In today's why-wasn't-this-a-law-already department, President Obama today signed Congress' shiny new STOCK Act. The name stands for Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, and sure enough, it bans any financial activity by members of the federal government relating to "non-public knowledge" - in other words, if you only know about something because of your position, you're not allowed to make money off of it.
This article admits in no uncertain terms that the act was put together in an effort to boost the public's approval of Congress - which currently stands at around eleven percent, so now we know exactly how bad things have to get before Congress will bother to pass an extremely obvious law that should have been on the books decades ago.
If this is what we get from an eleven percent approval rating, I wonder what kind of laws they'll start passing if it dips below ten?
No comments:
Post a Comment