Congress and the President passed the "Stock Act" a few years back, with impassioned denunciations of the prior system which allowed insider trading for them, their staffers, and some well connected investors. Now they've quietly rolled the whole thing back in silence. They barely try and pretend to care about the public anymore. Our government is so far gone.
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Might wanna turn the video default player to pause otherwise the video plays automatically if it is anywhere on the page...
This law got a few heads shaking in bewilderment here in Aus.
Here:
a. Insider trading laws apply to members their staff too.
b. Every member/staffer has to fill out a "declaration of pecuniary interests" of himself and spouse or partner. Errors and omissions can result in the member's election being voided triggering a by election. This generally means the party will most likely lose the seat. Even conservative seats that go as a consequence of this type of scandal means at least a two term loss, In fact they have two seats that went to “conservative” non party independent one is now in his 4th term.,
Interestingly these 2 presently keep the leftish minority government in power. This is a major disincentive for political parties.
c. Any existing share holdings must go into a Blind Trust i.e. they have no day to day influence.
d. in one famous incident an incumbent PM's wife had to sell her Aussie interest in HER long (before he went into fed parliament) standing EMPLOYMENT COMPANY because it relied on Federal contacts. She maintained her international employment company interests.
Aussies wonder why it's so difficult.
I suspect it's the US culture of Money comes first and everyone for themselves.
The US constitutional fathers were themselves educated, rich and powerful and it's clear they saw their class as the ‘ruling class'
Australia's less grandiose origins has put the emphasis on the people rather than maintaining personal interests. This is shown in the Politics around the writing of the constitution i.e. the Federalists V Republicans. Those that followed the philosophy of the (‘enlightenment’) were largely in the Federalist group. Australia is a Federated Commonwealth.
It's not difficult at all. It's just that the people with money like the present system and they get what they want, no matter how corrupt. We don't have democracy.
Jon,
Any thoughts on how to fix the system?
Jon we both agree on that one.
The point I was making that it has been done elsewhere in the world . presumably the same motivations would apply.
To me there's something else going on.
To make Chad really sick The Australian Conservative opposition coalition (Liberal party+ National Party) have just agreed to support an increase in the Medicare levy (universal health) on everyone from 1.5% to 2% to introduce disable support insurance.
They agreed because they knew if it became an election issue in 4 months time they'd be creamed at the polls.
All this socialism (sic) yet the collapse of the markets, the A$ that is worth more than the U$. And it still approximates a democracy. It is a working proof that US conservative style governments can and do survive.
Proof positive that the Republican rhetoric about stifling jobs, business and profits is just that SELF SERVING RHETORIC. Unsubstantiated scaremongering BS.
Anyone? Ideas on actual steps to take to fix the system, or do we just talk about how bad everyone and how they should change...
http://www.rootstrikers.org
Jon,
clearly I agree with the analysis,especially given I've been touting pretty much the same line all along.
NB the non partisan view not left OR right but both.
I disagree with the aggressive left that want to BAN religion equally as those on the right wanting to IMPOSE it on the left.
Where I differ is the motivation part,
"Love" (?) of humanity rather than of Country.
But as a pragmatic (political compromise) first step I'd go along with it.
But as usual I distrust any thing that can only be justified by patriotism (emotion) alone.
I consider others and myself more than just outward displays of instincts(emotions). We are more than the 'beasts' within.
If only there was MORE insider trading prior to the financial crisis!
If so, the financial crisis would have been alot less severe or maybe not ever happened at all....
Yeah, that's the kind of thing Heritage or AEI say, HP. You should take a job with them. Their job is to spin policies that are clearly in the interest of their wealthy backers as if it was good for the common man as well. Global warming would be good for us, smoking is good for us, deregulated finance is awesome and will help everybody. I actually worked at a nuclear plant during college. They told us that some radiation is good for us and all this liberal checks and balance stuff was silly. Of course war in Iraq is what Iraqi's need and they will love it. We do it all for them, because we love them.
They have these stories, like they offered when defending deregulating the mortgage securities market. See, when people can trade freely you get this faster, freer flow of information, and that's reflected in prices, which prevents the formation of bubbles, etc. A great story, but it didn't quite work out that way in 2008.
It's easy to just tell a story and say that insider trading would have prevented what happened in 2008. It's the kind of story the rich like to tell, and so we hear this sort of thing based on flimsy or non-existent evidence. Outside of a story do you have evidence that's not created by AEI or other such front groups that are always wrong about this sort of thing?
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