Why are members of Congress allowed to play the stock market?

Part 1

1. Donald Trump's ascension to the presidency was the alarm going off in the bank. Smash the glass and grab everything you can. This is true with regard to the First Family, who are relentlessly monetizing public office through a rolling series of conflicts-of-interest. It's true of many in the president's Cabinet, who often nakedly represent the interests of the industries they're tasked with regulating—and which they will likely (re-)join in some capacity, with appropriate compensation, when they leave government....

We had some new and infuriating evidence of this a couple of weeks back, when we learned a couple of Republican senators unloaded a whole bunch of stock at a very convenient time. That is, the time between when they began to receive closed-door briefings in February on how bad the coronavirus crisis might get and when financial markets reacted to this.

Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee—a post that makes him privy to more information than pretty much anyone outside the White House—dumped up to $1.7 million in stock while publicly assuring us all that the U.S. was well positioned to weather the storm. Audio also emerged of Burr telling wealthy and well-connected constituents around the same time that actually, things were going to get really bad....

And then there's Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler, also a Republican, who happens to be married to the CEO of the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange. Initially, it emerged that Loeffler had dealt up to $3 million "in a series of transactions beginning the same day as a Senate briefing on the virus."...

It's tempting to believe all this shadiness is just an outgrowth of the Trump era, where only people who sufficiently lack integrity or shame would enter Republican politics....

Source: https://www.esquire.com/news-politi...effler-coronavirus-stock-trades-richard-burr/

2. Why are members of Congress allowed to play the stock market in the first place? No wonder President Tweety said the economy right now is like a rocket ship...just ready to soar into year end and into 2021. By now we know who have been taking a free ride in the rocket ship all the while.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/is-trumps-economy-really-like-a-big-beautiful-rocket-ship-173416739.html