> 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."
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.
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.
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.
I'd add to that list the option to vote "no confidence". About half of Americans do not vote, and I strongly suspect that for a large chunk of them it's because they feel there's no candidate which represents their interests.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 and then when it yoyos over the inverse would happen. That would be a worse outcome for the US, I think. It would stall any significant action from the government.
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.
> we allowed a sense of decorum and a hope we could just "move on" to avoid that happening in 2021
2021 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.
The problem is Trump’s family and friends and donors and people who have otherwise bribed him all can benefit from actions the administration takes. It’s not as simple as restricting the current officials.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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; and
2. 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Nothing; so it raises the question, when the BBC news reports "insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency", are they deliberately ignoring insider trading suspicions looming over a bunch of other high-ranking US politicians?
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."
… but you've explained it more thoroughly.
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.
Those should fix most of the problems with time.
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.
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.
2021 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.
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.
The second one has made an even stronger case for doing so though.
We got rid of it last year.
Stock market at all time highs
Miami houses selling north of $150,000,000.00
No one cares about that crisis anymore
The markets keep ripping no matter what
Just some hiccups along the way
This administration highlights why the pardon provisions of the constitution need amendment.
I would be more interested to know if the traders had insider knowledge of timing of the announcement or if it was leaked.
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; and
2. 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
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.
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.
I mean Pelosi has a higher rate of success as a stock picker than Warren Buffet.
> That line of argument isn’t new
Why are points raised previously invalid?
> and is often associated with pro-Kremlin narratives
I could write "pro-Kremlin narratives are associated with the Russiagate hoax" but that would be childish.
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.
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.
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.
Eg, an inability to enforce anti corruption at state and federal levels and a weak ineffectual process of bringing heels to boot.
So it's worthwhile to note that both major political parties believe this is acceptable.