Lawmakers reworked financial portfolios after talks with Fed, Treasury officials

In January 2008, President George W. Bush was scrambling to bolster the American economy. The subprime mortgage industry was collapsing, and the Dow Jones industrial average had lost more than 2,000 points in less than three months. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner became the Bush administration’s point person on Capitol Hill to negotiate a $150 billion stimulus package.


In the days that followed, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. made frequent phone calls and visits to Boehner. Neither Paulson nor Boehner would publicly discuss the progress of their negotiations to shore up the nation’s financial portfolio.
On Jan. 23, Boehner (R-Ohio) met Paulson for breakfast. Boehner would later report the rearrangement of a portion of his own financial portfolio made on that same day. He sold between $50,000 and $100,000 from a more aggressive mutual fund and moved money into a safer investment.


The next day, the White House unveiled the stimulus package.
Boehner is one of 34 members of Congress who took steps to recast their financial portfolios during the financial crisis after phone calls or meetings with Paulson; his successor, Timothy F. Geithner; or Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, according to a Washington Post examination of appointment calendars and congressional disclosure forms.
The lawmakers, many of whom held leadership positions and committee chairmanships in the House and Senate, changed portions of their portfolios a total of 166 times within two business days of speaking or meeting with the administration officials. The party affiliation of the lawmakers was about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, 19 to 15.




http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/lawmakers-reworked-financial-portfolios-after-talks-with-fed-treasury-officials/2012/06/24/gJQAnQPg0V_story.html

It figures!!! Go Ron Paul!!! anyone concerned with this should "write him in" when they vote. we need an audit of the federal reserve.

more from the Washington Post

Members of Congress trade in companies while making laws that affect those same firms

One-hundred-thirty members of Congress or their families have traded stocks collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars in companies lobbying on bills that came before their committees, a practice that is permitted under current ethics rules, a Washington Post analysis has found.

The lawmakers bought and sold a total of between $85 million and $218 million in 323 companies registered to lobby on legislation that appeared before them, according to an examination of all 45,000 individual congressional stock transactions contained in computerized financial disclosure data from 2007 to 2010.

Almost one in every eight trades — 5,531 — intersected with legislation.

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This is not going to change as long as we have a Supreme Court that continually sides with corporations and the 1%

Supreme Court won’t revisit Citizens United decision
The court’s decision means the increasingly secretive world of campaign contributions and the unforeseen consequences of the case known as Citizens United will remain intact for the foreseeable future.

“Considerable experience since the court’s decision in Citizens United casts grave doubt on the court’s supposition that independent expenditures do not corrupt or appear to do so,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote.

“Contributors who want to give enough money to buy candidates now have an obvious place to turn: ‘outside’ groups with a publicly stated intent to pour massive sums into supporting those candidates,” former Solicitor General Seth Waxman wrote in a legal brief.

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Supreme Court: U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Undefeated This Term

There is also the problem that some legislators may profit in less easily discernible ways

ANALYSIS: When a Congressman Becomes a Lobbyist, He Gets a 1,452% Raise (on Average)

Selling out pays. If you’re a corporation or lobbyist, what’s the best way to “buy” a member of Congress? Secretly promise them a million dollars or more in pay if they come to work for you after they leave office. Once a public official makes a deal to go to work for a lobbying firm or corporation after leaving office, he or she becomes loyal to the future employer. And since those deals are done in secret, legislators are largely free to pass laws, special tax cuts, or earmarks that benefit their future employer with little or no accountability to the public.

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I say it's human nature to use information to better one's position in life, and if they want it stopped you have to factor out the potential for corruption. I'm not saying that we throw all the bastids in jail for insider trading (Men have gone to jail on much less evidence by the way) as this seems legal(????) but we can certainly change the laws for the future, and we need too, fankly!


Tim-