Pelosi Angers Fmr Obama Advisor and Left-Wing News Hosts for Appearing to be Against Stock Trading Limitations for Congress People Such as Herself

Wednesday, a reporter asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “Should members of congress and their spouses be banned from trading individual stocks while serving in congress?” Pelosi retorted unsurprisingly, “No… We are a free market economy. They should be able to participate in that.”

REPORTER: "Should members of congress and their spouses be banned from trading individual stocks while serving in congress?"

PELOSI: "No…We are a free market economy. They should be able to participate in that." pic.twitter.com/2SNqSCwFEU

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) December 15, 2021

Obama’s ethics chief Walter Shaub had strong words for Pelosi’s position on trading. He told Fox News Digital, “What a disgusting comment. This is the opposite of government ethics.”

“Nobody kidnapped these members of Congress when they were private citizens, dragged them to Washington and forced them to be in Congress.”

“The American people are sick of members of Congress buying and selling stock and creating the appearance of trading on insider information.”

“They should absolutely be banned from trading stocks. Let them buy diversified mutual funds. Let them buy government bonds. But bar them from trading stocks for crying out loud.”

The speaker’s position comes as no surprise as earlier this year Fortune reported on her husband’s 5.3 million gain on Alphabet parent company of Google.

Fortune reported, “The week before the House Judiciary Committee voted on reigning in big tech, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband exercised a bullish bet on Google-parent Alphabet, in a timely transaction that netted him $5.3 million.

The antitrust bill was advanced as a push by the government to curb the “unregulated power” of big tech firms Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook. It was the final part of a six-part package called “Ending Platform Monopolies Act” aimed at restricting how big tech companies offer their products to ensure they don’t use their size to dominate the market…  

Paul Pelosi, who bought 4,000 shares of Alphabet on June 18 (as revealed in a financial disclosure signed by Nancy Pelosi and filed on July 2), made an initial $4.8 million gain from Alphabet’s rising share price, and has since seen his gain grow to $5.3 million.

Paul bought the stock by exercising a call option, which allows investors to speculate on stocks they do not own by entering into a contract that allows them to buy a stock at a later date at a promised price. The upshot: a call option is a good tool for an investor who believes the stock price will go up in the future. In Pelosi’s case, the call options he’d previously bought for Alphabet (which were due to expire the day of his purchase) allowed him to buy it at $1,200 a share while the shares closed that day just over $2,500, a difference that accounted for his profit.”

These moves by members of Congress and their spouses are under a lot of criticism from many. In 2012 Congress passed the STOCK Act which Obama signed into law. This move was introduced by former Senator Joe Leiberman (D-CT). The objective of the bill was to prohibit the use of non-public information for private profit, including insider trading by members of Congress and other government employees.

Obama’s former ethics chief was not the only one who was disgusted with Pelosi’s stance on members of Congress owning and trading individual stocks. MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle commented on Thursday asking, “When you’re the CEO of a publicly-traded company, there are all sorts of restrictions on what you can do. When you work in an investment bank when you work as an investor, so many restrictions when it comes to personal investments. But these people, lawmakers, these are policymakers – policies that directly influence the way business is done all over the country – how is this even remotely legal?”

CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin also had words for the Speaker of the House, “This was one of the most disappointing and, maybe to put it even less politely, disgraceful comments in views I have heard espoused on this issue and surprising given Pelosi’s views on many other issues. We have insider trading laws for a reason. CEOs, executives cannot trade. Members of the Federal Reserve now cannot trade. And yet we are allowing our politicians, who do have access to inside information, they are often briefed regularly about all sorts of things that are about to happen and that they have a meaningful influence on what is about to happen and they are trading. To the extent that politicians should want the public to trust them, this undermines every bit of trust. It goes to every worst expectation of corruption, and it’s not even expectation. It’s real!”

This conversation seems to have been spurred by a tweet from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez which was put out in early December. “It is absolutely ludicrous that members of Congress can hold and trade individual stock while in office. The access and influence we have should be exercised for the public interest, not our profit. It shouldn’t be legal for us to trade individual stock with the info we have.”

It is absolutely ludicrous that members of Congress can hold and trade individual stock while in office.

The access and influence we have should be exercised for the public interest, not our profit. It shouldn’t be legal for us to trade individual stock with the info we have. https://t.co/Z3UZej2eC2

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 8, 2021

With Pelosi in charge of the House, it seems that nothing will be done to stop members of Congress and or their spouses from trading individual stocks and exercising options a move that disgusts even many liberals, who knows if it would even change under GOP leadership.

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