The stock portfolios of literally dozens of members
of Congress have outperformed the stock market in 2021.
And we have no new data on this,
thanks to one of my favorite Twitter accounts, unusual_whales.
This person compiled a list of all of our lawmakers who
did in fact beat the stock market in 2021.
And if you take a look, this is really a bipartisan effort.
You've got Democrats and Republicans again,
let me reiterate literally dozens of them who seem to be such
expert stock traders that they outperform the overall market.
And this is of course not the first time this has happened,
this has been a longstanding issue that I think has really come to
light as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
And what we saw happen in the Senate with senators essentially selling
certain stocks, individual stocks.
After they had a closed door briefing on the severity of the Coronavirus pandemic
before the general public really knew about the severity of the pandemic.
This was early on in 2020.
Now, if you look at that list,, you've got 19 Democrats and 16 Republicans.
So this is not a partisan an anti Democrat or anti Republican issue,
this is really a corruption issue that impacts both political parties.
And they're also apparently doing real well when it comes to trading options.
Something that I'm not in any way an expert on, but
let's take a quick look at that graph because it shows that.
In terms of trading options, Josh Gotttheimer, Jim Langevin and
also Nancy Pelosi and Blakemore, all four of them outperformed in trading options.
All right, so with that said I want to just really show you guys that this has
been an issue for decades.
And it's not just about the fact that we have a double standard where if we were
trading stocks based on Insider info we'd go to prison.
They don't go to prison.
This happens out in the open.
There are no real consequences for it.
In fact there have been cases where all they're supposed to do
is file their financial disclosures and they missed the deadlines and
there are no consequences for that either.
There is no accountability whatsoever and this has been going on for decades.
And obviously they have a bias in place because they're personally financially
invested in companies that maybe they should consider regulating.
But why would they regulate when they know they're personally invested.
Anyway, let's take a look at this fun video showing you just how long this has
been going on.
>> They have market moving information and
they're going to act on that information, information is king.
>> A groundbreaking 2004 study by a group of professors and
researchers examined the records of US senators between 1993 and 1998.
The study found that a portfolio tracking the stocks at the US Senators bought
during the same time period outperformed the market by 85 basis points each month.
In a portfolio that tracked the stocks that the Senator sold during the period
lagged behind the market by 12 basis points.
The study concluded that the senators new appropriate times to both buy and
sell their common stocks.
>> So again Cenk there are two things happening here to negatives in this
behavior.
Negative number one of course is the fact that it's very likely that they're
trading based on insider information, something that we would go to prison for.
But I would argue the second consequence is far greater,
which is if they have these personal financial investments in individual
stocks that bias will motivate or inform their policy making decisions.
And that means that they're not gonna work for us,
they're gonna work for their personal portfolios.
>> Yeah, so this is wrong eight ways to Sunday.
So first of all them owning stock at all gives them an instant
bias because if you're debating,
let's say the minimum wage and you own stock and restaurants.
Well, the restaurant folks are very much against raising the minimum wage.
Well you have a direct conflict of interest against your own voters.
It's so obvious.
There's an argument to be made that they shouldn't even own mutual funds but.
Okay fine I'd take it right.
No problem but we're not anywhere near that.
So they're not only own mutual funds, they own direct companies and
they know which companies, hey, I'm not going to break up Google.
So once they announced that news, I bet Google stock goes up.
So it goes on and on the conflicts of interest again are very obvious for
the average person.
That's why about 95% of Americans think that they shouldn't do this.
And shockingly enough, 95% of politicians think they should.
But if all of that wasn't clear enough you can see the data dating
back all the way to 1993, take any period of time, study it.
And the politicians somehow magically coincidentally do,
way, way, way better than the markets and then the average person.
And on top of everything else they have insider information and
they use it brazenly.
So and one more thing is Anna is gonna give you
the rest of it, Obama passed the stock act.
And the Republicans pretending to be in favor of it as well about ten years ago
understand that like at least half the things they passed in Congress are just
marketing gimmicks.
So that the press, which dutifully back then declared it historic.
My God, it's such an important, big change Obama and the corporate Republicans and
corporate Democrats should get such great credit for this.
And then how many times have they enforced the stock act since literally zero.
It has always a lie.
>> Right, and especially in the house, the stock act,
which mandates those financial disclosures has no teeth.
We talked about that on the show previously.
So you're right in bringing that up and you're right mentioning how well it was
celebrated as historic when push comes to shove,
it didn't mitigate the behavior that we're seeing.
And I want to now talk about the yeah, honestly the ridiculous proposals and
what's really taking place in regard to changing this, right?
So all these people are starting to give Jon Ossoff a lot of credit
because apparently, he is looking to propose legislation that
would ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks.
But he claims that he's waiting until he finds a Republican
co sponsor to the bill before proposing it.
So let me just be clear, we still have the legislative filibuster in place
in the Senate, so there's no way it would pass in the Senate.
But more importantly, let's also not forget that Nancy Pelosi,
who is the Speaker of the House, she makes decisions about whether or
not bills even make it to the House floor for a vote.
She's made herself very clear on how she feels about the possibility of banning
members of Congress from participating in the stock market.
Let's watch.
>> Madam Speaker insider just completed a five-month investigation,
finding that 49 members of Congress 182 senior congressional staffers have
violated the stopgap?
The insider trading law, I'm wondering if you have any reaction to that.
And secondly, should members of Congress and their spouses be banned from trading
individual stocks while serving in Congress?
>> No, I don't know to this second one any,
we have a responsibility to report in the stock on the stock,
but I don't, I'm not familiar with that five month review,
but if people aren't reporting, they should be.
Because this is a free market in people, we have a free market economy,
they should be able to participate in that.
>> Yeah, trading on insider information is not participating in the free market.
It's illegal for regular citizens and
also never mind the fact that she's supposed to be a public servant,
not someone who uses her position of power to just enrich herself.
But of course, we're talking about the United States of America,
which is incredibly corrupt, full of corrupt politicians.
Who don't care about anything else but their own financial interests and
their own stock portfolios.
With that said, though, going back to Jon Ossoff,
why, why is he proposing something that he knows would not pass?
And more importantly, why is he saying,
I'm not going to propose it until I can find a Republican to co sponsor it.
That might give you this illusion that he's interested in doing this in
a bipartisan way but no, this is all just a game.
It's a trick.
This is my, speculation, my analysis on it but I think I'm right.
He's just trying to do this as a stunt to point fingers at Republicans for
not wanting to do something about this corruption.
But he knows full well that this is not something that would pass in Congress,
especially since there has not been a plan in place to do away with
the legislative filibuster in the senate.
>> Yeah. >> It's just the truth.
>> Yeah, so it is not the worst of them.
But nonetheless, here's my translation of what sf is saying, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah but, has a 0% chance of passing.
He knows that this is just marketing and by the way, half of Washington,
I'm sure scandalized by this, Ossoff said that there shouldn't be
insider trading when the queen insider trades.
How dare he?
Wow did he send her a strongly worded letter.
Okay, you guys want to know what you would do if you actually wanted to pass this.
You would bring tremendous attention to it because you know literally in a poll,
only 5% of Americans said they should be allowed to do this.
Okay, you have 95% of Americans on your side, it's an easy win as long as
you attract attention to it and embarrass the other politicians.
So you would strategically call a press conference saying I'm tired of
the corruption of Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi.
And you would talk about how she gained, what does she have a 69% returns?
It's absurd.
It's absurd and you put the 69% return on a giant placard and
you show it to the entire press and then everybody would talk about.
My God, Ossoff versus Pelosi wait a minute,
Pelosi really make that much money.
That's ridiculous, how did she do it?
Look at her husband's trades, etc and it would bring a lot of pressure and
they would cave.
But that would require courage and honesty,
which almost no Democrat in the country has.
>> And by the way, it's not just democrats, of course,
in response to Ossoff's proposal, in some ways what Ossoff did kind of worked.
Because it was just a marketing ploy to point fingers at Republicans for
not wanting to do anything about this corruption.
But immediately following news of what Ossoff is doing with this proposal, this
alleged proposal, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy came out and claimed that.
He is considering instituting a ban on lawmakers holding and
trading stocks of individual companies.
But there's a condition here if the Republicans win a majority in the House of
Representatives in November's elections?
Why if you see this as a huge problem, why are you going to wait until republicans
have control of Congress if this is something that you genuinely care about.
And it's something that allegedly Democrats are in favor of doing
something about.
Why wouldn't you do something about it right now?
It's because neither one of them, whether we're talking about Ossoff or
McCarthy genuinely want to do anything,
think that anything will happen if they propose the legislation.
It's just the way things work.
And I want you guys to think a little more critically when these proposals are being
put out there.
Is there a plan in place to actually accomplish the stated goal or
is this an attempt to do some positive PR especially in a midterm election cycle.
Where Democrats have failed to really provide any material gains for
the average American and are looking for anything and everything to latch onto for
their campaigning.
And so with that explanation in place,
I just want to note that whether we're talking about Jon Ossoff, for
Kevin McCarthy, neither one of them deserve cookies.
[MUSIC]
No cookies for you I'm sorry.
[MUSIC]
>> Yeah and I'll add one last thing.
I read Kevin McCarthy's so called proposal.
Even what you the quote, you just read Anna it's that's not even true.
He says, well, we will, but it could be this or it could be that and
we would only do it if my dog didn't eat the bill first.
And so when you read the caveats, it's a joke,
he's not even promising to do it at all.
And look, we're honest about Democratic politicians find me
a right wing show that's honest about Republican politicians.
They're all crooks, they're all crooks.
They all do the insider trading.
The two biggest people who got busted on insider trading during Covid were
Republican senators.
So one from north Carolina, one from Georgia.
Please do not believe anybody in media that tells you that politicians are honest
and wonderful, but only on your side.