Sen. David Perdue Says His Perfectly Timed Stock Trades Are Completely Innocent
Two weeks after Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) helped to dilute a rule that governed the prepaid debit card industry, he reported acquiring stock in a company that stood to benefit from the rollback of those regulations.
In early 2017, Perdue was pushing to overturn a recent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau measure that, among other things, imposed new regulations on the growing prepaid debit card industryincluding requirements that they be more transparent about fees and penalties, and extend the fraud and theft protections enjoyed by normal account holders to those with prepaid cards. The rule was not completely overturned, as Perdue wished, but it was rolled back.
A review of Perdues trading of shares of Atlanta-based financial company First Data reveals that an investment firm owned by the senator and his wife, and for which he serves as a director, bought and sold substantial shares in the company from June 2017 to April 2019. Perdue has been among the most active traders in Congress. But of the more than 400 companies in which hes bought and sold stock since taking office in 2015, hes reported more transactions involving First Dataa major card payment processor with a significant business in prepaid cardsthan any other company but one.
Perdues office told The Daily Beast that all of those transactionsinvolving First Data and every other companyare handled by a third-party investment adviser, and that the senator has no role in buying or selling the securities in his portfolio.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/sen-david-perdue-says-his-perfectly-timed-stock-trades-are-completely-innocent?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4?ref=home
BKDem
(1,733 posts)dchill
(38,462 posts)SWBTATTReg
(22,097 posts)allow representatives etc. to not own any stocks or any assets (put in a blind trust etc.) while serving as a impartial representative.
Claustrum
(4,845 posts)or invest more overall. But they should never be able to control buying or selling in a specific industry stocks. And that should include their spouses as well.
SWBTATTReg
(22,097 posts)of course immediate family members, etc. to participate in such nefarious activities in either buying and/or selling stocks. I know that the SEC really frowns on such activities being that they are a proponent of really preventing insider information from being leaked and/or used in underhanded ways to give others not privy to such classified information a heads up. Otherwise, the integrity of the marketplace is undermined and people will lose faith in how stocks are priced, etc.
I guess when it comes to money, lots of money and not having to work so hard for it as we all do in the 'real world', there are those that chose to do the wrong thing. It's a shame that we don't have such a process in place that could weed out such types before such information is doled out (market conditions, other secret events such as approving a drug, etc.).