Monday, November 14, 2011

David Barker writes that Congress is indeed subject to insider trading laws

He points me to a paper by Donna Nagy.  I will be curious to see if a prosecutor does anything with it.


2 comments:

David Merkel said...

I think the author is right. SEC rule 10b5-2 is broadly written, dealing with "the purchase or sale of securities on the basis of, or the communication of, material nonpublic information misappropriated in breach of a duty of trust or confidence."

The rule is short, and you can find it here:

http://taft.law.uc.edu/CCL/34ActRls/rule10b5-2.html

From scanning the article, it seems to come down to questions of whether:

* The SEC would pursue civil actions, and
* The DOJ would pursue criminal actions.

I'm not optimistic, but it might take trying one or two egregious cases to make it all stop.

Kurt Paulsen said...

This was on Freakonomics a few months ago, referencing a recent paper looking at investment returns of congressmen:

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/25/politics-pays-evidence-of-insider-trading-among-congressmen/