On Friday the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that members of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee bought and sold financial stocks last fall, at the same time that the Committee was approving the bailout, and in the same companies that the Committee would later criticize for incompetence and greed. The article points out two potential problems:
1. The potential for conflicts of interest; and
2. The potential for trading on material, non-public information.
Some of the trades resulted in avoiding significant losses; while perhaps more troubling, some trades resulted in increased losses, which may at least be proof there was no impropriety.
In any event, such trades do not appear to violate Congressional ethics rules (although, arguably they could violate broad rules against using one’s office for “improper advantage”); however, the securities rules are more troublesome. If a member of Congress trades in securities based on material, non-public information provided by a corporate insider, the representative faces possible liability under a tipper/tippee theory assuming other elements of the offense are met. But, if the representative trades based on material, non-public information that results from the representative knowing about a new regulation or government program that will affect a company, liability depends on whether the representative has breached a duty to the source of the information, presumably Congress or some other source to which no duty is owed.
Congressional staffers are not so lucky, as they potentially owe a duty to their representative, the source of the information.
This is not a new issue. The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act aims to close this loophole but has failed to pass despite annual tries since 2006. Also interesting is the fact that two SEC lawyers got in trouble about a month ago for trading in the securities of issuers under investigation, and the Commission quickly enacted rules to stop the practice. Congress has been at least 3 years slower.
