Thank You, Scott Brown

Official portrait of Senator Scott Brown

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The article I posted this afternoon (just below this article) dealt with the fact that lawmakers exempted from the insider trading laws they impose on private traders. Evidently I was not the only one appalled by this.

CNN News reported this afternoon that Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown has introduced the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, or STOCK Act, (S.1871) which would clarify insider trading regulations that do not clearly identify whether the use of inside government information constitutes insider trading.

The article reports:

The bill filed Tuesday by Massachusetts Republican Sen. Scott Brown would make it illegal for elected congressional officials, their staffs and executive branch employees to use information about pending bills that’s not available to the general public in making investment decisions. It would also forbid them from making such information public for personal gain.

All of this attention to insider trading follows a report aired by CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday which highlighted instances in which congressional officials reportedly bought stocks around the same time Congress was discussing legislation affecting those companies or industries.

Based on recent reports on the number of Congressmen (and Congresswomen) who have drastically increased their net worth after being elected to Congress, this legislation is long overdue.

Thank you, Scott Brown.

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