• @distantsounds
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    1418 months ago

    Lawmakers should not be allowed to trade stocks

    • chknbwl
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      298 months ago

      Say it louder for the people in the back

      • @[email protected]
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        68 months ago

        It’d be better just to require blind trusts. The trust has a fiduciary duty to invest their money well, and the politician can write a letter requesting a certain high-level investment strategy prior to the start of their term (ie, primarily large cap, primarily bonds, high/low risk tolerance). If they want they can add or remove money as USD during their term and they’ll get back whatever’s left at the end.

      • @[email protected]
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        18 months ago

        That’s not really what people consider “stocks” but yes of a lot of economists and political theorists were able to debate the details of the policy people could decide and urge their reps to do the right thing. Worth a shot I guess.

      • @NightAuthor
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        158 months ago

        Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

      • @[email protected]
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        88 months ago

        Carter sold his family’s peanut farm.

        Legislators, members of governments and their households should either be forbidden from doing insider trading, with regular detailed audits to ensure it, or should be forced to use blind trusts for investments.

      • @hark
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        18 months ago

        Insider trading is theoretically illegal in all other contexts, why are congress creeps special?

  • @[email protected]
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    918 months ago

    I know Pelosi is one of the magats’ favorite talking points, but last time I saw Pelosi’s market gains posted, she wasn’t even in the top 10 of Congressfucks rigging their investments, and it wasn’t close to being a one party issue.

    • @[email protected]
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      488 months ago

      What the right doesn’t get is that the left wants this corruption to stop, even when the corruption is from the same side. The GOP only wants the other side to be held accountable

      • @[email protected]
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        228 months ago

        the left wants this corruption to stop, even when the corruption is from the same side

        This is very confusing. The left absolutely does want it to stop but centrist Dems do not. The left is not on the same side as Pelosi.

        • @[email protected]
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          168 months ago

          I was talking about the voting base, and how dem voters are willing to criticize the dem electorate, while GOP voters (even leaving MAGA aside, bc they’re a lost cause to the cult) don’t hold their representatives accountable.

          • @[email protected]
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            8 months ago

            Dem voters are the Dem electorate. Did you mean Dem representatives?

            And you’re still eliding the difference between the left and centre-right. Left and centre-left voters are willing to criticise Dem politicians. The centre is not. And, while hypocrisy absolutely is a characteristic of the right because they know how power works, it’s nonsense to suggest that the entirety of the Dem electoral coalition holds its representatives to account. It doesn’t, not least because a large proportion are in on the grift. And that’s why we’re having another global fascist spasm. Liberals refuse to challenge power, not least because they like its perks and also believe that those perks should exist.

            • @[email protected]
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              48 months ago

              Right, I meant elected instead of electorate.

              I don’t think a large portion of the dem voter base benefits from the grift that the dem politicians are participating in. If they were rich and wanted to benefit, they’d just vote GOP. Don’t get me wrong, the rich who vote dem absolutely benefit from the corporate center of the party (which is most of it), but the wealthy class is a tiny proportion on both sides and I was talking about the majority.

              And I think you’re giving too much credit to the GOP voters by saying they “know how power works”. The vast majority of them are useful idiots taken in by culture war nonsense continually voting against their self interest.

              • @[email protected]
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                -28 months ago

                I didn’t say GOP voters know how power works.

                And there is barely any difference in the proportion of rich people voting GOP or Dem. 1-2% in the 2020 exit polls. In 2016, Clinton had swings in her favour amongst the very rich, and larger swings against amongst lower income and POC voters. Not because they switched to the GOP but because she gave them no reason to turn out.

                You’re projecting your ideal onto a party which relies on the very wealthy to fund their politics. And they can do that because it is how power works and why they do not want to challenge power.

                Stop confusing the left with the centre. The necessity of the electoral coalition is precisely a result of power, and its ability to silence the left while pandering to the right.

                “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” – Chuck Schumer, 2016

                • @[email protected]
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                  38 months ago

                  You’re projecting your ideal onto a party which relies on the very wealthy to fund their politics.

                  I’m not talking about the rich, because while they wield outsized clout in what their parties do, they’re a tiny percentage of the population and consequently voters. All I’m saying is the vast majority of dem voters (they’re not wealthy and they don’t benefit from the grifting that the majority that the dem pols do) are willing to criticize dems. The opposite is not true–most GOP voters, who also don’t benefit from anything the GOP elected does, will never speak a word against the people in office.

      • @[email protected]
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        38 months ago

        Maybe the left like you and me do, on the ground, but I guarantee that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are just fine with how things are right now.

        • @[email protected]
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          48 months ago

          Yeah I was thinking more about left voters instead of pols. Almost everyone in congress is fine with the corruption. But right wing voters hardly ever criticize their own, let alone the maga cultists

          • @[email protected]
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            -28 months ago

            Right-wingers who are critical of Trump get plenty of airtime. Left-wingers who are critical of Dems, not so much.

    • Ultragramps
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      98 months ago

      It’s that part of the fascist playbook where the enemy is weak and dangerous at the same time.

    • @Tetractys
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      -48 months ago

      So? You approve of the behavior? That sounds like “what aboutism”, ignoring the point. Unless you have a spare 500k to send to me showing how little you care because it’s insignificant.

  • @oakey66
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    588 months ago

    Well considering she made the purchase a couple weeks before there was an announcement of a new chip plant in China. The game is rigged folks.

    • @TropicalDingdong
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      18 months ago

      Well considering she made the purchase a couple weeks before there was an announcement of a new chip plant in China. The game is rigged folks.

      I mean. Its absolutely nothing compared to the post ChatGPT runup.

      • SeaJOP
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        298 months ago

        Vote progressive in the primary.

      • @Wrench
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        198 months ago

        It’s obvious you’re being sarcastic, but actually yes, vote blue no matter what. This is literally the best thing you can do to fight blatant fascism with your vote.

      • @the_q
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        8 months ago

        deleted by creator

      • @oakey66
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        28 months ago

        I’m criticizing Pelosi because she is a democrat. We don’t expect anything better from the GOP. We can hopefully exert some pressure through outrage to make democrats change this. Democrats by and large suck but it’s a given that republicans do this too.

  • @[email protected]
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    468 months ago

    Making money isn’t the problem, insider trading is the problem. Did she do something as a congressperson that gave her inside knowledge of how AI was going to blow up Nvidia stock?

    If not this is a non story.

    • @Otkaz
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      278 months ago

      Last time she bet on Nvidia was right before she voted on passing the chips act which directly benefited Nvidia. Thats why this is a story.

      • @[email protected]
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        48 months ago

        I think that the concern would be less her vote – she’s just one vote – and more that she knows how legislators, more-broadly, are going to vote.

        • @Kbobabob
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          28 months ago

          She also holds/held the power to coerce others to do the same.

    • @[email protected]
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      68 months ago

      Nah, see, the reality is the stock market is a fundamentally manipulatable thing that is weakly coupled to anything.

      • @WoahWoah
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        18 months ago

        Oh OK then, thanks for clarifying.

    • @[email protected]
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      38 months ago

      I am not saying politicians aren’t routinely filling their pockets with insider information but most people who have an interest in at ai could have seen this coming. I am simply not rich enough to join the game and make profit.

      • @hark
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        38 months ago

        I knew about AI when it was all the rage years ago. Why has nvidia been surging now because of AI when it was already a thing long ago? Kinda seems like a made-up narrative to pump the stock market (of which tech stocks drives a lot of the movement).

        • @[email protected]
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          18 months ago

          All the rage years ago?

          I mean sure i’ve had an interest myself for longer as i am a nerd, its always been really cool. But I remember very little enthusiasm by others.

          If you asked anyone on the street about ai a few years ago they might know cleverbot but definitely no machine learning. No one had any reasonable expectation for real practical use cases and a intelligence explosion even while there where real practical uses already it was a scientific niche.

          Openai has absolutely blown this up. Now even my mom knows what ai is. The intelligence explosion is so tangible people literally fear the end of the world.

          Everyone can see that big money can be made using ai, every major company is now trying to get hold of some form of it.

          Nvidia has profiles themselves as the only real option for ai compute. They are selling more industrial ai cards then consumer ones, demand keeps climbing. Its projected to keeping climbing so even right now if you wanna invest Nvidia is probably a super safe bet (no financial advice, personally i dont play that game at all)

          You can absolutely agree with the reality of it. Competition is making progress, the potential for ai has been there for years but markets are much more about public perception then annything else.

          • @hark
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            8 months ago

            Image recognition was the big killer app back then, and there were many stories about its use. Yes, OpenAI with their fancy-pants chat bot has brought out some more hype (mainly from idiotic CEOs who think they can replace everyone with a chat bot), but the demand for nvidia hardware was always there. Actually, with all the hype about AI, it has driven more effort toward creating hardware specifically for AI by other companies, which will eat into nvidia’s dominance in the area.

            As for companies making money off of AI, we’re in the stage where they’re trying to figure that out. There were a couple stories about companies trying to charge a subscription fee to monetize AI, but that’s going to fail. As monetization schemes fail, that will pop the AI hype bubble. It’s expensive running these AI models.

    • @[email protected]
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      08 months ago

      She’s probably one of the ones who made a bunch of trades just before the first lockdown of the pan. Or her husband. I don’t trust any of 'em without full transparency.

      • @agitatedpotato
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        28 months ago

        Did he lose money or did he declare losses. Not the same if you have any decent accountant.

  • @badbytes
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    248 months ago

    Not really a bet, when you control the rules of the game.

  • ThrowawayOnLemmy
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    168 months ago

    Anyone with Nvidia stock made a stupid amount of money.

  • @maness300
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    158 months ago

    Stop voting for these people you fucktards.

    • @Burn_The_Right
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      Stop voting for who? Democrats? Republicans? Politicians? Insider trading is effectively legal in congress, no matter your party affiliation.

      We need a complete overhaul. But we still need to keep voting. Progressives at least favor improvements to the system itself, so if you mean “vote progressive instead of these others”, then I agree.

      • @maness300
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        48 months ago

        vote progressive instead of these others

        Yes, this.

  • @alienanimals
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    138 months ago

    The (already rich) members of Congress get to break the law and commit insider trading whenever they want. If you COULD commit insider trading, they would throw your ass in jail.

    It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.

  • @phoneymouse
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    128 months ago

    How do 80 year olds know what stocks to buy and I don’t?

    • @[email protected]
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      158 months ago

      Because they get all the insider info that they are legally allowed to use for investment strategies which commoners are not.

        • @hark
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          08 months ago

          If someone who isn’t of congress nobility tells their investment firm owning spouse of insider information, they’d face severe penalties. Congress is taking advantage of the fact that they write the laws by exempting themselves.

    • @[email protected]
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      8 months ago

      They’re in a job where they often are the first to hear significant public info that will affect the markets. This lets them make stock deals to their benefit before anyone else.

      If they’re being scummy, they use info that isn’t public.

      Progressives in the DNC are pushing for this to be reformed, so that’s the best path for change.

    • @[email protected]
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      18 months ago

      Who says they do? Everyone holding Nvidia got the gains, it’s the 6th largest company by market cap, everybody with enough money in the stock market (or any shares in an S&P 500 index fund) owns some.

      And you’ll never see an article about Nancy Pelosi losing money because nobody cares, so if she has a lot of money in a lot of places, you’ll just see the bets that succeeded and think she’s killing it.

  • @Phegan
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    98 months ago

    Those in Congress should not be able to trade stock

  • @[email protected]
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    58 months ago

    Other countries should be following our great example. Not only do we have the best legislators, but in their spare time they are also financial geniuses, doubling their salary easily. Other countries are envious that our government workers are so efficient and financially savvy.