Members of Congress profit from stock trades in companies affected by their legislation
Source: rawstory.com
An analysis by the Washington Post has determined that between 2007 and 2010, 130 members of Congress or their families engaged in hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions involving stock in companies that were lobbying before their committees.This practice is neither illegal nor forbidden by Congressional ethics rules, which allow members to act in ways that benefit themselves as long as they are not the sole beneficiaries.
The paper’s researchers examined all 45,000 congressional stock transactions revealed in financial disclosures over the four-year period and found that almost one out of every eight involved companies affected by bills that were before either Congress as a whole or the lawmakers’ committees at the time.
[...]
Read the full article at: rawstory.com
