Is the White House Open for Hedge Fund Business?

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http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/white-house-hedge-funds-corruption



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Is the White House Open for Hedge Fund Business?

The latest outrage concerns a series of private meetings between White House healthcare officials and hedge funds that are betting on the healthcare industry. As the Washington Post reports:

"Wall Street investors hungry for advance information on upcoming federal healthcare decisions repeatedly held private discussions with Obama administration officials, including a top White House adviser helping to implement the Affordable Care Act."

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There Ought To Be a Law

There already is.

In 2012, President Obama signed a bill disallowing government insider trading of all kinds. You see, academic studies figured out that on average congressmen miraculously earned returns that were 6 percent higher than the average market returns. And senators did even better by scoring 10 percent higher returns. Either these elected officials are really, really smart investors (of course, doing all their prodigious stock research on their own time), or they are trading on insider knowledge. Then again, they also might profit handsomely by pushing legislation to feather their own investment portfolios. Either way, it's good work, if you can get it.

Knowing how difficult it would be to police thousands of government officials, the new law relied on sunshine: All federal elected officials and key staff would have to put the investment portfolios online so that we could see the results of their prescient investment decisions.