are. In India, it used to be (I haven't lived there in decades) pretty par for the course for a new party to come into power and jail all the previous party's heads for corruption. That would be a worse outcome for the US, I think. It would stall any significant action from the government.

waynecochran: How is Nancy Pelosi's stock doing?

mostlysimilar: What does that have to do with the Trump admin?

renewiltord: I imagine it's because she's in the opposition and has been doing this for a long time with the justification "We are a free market economy. They should be able to participate in that" https://apnews.com/article/business-nancy-pelosi-congress-86...So it's worthwhile to note that both major political parties believe this is acceptable.

waynecochran: Political insider trading example par excellence.

none2585: Why bother reporting this - it's obviously happening and it's obvious that nothing is going to happen about it.

malshe: For sure nothing will happen with the defeatist attitude

stingraycharles: How about we start with congress and see how that goes? Been a point of discussion for a long, long time and politicians do not seem to be interested in regulating themselves at all.

amazingamazing: Yeah. Lots of problems. If I could only get three wishes I’d choose implementation of score voting for presidential election and congress, introduction of recall votes and introduction of national ballot questions.Those should fix most of the problems with time.

KumaBear: Until money and politics are commingled there will be no solution

rubyfan: Nothing will happen until the mid terms or 2028.This administration highlights why the pardon provisions of the constitution need amendment.

e2le: In such a scenario, people shouldn't acquiesce. Be creative and find ways of bringing hurt to those in this administration who feel they can dodge consequences. If no example is made of them, it will happen again.

ocdtrekkie: I think we allowed a sense of decorum and a hope we could just "move on" to avoid that happening in 2021, and now we are suffering the wrath of not doing it. I suspect we will not make the same mistake in 2029.

jonstewart: The vast majority of government employees would not have access to MNPI.

malshe: Yeah both Bush and Obama ignored those crimes

toast0: My spouse was a minor elected official in california, so we had to fill out form 700. I was already pretty much ready to go on broad based mutual funds, but needing to fill that out for anything that isn't a broad based mutual fund put any thoughts of individual equities out of my mind. (Other than employment based stock, which we reported out of caution, even though my employer had no operations in or near the district)

eli_gottlieb: Ok, let's make it Congress and everyone working an elected position or political appointment in the executive branch as well. All good!

gdhkgdhkvff: Why do any rules matter for government officials? Should we just make all laws not apply to them because of the pardon?

gruez: That seems highly questionable given how little pushback Trump got in congress, and it was almost entirely along party lines. What makes you think they'll suddenly grow a spine in 3 years?

matheusmoreira: There were bets on BRL/USD exchange rates just prior to Trump's tariffs announcement too. No doubt some people made a lot of money.

r0fl: NothingStock market at all time highsMiami houses selling north of $150,000,000.00No one cares about that crisis anymoreThe markets keep ripping no matter whatJust some hiccups along the way

night862: Well, in order to go up, first it must go down…

yegle: Nit: MNPI (material, non-public information) has strict definitions. Not all internal information are considered MNPI.

simonw: I thought that would happen after the first Trump term. It did not.The second one has made an even stronger case for doing so though.

oatmeal1: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"

throwaway27448: I don't think good men have been allowed near government for many decades

fnordpiglet: Well, given it’s a federal crime, pardons will happen.

none2585: lol touché

defrost: Pelosi got a free Presidential jet and scoopped the inside trades on Iran?Trump set a stratosphereic high bar for examples par excellence, I doubt all of Pelosi's husband trades add up to a signifigant fraction of Trump's crypto gains alone.

waynecochran: You can actually buy an iOS app that mimicks Nancy Pelosi stock picks! Top that!

defrost: Irrelevant to the matter of scale - Trump's corruption easily exceeds that of Pelosi.More to the point, this is simple what-about-ism to avoid facing up to corruption in the US government and the poressing need (for many decades now) to take effective action.As it stands, the emoluments clause and the impeachment wrist slapping make the US a standing joke for poor definition of problem and inability to punish.

jfengel: We created a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to try to head off that kind of crisis before it happened again.We got rid of it last year.

2510c39011c5: He essentially could pass anyone in the world some amount of information about a certain decision ahead of the time he makes that decision public. And it's really difficult to establish, legally, that he is responsible for the case, especially given all the confidentiality surrounds the environment he works in.It's one thing to observe something is off statistically, and it's quite another to prove that off thing actually happens based on that statistics.

ocdtrekkie: Congresscritters like personal power. Trump has neutered even his own party's legislators and they do not like it, even if they fall in line out of fear. Keep in mind even when Trump is in power, his own party goes through processes like "pro forma" sessions which prevent him from making recess appointments.

zhoujing204: This feels like whataboutism. That line of argument isn’t new and is often associated with pro-Kremlin narratives—do you have a more substantive point to add?

waynecochran: Or just simply pointing out the usual blind political hypocrisy ...

ipython: Add onto all that Trump suing the IRS for $10 billion.

amazingamazing: Personally I think they’re inherently linked. How exactly would it look like for money and politics not to be linked? Money is political. There are some low hanging fruit though like corporate personhood and super pacs.

ocdtrekkie: The issue is people are afraid of him. There was plenty of Republican opposition to Trump but people either fell in line or got pushed out. (The main problem is that people didn't have the courage to oppose him all at once, he can easily handle one threat at a time.)I suspect even of Republicans voting in the lines today, they don't like him or his behavior but are too self-interested to do anything about it. When a new administration comes in, between Republicans happy to avoid a Democrat or one of their own have that power again, and Democrats ready to ensure another Trump can never happen again, we'll have bipartisan support for crippling presidential power.

Avicebron: I think you may mean disentangled?

nailer: That might work out well for the Republicans - "rule by executive order" started under the Obama administration.

waynecochran: Saying something over and over does not make it true.

ipython: Sure. This one’s free. https://www.trumpcorruptiontracker.com/

waynecochran: That does not allow you to buy stock based on what Trump picks.

idle_zealot: > Some analysts say it bears the hallmarks of illegal insider trading, whereby bets are made by people based on information that is not available to the general public. > Others say the picture is more complicated and that some traders have become more adept at anticipating the president's interventions.This and the title are journalistic malpractice. This is an article designed to report on obvious insider trading, and the writer clearly knows and agrees that it's obvious, but goes out of their way to throw in concessions and a build a veil of neutrality. You are legally allowed to accuse public officials of crimes. You do not have to gesture at "looming suspicions." A neutral reporting of the facts would make such an accusation, and tie it into the broader pattern of criminality. But it's more important to perform neutrality than to be honest, so we get this garbage. "Mr President, would you please comment on the allegations that-" "Shut up, piggie."

rubyfan: The pardon is limited to federal offenses, state prosecution is still viable.

josuepeq: You’re correct, but this is unsustainable.

chollida1: What were the crimes you believe were committed in 2008 and who do you think committed those crimes?

uncivilized: You seem to think you’ve found some sort of gotcha. There were plenty of crimes committed in the MBS world. See GS, Credit Suisse, and others. However very few were prosecuted at the individual level.

dwd: While insider trading is always a possibility, what often happen is trades are made in anticipation of an announcement without knowing what the announcement actually is, and Trump really is fairly predictable. You know hes going to TACO, question is when.I would be more interested to know if the traders had insider knowledge of timing of the announcement or if it was leaked.

jamroom: Based on this:https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/executive-or...Looks like it really started under Teddy Roosevelt. Obama's 276 is lower than most of his predecessors.

defrost: No, it's sadly true, the US is regarded as having an old, quaint, constitution that has deep flaws.Eg, an inability to enforce anti corruption at state and federal levels and a weak ineffectual process of bringing heels to boot.

nailer: > This feels like whataboutism.I mean Pelosi has a higher rate of success as a stock picker than Warren Buffet.> That line of argument isn’t newWhy are points raised previously invalid?> and is often associated with pro-Kremlin narrativesI could write "pro-Kremlin narratives are associated with the Russiagate hoax" but that would be childish.

helterskelter: It's very nearly a contradiction of terms.

jfengel: It does encourage you to focus on something that you might be able to fix, instead of being constantly dragged from one outage to the next.

hansvm: Or we can use this camel's straw to finally draw a bit of inspiration from our French compatriots. The power these people wield is artificial, and we're capable of taking it away.

rvz: It is not. The OP just agreed that both Trump and Pelosi insider trades are unacceptable. Thus it is not "whataboutism".Both Trump and Pelosi and all of congress doing insider trading all shows the complete corruption in US politics in the open.It's just that one of them is better at hiding it.

nailer: > we allowed a sense of decorum and a hope we could just "move on" to avoid that happening in 20212021 was exactly like India - Trump was going to go to prison for overestimating the floorspace of a building in New York to get a loan, which is apparently very commonplace and did not concern the bank.

dlenski: Thank you. I was going to simply comment "Suspicions"!?!… but you've explained it more thoroughly.

davidw: Once you start seeing all the "both sides" and "sanewashing" you can't unsee it. And they lean on both so hard.

jmyeet: Here are the lessons:1. The Supreme Court is not some neutral arbiter of a hallowed intractable document. They are political actors. Just like history books now write about the disastrous Court of the 1850s that went completely off the rails (Reconstruction wasn't much better), history will likewise write about the Roberts court as (IMHO) the worst in American history, particularly Citizens United and Trump v. United States. The latter is most directly responsible for all of this. There is now absolutely no prospect of consequences for any of this. The president himself is immune and is now free to openly sell pardons for anyone gets indicted. And let's be real, nobody is getting indicted. This is brazen, unfettered kleptocracy; and2. The Democratic Party itself, the donor class and the consultant class is completely on board with everything that's happening.f The term here is controlled opposition. Now you just feckless pronouncements like "Trump bad" but, for example, no objection to policy. Instead the objection is to process. For example, Hakeem Jeffries saying Congress should've authorized the Iran War. That's not an objection to the war. The Democratic establishment likes the war. All of these political careers are just stepping stones to their eventual private industry paydays. It's their children getting fake jobs at thinktanks, management consultancies, lobbying firms and so on.My personal opinion is that nothing will be solved. It's too late to do anything about this with electoral politics. Democratic politicians and the mainstream media has spent more effort attacking Hasan Piker in the last month than attacking Trump's foreseeably disastrous war or outright corruption with insider trading and pardons.This feels like a "So long and thanks for all the fish" moment.Princeton did a study on the effect of public opinion on what Congress does, specifically the impact of popularity of a bill passing and it actually passing [1]. It should surprise no one that public opinion has almost zero impact.[1]: https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba

ipython: Ha. Well in that case an ios app is small ball. For corruption on DJT scale, just become one of the top bag holders of $TRUMP to meet him and get corruption tips from the man himself. https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-dishing-out-mar-a...

SilentM68: I don't see any actual evidence given in the story by the author.The BBC is not exactly known for unbiased reporting. It's been accused of systemic anti-Trump bias, including the misleading 2024 Panorama edit of his Jan 6 speech for which the network was forced to apologize.Again, proof or evidence? No direct names mentioned of insiders, or any leaks traced. I do not see it. The BBC cites trade volume spikes that were timed to the announcements and analyst opinions. But is that not how Forex and Future exchanges/trades work? Are they not driven by geopolitics? If anyone is calling for a SEC probe, then the investigation should start with the entire congressional body. If it were me, I would start by enacting term limit legislation for senate and house. I'd then start speaking to any politicians that have been expelled out or sacrificed by their own political parties. I'm sure they'll have a rather good story to tell. It will be interesting to see how many of these people will be open to public hearings on the matter.

chollida1: I wasn't looking for a gotcha at all. I was wondering what specific individuals are you referring to and what crimes you think they committed.

awakeasleep: It may be different in the UK. They have defamation laws that seem insane to a USA person. (Burden of proof on the speaker to prove what they said is true iirc)

phyzix5761: They'll just do something similar to what some engineering managers do in the software industry. They'll tip off their cousin or friend of a friend of some opportunity (like needing to hire 10 engineers for a new initiative) and when they make money by acting on the information they reward the tipper with cars, vacations, homes, etc.Sometimes managers will only hire through staffing agencies owned by family friends and get indirect kickbacks.When I first heard about this my initial question was how do they not get caught when the assets are gifted or transferred to the manager's name. Turns out they don't actually transfer the assets to the their name but they effectively own it through free usage.

wyldfire: The cult of personality is impenetrable. He won't be held to account, ever. Nor his sycophants in the administration.

customguy: Implicit in that is the false dichotomy that everything perceived to be somehow against American political party A can only be of interest for proponents of American political party B.And even if that framing was accepted: okay, now we "talk about the other side", but then anything said could be countered with something about this side. It's not pointing out anything relevant, it's rather wiggling a laser pointer.