I guess the way to start is by shaming these obviously corrupt officials and practices. Much like racism, people don't mind being corrupt but they seem to mind being _called_ corrupt.

Having done some reading on this myself I don't think it's the case that Congress as a whole outperforms SPY [1]

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...

I think that one died in committee: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5106

There’s another from earlier this year (https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1908...) that is currently being pushed by a Republican member from Florida. It was blocked by the Speaker. There’s currently a discharge petition: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolutio...

Over the summer, Josh Hawley of all people introduced a similar bill in the Senate.

They shouldn't be allowed to trade stocks. When you do so, corruption is inevitable. It should be an expected price of public service that you remove yourself from most other ambitions.

I'd hope that if they were required to live off of their (rapidly depreciating) savings and income, like most Americans, they might consider some of their legislative choices differently.

I would say jokes aside but the political system promotes this corruption.

I don't know if that's realistic or not as the electorate has already shown they don't care enough to vote their representatives out for doing it and it's unlikely that current members would restrict their earnings. I guess it's good that we know about it, at least.

Or is that one of those, "Of course that exists, but if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it" kind of things?

"After ascension, however, leaders outperform their matched peers by up to 47 percentage points per year"

They looked at the 20 congressional leaders from 1995 to 2021 that traded stocks. They found _up to_ a 47% outperformacnce per year.

It's not clear (without trudging through the data) what the average outperformance was (or if there was any).

If only Congress and Americans had access to more figures and math, then we would do the right thing. This paper is going to change things. We finally did it.

I'd vote for that person in a heartbeat even if the rest of their platform was non-existent.

But there are many other interests that heavily influence politicians.

For example, in many districts you can not get elected without the endorsement of certain unions.

"Earlier studies of lawmakers’ trading by Ziobrowski et al. (2004 and 2011), found their portfolios to outperform the market. However, this conclusion is reversed in later studies. In particular, Eggers and Hainmueller (2013) and Belmont et al. (2022) document the opposite—members of Congress underperform the market during 2004-2008 and 2012-2020, respectively."

I guess the title of "Congress members suck at trading stocks, but suck less once in leadership positions" was already taken

Do you get insights early enough or is it too late to turn a profit? Anyone knows how they get the data?

And before anyone mentions she whose name is nauseatingly always mentioned on this subject, here's the list of Congress members by net worth so you get the whole picture instead of just how bad the situation has become.

Because in the end, the mice keep voting the same cats back in.

https://www.quiverquant.com/congress-live-net-worth/

https://nypost.com/2025/11/08/us-news/nancy-pelosi-made-130-...

It doesn't require us to change our views on areas where we don't agree. It simply requires uniting on the numerous areas where there is common ground.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of this.

Your average Joe does this and gets ripped away from his family for 10-years. Politicians do it and it gives them job security.

The two-party system amounts to two wings on the same bird. While we're fighting about left vs. right, we're soon going to find ourselves in a new system of lords vs. peasants.

It's one thing to use insider information, it's another to be blatant and unapologetic.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_congressional_insider_tra...

By having lawmakers as peers, you’d have a natural feel for what laws have momentum, who would benefit, etc.

I’m not ruling out corruption, just that assuming malicious intent often masks underlying dynamics.

Anyone who disagrees must be new to humanity.

Right now the people entering politics are people who just want more money. They don't care about anything or anyone else. The sooner Americans realize this the better off we'll be.

I think if you asked average USA citizens, the majority would support more restrictions, or an outright ban on trading, for the legislature. But our country isn't even pretend-run according to the will of the people at this point. The veneer of listening to the people is practically completely gone.

I remember writing to one of my reps about a decade ago, urging that she vote a particular way on an issue. The canned auto-reply that I got in response told me why she was right to take the opposite stance and didn't even pretend to value my feedback. It used to be part of the job that a politician would lie to you and say they valued your opinion, even if we all knew that was bs. It was a real mask-off moment that I didn't realize was about to become the norm throughout our country.

Whatever she's investing in, he chases the money.

We're now at the point where the most accurate predictor of what the administration and Congress will do comes from stock trades. You want to predict a land war in Venezuela? Just watch defense contractor and energy stocks.

We should force all elected officials and senior public servants to put their assets into a blind trust for their entire term plus two years. They should be forbidden from investing directly. So should their immediate family.

But the problem is so much larger than that. The government as a whole is captured by the donor class. It's so well known that even without an explicit quid pro quo, you and your immediate family will be looked after if you play ball. Vote for tax cuts, deregulation or th einterests of some industry and after your political career, you will have a nice 6 or 7 figure job for life. So will your spouse and children.

What brought the most recent government shutdown to an end? The evidence points to politicals who were beholden to the aviation industry. The disruption to air travel was really starting to bite. Tim Kaine in particular. But it's not just one guy. Chuck Schumer whipped votes to end the shutdown and subbed out John Ossoff who would otherwise face backlack in 2026. Every single Senator who "broke ranks" is either retiring or won't face a primary until 2028 or 2030. That's not an accident and many of them are highly funded by the commericial aviation industry.

What's depressing is how little money it takes to buy our government.