trying to stop the trades is the wrong fix. The right fix is remove their ability to affect markets. Getting to choose winners and losers will always create opportunity to abuse this privilege.
Someone has to wield political power over companies right? I would rather senators who are restricted from trading than senators who are restricted from lawmaking that might move a stock price.
I disagree with this. The people we elect to govern have to be able to govern. But, they maybe don't need to have any business holdings / stock while they're in office.
again, the government's role should be protection of protection of person and property. You're conflating "govern" and "control". There are other means to control. In reality, your goal will never be met because no one is going to openly step into that scenario and be altruistic, certainly not all 536 people.
The protection of person and property oftentimes runs counter to the benefit of a subset of corporations. Given this, government has to do a balancing act. It's in that balancing act that lets them enrich themselves - either through happenstance or on purpose.
That's a pretty pessimistic view. Perhaps the individuals currently filling those roles wouldn't go for it, but it seems like we might be able to find 536 altruistic idealists somewhere in America.
I didn't dive deeply into this data, but it doesn't sound like we even need to find 536 idealists. If you sort by number of trades descending, it becomes less than mine very quickly (I buy 4 mutual funds once a month, automatically). If you sort by value of trades descending, it looks like there are only a handful of officials with any meaningful amount of money in the stock market. (For some value of meaningful; there is an example in there about a $50,000 trade, and it just doesn't seem like very much money to me. 50 million dollars, get out that microscope. $50,000? Doesn't change anyone's life, so not really worth being corrupt for.)
This is fantasy, the rules by which the country is run inevitably effects the markets. Raise import taxes, local manufacturers do better, importers worse. Lower import taxes, the opposite. Build roads, construction companies and their supply chains do better. Weaken environmental laws, oil companies do better. Make it easier to sue for health damages, personal injury lawyers do better. Fund the military, defense contractors do better. Etc, etc.
look at the trades in the article and how it was impacted by government. Did they outlaw vaccines or did they specifically award money to specific companies?
Further - it will not be reduced to zero. The goal is to move towards zero.
I spent all of the stimulus money I received at local businesses which have been severely impacted by the pandemic. Unfortunately none of them offered stock I could purchase.
My first instinct was to give it all to a large tech company in exchange for some marvelous electronic bauble from China, but that seemed counter-productive after some deep thought.
