Some More News - SMN: Maybe Lawmakers Shouldn't Be Allowed To Trade Stocks?

Episode Date: March 13, 2022

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Hey, Scruffy. Yeah! I am quitting the show. Also, you're peeling that banana the wrong way. It's better to peel them from the bottom. I like my way better. Did you say you were quitting? Yeah.

I mean, probably, now that I'm rich. I discovered this thing called the stock market. All the kids on Reddit are doing it. What you do is you take your life savings and also the company budget and you move it into all these letters on this app. There's, um, let's see, there's Wormt and Cost and KO and E-N-E. I don't think that's how the stock market works. Okay, smart brain, then how does it work? Well, well, we do have researchers for this show, so maybe we can ask them before you

dump all of our money into E.N.E., which I think might be Enron, actually. Where did you even get this idea from? My biggest hero, Nancy Pelosi. Wow. I mean, her politics aren't great, but boy, can she make a titty ton of money from exploiting her position. Speaking of, what are your thoughts on being paid in gravel? Let's put a pin in that. Hey, why don't I, like, do an episode about the stock market and politicians, and we can circle back to this whole plan afterward. Okay, fine, but make it quick.

We are burning money right now. Like, I'm literally currently heating my home by burning money. All right, just two seconds. Oh, hey! long time no see. You want some news, little fella? Put some news on your snout. Count to three. Well, here's some news.

The stock market is a thing that exists. I am told. And lately, there's been a bit of a question around whether or not sitting Congress people who write legislation should like trade stocks. Because apparently that's a thing they can do. And we should really talk about it. And like in an episode of this show that you are watching right now with some kind of title,

like, ooh, perhaps wealthy people who are in charge of laws shouldn't also be allowed to trade stocks since they have an unfair advantage that could be defined as insider trading, which is illegal for most people to do. Snazzy, succinct. Okay, well that actually summed it all up. So I guess we're done.

Thank you for watching. Go ahead and eat that news with your snout. But also I could expand a bit if you'd like me to. Indicate you want me to expand by continuing to watch. Now you might have a lot of questions like is this really a problem? And also what can we do about it? And most importantly, what is the stock market?

Because boy, let me tell you, I did not immediately have an answer to that last question. But then we at the showdy did this thing called Google, have you tried this? And sorta kinda figured out an answer while still, to be honest, remaining largely confused. But the shortest, sweetest, least mind-numbing overview of the stock market is that a stock, sometimes called an equity, is a security, which is a special word for any tradable financial

asset. Did that clear it up? No? Well, more specifically, stocks are securities that each represent a fraction of ownership of a corporation, which entitles the owner of the stock to a proportion of the corporation's assets and profits equal to what fraction of the corporation they own. A stock market, or stock exchange, is a space where investors can buy and sell shares of stock in companies that allow themselves to be publicly traded.

The price of each share is driven by supply and demand, which themselves are affected by various things. Supply is altered when an investor decides to sell a large amount of shares, or when the corporation chooses to issue more available shares. And demand can be affected by things like public perception of the corporation, current events, whether your razor thinks sexism is good or not, really anything. If Biden shat himself on the air,

it would probably affect the stock market, which is why if you perhaps are in a position of power to affect the companies and by extension, these stocks, you should not also be able to own stocks or be related to people who own them because that gives you an unfair advantage. So like if Biden bought stock in a diaper company and then shat himself during the State of the Union,

that would be bad of him for a few reasons, actually. So if you think of stocks as gambling, which it kind of is, well, this would be similar to regulations that bar casino employees from gambling in the places they work, except not really because casino employees have the same odds as everyone else, right?

So nevermind, I guess, actually. It's actually more needed with the stock market than the gambling at casinos thing. Modern stock trading was developed in the 1600s in Amsterdam when the Dutch East India Company became the first publicly traded company. Though how they found the time to do it while busy hunting for Jack Sparrow is beyond me.

He is so slippery, he is. Over here in America, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange was founded in 1790. And a few years later, we got the New York Stock Exchange. Jumping forward almost 200 years, like the time wizard I am. In 1971, trading began on another stock exchange in America, the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, or NASDAQ,

one of the most threatening acronyms known to man. In 1992, NASDAQ merged with the International Stock Exchange, based in London, to form the first intercontinental linkage of security markets. The NASDAQ was also special in that it was the first stock exchange to allow trading to be done on computers, instead of requiring investors to be in the same physical room to trade in person. So instead of doing that thing where you stand in a big room full of big TVs and scream gibberish, you can now quietly sit at home and like look at those other screens with all the numbers and lines on them

and scream gibberish if you want. I think there's also a big green arrow that shoots up or a red one that shoots down and you have to like, you gotta dodge it. Also, you have to fight a bull? Right, there's that metal bull that comes to life that you fight, like Colossus from X-Men, but a bull. Anyway, that's basically it.

Stocks represent a small percentage of company ownership, which equates to a profit share. Stock value goes up and down based on external factors that include the health of the company, and investors buy and sell shares for profits or losses as the prices go up and down. And the bullfights. In theory, simple.

It obviously gets a lot more complicated than that. There are different types of stock, like common stock and preferred stock, which confer to shareholders different levels of control over the company. And depending on the size of the company, the factors that affect the price of shares can be unbelievably complex, but that's it in a nutshell. And while it all sounds silly because money is fake, there's more than enough of this so-called money in the stock market to have huge overarching effects on the national and global economies. The Roaring Twenties, the subsequent Great Depression,

1987's Black Monday starring Don Cheadle, the 2002 tech bubble, and the 2008 housing market crash are just the most well-known examples of changes in the stock market having drastic effects on the lives of average people. The appeal here is that financial markets are generally pretty volatile, especially in the last few decades.

The reasons for this are too complicated and boring for me to even consider talking about here. But the point is that that volatility can mean massive gains for the right investor at the right time, even as it means massive losses for all those investors at just the wrong time. Incidentally, this is why cryptocurrency is often compared more closely to a stock

than to the much less volatile, far more stable, nation-backed currencies like the US dollar. This of course brings us to the whole insider trading dilly. With all this money theoretically up for grabs, it's no surprise that insider trading is an appealing prospect to the less ethically scrupulous stock traders. This is the practice of, to quote one legal definition, trading of a company's stocks or other securities by individuals with access to confidential or non-public information about the company. And it's

regulated by the SEC. Like if you were a higher up at a big fancy corporation and you got tipped off that something big was about to go down, so then you cashed out all your shares before the public knew anything so share value hadn't dropped yet, that would generally be considered a dick move. Also a crime.

And that brings us to today, where a bunch of people are arguing very loudly about whether or not Congress people, their spouses, and other government officials should be legally allowed to trade stocks while in office. Now, this may seem like a clear-cut, one-sided situation, because it is. Sitting lawmakers have the ability to pass legislation that could affect stock value, and they're susceptible to bribes from the large corporations whose stocks stand the most to gain from shady dealings.

Pretty obvs doorway to corruption that has been literally open since the New York Stock Exchange became a thing that existed. In fact, the very first American inside trader was William Dewar, who in 1789 was appointed the first Assistant Secretary of the Treasury underneath Alexander Hamilton. Thinking he could use his insider connections to Hamilton

to make a killing by speculating on the newly issued debt of the infant government, Dewar borrowed heavily, went bankrupt when the bubble burst, and caused the first ever US market crash. Hey, hey Lynn, where's our terribly sung song about that, Lynn? Additionally, in 1872, the Union Pacific Railroad awarded its construction contract

to a company of its own creation, Credit Mobilier, which then immediately proceeded to charge the federally financed railroad project grossly inflated sums. In order to protect their schemes from the long arm of the law, insiders let several members of Congress buy shares of Credit Mobilier for much less than the stock was worth. Ultimately, nobody faced criminal charges because this is America and they were wealthy.

And of course, there was that time in 1929 when a man used the Time Enforcement Commission to travel in the past and play the market before getting launched out a window by a guy with a mullet. That last example was at least awesome, but unfortunately also fictional. So yeah, this isn't a revelation, but rather something that's been happening for almost as long as our country has existed.

And yet, amazingly, it appears that the only real efforts to do something about this didn't happen until 10 gosh darn years ago. One line in a bill in Congress can be worth millions and millions of dollars. do something about this didn't happen until 10 gosh darn years ago. One line in a bill in Congress can be worth millions and millions of dollars. I mean, there was one night we had a late, late night caucus, and you could kind of tell how a vote was going to go the next day. And I literally walked home and I thought, man, if you went online and made us some significant

trades, you could make a lot of money on this. You could just see it. You could see the potential here. So in 2004, Baird and Congresswoman Louise Slaughter introduced the Stock Act, which would make it illegal for members of Congress to trade stocks on non-public information and require them to report their stock trades every 90 days instead of once a year. That is former Democratic House member Brian Baird talking about this in 2011 as they pushed the Stock Act, which we'll get to in a moment. And since then, people have slowly begun to come around

on what is not even close to a partisan issue. Pretty much everyone, Democrats and even the MAGA-iest of Republicans, seem to agree that the notion of legislators using their position to enrich themselves on the stock market is, at least in theory, a bad thing. Of course, the key words there are pretty much everyone. Where the disagreement lies is that some people seem to think that lawmakers just won't do insider trading out of the goodness of their hearts or something, I guess. You know how

politicians are famous for being selfless, law-abiding citizens who never act in their own self-interest? Arguments opposing legislation banning this behavior tend to boil down to something along the lines of, it's a free market, we're allowed to do whatever we want, which is, all things considered, not incredibly compelling. Also, and this is important, I'm not even exaggerating about that. compelling. Also, and this is important, I'm not even exaggerating about that. Because this is a free market and people, we are a free market economy, they should be able to participate in that. Oh yeah, you slay Nancy. That was the speaker of the house shrugging off questions about

violations of the aforementioned Stock Act. For context, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, signed in 2012, was the first piece of US legislation that addressed insider trading on Capitol Hill. It was amazingly bipartisan, passing in the Senate with a 96 to three vote and the House with a 417 to two vote. The law makes trading on inside congressional knowledge criminal and requires public disclosure of any trades

within 45 days. It also, Fuck! Stop trading on congressional knowledge. public disclosure of any trades within 45 days. It also, fuck! Stop trading on congressional knowledge. Stock Act, like stocks, but it's, I get it. That's good. Anyway, the Stock Act also requires those reports to be made available online in a database

that members of the public can search. The bill was signed into law with a lot of fanfare and public approval. Remember, this was just a few years after the incredibly unpopular 08 bank bailouts, and in the midst of a sluggish economic recovery that had almost a quarter of Americans struggling to pay rent. Combine this with a few high-profile congressional insider trading scandals, like former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist selling stock in the hospital chain owned by his family, plus several high-profile studies

that although later refuted, showed that Congress members had, on average, outperformed the stock market. It also, and this is just delicious, was created at least in part as a response to a report that a certain politician and that certain politician's spouse were participating in Visa's initial public offering

at the same time that Congress was working on credit card regulation. Now I don't wanna name names, but I do actually, that was the whole point, it was Nancy Pelosi. And so while this was bipartisan, well you might have noticed that the GOP isn't exactly the villain in this tale. But hey, Obama did pass the darn thing,

if only to avoid facing an incredibly pissed off voter base going into the midterms. It's the notion that the powerful shouldn't get to create one set of rules for themselves and another set of rules for everybody else. And if we expect that to apply to our biggest corporations and to our most successful citizens, it certainly should apply to our biggest corporations and to our most successful citizens, it certainly should apply to our elected officials, especially at a time when there's a deficit of trust between this city and the rest of the country. Yeah! Go Obama! Go Obama! No notes! Oh wait, sorry, one note. Actually,

several notes. Because going back to that clip of Pelosi, the questions she was specifically sidestepping were about an extensive study that recently revealed that at least 182 top congressional staffers and 57 members of Congress had violated the Obama Signed Stock Act and received no consequence for it. So yeah, a lot of notes, at least 57 notes. Scores of notes that I will get into after, you know, the part where we all watch ads.

Be sure to call out to all the other people in your house and get them in the room for these ads. We get more money depending on how many faces your web camera detects. If you don't have a web camera, don't worry, we still know. Hello there, attractive consumer! Listen, look here and listen. Ah, I get it.

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for show. For starters, it still allows politicians to own and trade stock in industries that they can affect with their political power, just so long as they say they won't use their congressional knowledge to affect those trades. As we mentioned, they're technically supposed to disclose all their trades, but there are no real accountability measures in place to make sure that actually happens besides, and this is not a joke, a $200 penalty for the first offense. That is less than what these people pay for haircuts. And that is probably why so many members and staffers

have completely brushed off the rule. All it says is, don't insider trade, please, but offers almost no effective system to enforce that policy. It's the equivalent of a no running sign at the public pool. Technically the policy, but that 16 year old lifeguard isn't gonna do anything because they're far too stoned on some space age synthetic drug us elders can only dream about.

Give me the drug. The penalty system for the Stock Act seems to be run entirely on the honor system and is overseen by a closed door House and Senate Ethics Committee. As in, the people in charge of enforcing the rules are also the people the rules are about, which seems, you know, wrong.

The Stock Act also only regulates, if we're going to keep calling it that, one really specific definition of insider trading, which means all other sorts of shady insider trading-esque behavior is totally fair game. During the 2008 bailouts, big Wall Street banks made billions in profit from the Fed Reserve's attempt

to shore up the financial market after Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson tipped off a gang of hedge fund managers that a partial federal takeover was imminent. And it was, according to this insufficient and half-assed piece of legislation, completely fine. Not only that, but in 2013, a mere one year after the bill was even passed in the first place, Congress quietly fast-tracked a bill that rolled back some of the key features of the already dilapidated legislation. No big fanfare or impassioned speech for this one,

just a one-sentence press release that was immediately buried in the bowels of the White House website. The rollback completely dismantled the online database for roughly 28,000 senior non-Congressperson government officials, even though those types of political staffers and aides regularly trade stocks and often have open access to the kind of sensitive information that constitutes insider trading. Now, technically, those records are still publicly available. The rollback only dismantled the online database.

But to access them, you'd need to physically travel to Washington, D.C., find the Cannon House office building, which is this weird Gringotts-looking motherfucker, and then search through the records which are stored in the basement by name. Also, there's no way that's not haunted by just the most racist of ghosts. The Obama administration justified the rollback by citing an independent report

that claimed the online database would make congressional staff vulnerable to theft and fraud and had substantial risk to national security. And yeah, those are bad things, but it feels obvious that the answer should be to address those problems directly and not just get rid of the mostly good thing, right? Like, hey, hey Barack, you get that this rollback made an

already pretty toothless piece of legislation even weaker, right? And in doing so encouraged everyone who was already insider trading to keep doing it. You get that, Barack? Sometimes I think you don't even watch this show, man. Well, he only listens to the podcast version. So if the original Stock Act was wildly popular

and bipartisan, like surreally so, House Republicans actually amended their version of the bill after a loophole was pointed out by fake news CNN. Well, then why haven't they fixed it? And why are we just now talking about it again? Well, to answer the latter, you may have noticed that a pandemic has been going on, during which a small group of privileged elites

have been enriching themselves. As for the other question, well, perhaps both the GOP and Dems knew that the Stock Act was bullshit when they first passed it. And so any push to actually limit or completely stop trading is going to be met with way less open arms. According to a report from MarketWatch, U.S. lawmakers traded an estimated $355 million worth of stock in 2021. The top eight traders, all House members, and of mixed political affiliation, each totaled transactions landing somewhere

in the nine digit range, which is such an astounding amount of money. It makes me ill and slightly aroused to think about. And hey, look who's pulling up the rear in spot number eight, it's friend of the showdy, Nancy Pelosi. Wow, wowie, wowoo, great. Weird how she didn't sell a single dollar worth

of stocks last year, even though, as we very much mentioned earlier, her husband made over $5 million from Alphabet, Google's parent companies, rising stock prices just one week before the House Judiciary Committee voted on reining in big tech. Now to be fair, balanced, et cetera, and so forth, Pelosi's husband also didn't actually make that money by selling.

Speculative markets are fun and quirky and not like other markets. Paul Pelosi actually exercised a call option, which allows investors to speculate on stocks they do not own by entering into a contract that allows them to buy a stock at a later date at a promised price. In Paul's case, this meant that he was able to buy Alphabet stock at $1200 a share, despite Alphabet stock price rising to just over $2500 a share that same day, due to the legislation

being passed by Paul's wife. Again, this is all technically legal. But it's kind of weird that Nancy is able to say, oh look at me, I only bought $12 million worth of stock this year, while her husband is very openly making even more off the back of legislation she's actively working to pass. And on the other side of the aisle, we have Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville,

number 13 on the list, who violated the Stock Act 132 times last year, and has been a vocal critic of any recent move to ban congressional stock trading. Even going so far as to say that if Congress people aren't allowed to trade stocks, we might as well start sending robots. The argument he's mostly failing to make here is that people will be less likely to want to run for office

if they aren't allowed to trade while serving in politics. Human gerrymandered district, yet apparently reasonable, decent Republican, Dan Crenshaw has made a similar argument for reasons. This argument about how banning stocks would ruin their good time and support the botification of Congress. To be honest, may well be the case.

But if Tuberville and Pelosi are the standards for people who'd be discouraged from running because they can't get rich, then to that I say, beep boop, motherfucker, and a psst for good measure. It turns out that the last few years have actually been really big for lawmakers looking to profit off of morally bankrupt speculative activity. You may have heard this one already,

what with the endless stream of terrible news being constantly pumped into our bodies. But in early 2020, four U.S. senators, including three members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sold stocks immediately after receiving sensitive briefings about the emerging threat of the coronavirus. Information that was not yet available to the public at a time when the president was actively downplaying the dangers of the virus. This includes intelligence chair Richard Burr, who unloaded between $628,000 and $1.72 million in 33 separate transactions, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who sold around $180,000 in stocks days after the briefing,

former Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler selling $20 million in stock after the briefing, and Dianne Feinstein, who while her assets are in a blind trust, does happen to have a wealthy husband who did happen to sell between one and $5 million in Allogene Therapeutics after Feinstein attended the COVID briefing. The stock market, of course, dipped just a week

after these transactions occurred, as the American public responded to the now publicly available information that these senators had received just a week earlier. And the investigation into the behavior of these senators was dropped by the DOJ because to reiterate from before, this is America and they were wealthy.

As I keep pointing out, this is very much not a divided by party thing, and rather seems like a good litmus test for whether or not a politician is secretly motivated by money and power instead of wanting to actually do right by the American people. Or as Brian Baird said 11 fucking years ago, there should only be one thing in your mind when you're drafting legislation. Is this good for the United States of America? That's it. If you're starting to say to yourself, how's this going to affect my investments? You've got a mixed agenda and a mixed purpose for being there. Thank you, Brian. You no doubt sucked in a bunch of other ways

because you're a politician, but in this specific case, you are very right. Whatever you may think of the stock market in general, it is beyond evident at this point that we can't trust lawmakers in positions of power to not also abuse those positions to massively enrich themselves. I mean, for fuck's sake, former US Senator Kelly Loeffler's husband literally runs the New York Stock Exchange and together they own a $500 million stake in ICE,

not the evil organization you're thinking of, the other slightly less evil intercontinental exchange, ICE, a Fortune 500 company regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which falls under jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee, which Kelly Loeffler was a part of. It just shouldn't be this hard to change something

that is so obviously broken when this many people want it to be fixed. And it speaks to an attitude of stagnation and an unwillingness to push for real change in Washington. When Biden extended the pause on student loan debt in December, we saw a lot of people saying something along the lines of bullying works.

And yeah, that's great. By all means, keep bullying Joe. Make him shit his pants. But we shouldn't have to cyber bully the president to get something as measly as a three-month pause on student loans during a global pandemic. Maybe U.S. senators shouldn't do insider trading, just shouldn't be this hard of a fight. And maybe the reluctance for things like student loans and stock trading really hints at a bigger divide that goes beyond party lines, but rather to other lines. Vertically placed, through an S symbol.

I'm talking about money. It's money. And so we should talk about this and also the efforts to actually do something about the problem. Just as soon as we get through this next ad break, which you're excited about, I can see it on your faces through your webcams and other cameras.

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Okay, got more blood in me. I am brimming with it now. Blood coming out of my ears. And we were inquiring about any efforts by perhaps the politicking types to maybe fix the problems with the Stock Act or perhaps introduce some kind of ban on trading altogether. Well, for starters, Pelosi has finally conceded on this issue,

presumably because she now has enough money. And with her support, combined with the several different bills on the table, it might finally be enough to fix this one problem. Such efforts include Georgia Senator John Ossoff and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly currently proposing a bill that would require lawmakers, their spouses, and their dependents to either sell their individual stocks or place them in a blind trust. This would close the ethical loophole

that's currently being used by people like Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi. Oh, hey, Nancy! We were just talking about you. Where they don't technically own or trade any stocks, but their wealthy husbands do. Missouri Senator Josh tried to do a coup. Hawley has proposed a similar bill, though his doesn't seem to currently ban child dependents from trading the way Ossoff and Kelly's does. Both bills would require Congress people who broke the law to pay heavy fines,

in Ossoff and Kelly's case, equal to their congressional annual salary, while Hawley's bill would force violators to pay any profits made directly to the U.S. Treasury. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren has teamed up with Republican Senator Steve Daines to file an even more radical bill that would ban lawmakers from ever owning stock

in the first place. And while that last one seems like the way to go, and thus will probably not be the one they go with, really any of these bills passing into law would be a great first step that would have immediate positive results. We should do, you know, something is my point here. Still a strict ban on congressional stock trading

is massively popular with voters right now, with 76% of voters believing that lawmakers and their spouses have an unfair advantage in the stock market, according to a recent survey commissioned by conservative advocacy group Convention of States Action. I really can't stress enough how oddly unifying this one issue remains in otherwise polarized times. Not only is Hawley, a Republican and general Trump sleazebag, proposing his own bill, but the Ossoff-Kelly measure is also being co-sponsored by conservative representative Chip Roy of Texas, a former top aide to Senator Ted, adult Twitter creep, Cruz.

The bill has also won the backing of two groups that usually defend unregulated access to the free market, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works, which emerged from the Obama-era Tea Party. It's kind of neat to see everyone rallying together just to stick it to Pelosi. It's like when Magneto and Dr. Doom pitched in after 9-11, except, you know, good? Yeah, that's the word.

Measures to stop congressional stock trading are in fact so popular that House GOP leadership have discussed running on this issue during the midterms. And honestly, it makes sense. It's a good strategy. People are really paying attention to just how blatantly our politicians have been flouting these incredibly basic ethical practices.

Not only are there independent databases that track stock transactions by lawmakers, there are entire communities on TikTok dedicated to watching and copying Pelosi and other members of Congress's stock trading disclosures. To put how universally popular the idea of banning Congress people from trading stocks is, like to really, really nail it home,

I have to show you something. And I'm so, so sorry to do it. Now, I'm of the belief that once you're in Congress, you should not be able to trade on the information that you receive in Congress. And because if we are going to bar insider trading for private entities, we should bar insider trading for members of Congress. Good point, Ben Shapiro. I think I just lost a year of my life.

Although to be fair, in that clip, he immediately makes the case for why insider trading should be legal for the private sector. But! So, if everyone from Elizabeth Warren to Mr. Wet Ass P-word are all completely in agreement on this, I once again have to ask why this isn't something we've accomplished already.

How are we still trying to pass a meaningful bill to stop politicians from trading stocks? The skin-deep answer is that our government systems are actually designed this way on purpose, and in some ways, that's a good thing. In theory, all the roadblocks in the way of changing things encourages bipartisan cooperation. And at the very least, they can stop a single out-of-control president, like that last guy, from breaking things too badly before we're able to vote them out of office. But with the country growing increasingly divided and one political party dead set against working with the other one, it really appears that this system is no longer effective and,

dare I say, outdated. And more often than not, those moments of bipartisanship tend to be focused on raising the defense budget. And that brings us to the Pelosi of it all. And those lines in the S symbols I talked about earlier. Because Nancy on this issue, as well as Biden on other issues, are both just so clearly unwilling to change until three-fourths of the country is practically shouting in their face about it. And I would argue that this actually is a problem for almost every single sitting member

of Congress today. And really the core of a huge, persisting problem in America that this stock market issue perfectly shines a light on. It's a problem that doesn't just plague the government, but every industry. We have pointed it out when we've talked about everything from politics to that goddamn Quibi episode. Remember Quibi? It's okay. You aren't required to remember them. I am talking about the fact that the average age for a senator is the oldest it has ever been. On top of that, the average member of Congress, including both senators and House members, has a median net worth of over $1 million. In fact, there are at least eight lawmakers, four Republican and four Democrat, who are worth over $100 million. One of the Dems, of course,

being Nancy Pelosi. And while the rich elderly are perhaps, in theory, perfectly fine people, sort of, in any institution, there's a certain mindset embedded in older, comfortable generations that things need to stay exactly the way they are and nothing needs to change. It's why we got three new Star Wars films that were essentially just incoherent remakes of the originals. And combined with a lot of money, it's why our politicians appear completely stagnant on things like student loans, healthcare,

hey Biden, pushing that public option any day now, I'm sure, and yes, insider trading. Even when the entire country is screaming for change. It's why until recently, Pelosi's line on this stocks issue has been pretty clearly, we've always been allowed to trade stocks, it's a free market.

But that argument shouldn't have, and in fact never did, hold water. Because no one in power and wealth and comfort has any reason to want the world to change. Nor will they give you spare change if you ask. Though maybe they'll give you some loose change. That's a 9-11 conspiracy reference for you. But yeah, the systems that are built by old rich people

to further enrich old rich people are going to be supported by all of the old rich people. So it kind of fucking sucks that all of the people we've put in charge are old rich people. It seems like a design flaw. The idea that things are fine the way they are and this is how it is, so this is how it should be

only works if you're doing well right now. And for a lot of people in America, that is just not the case. And when they won't concede even a fraction of their wealth, in this case, not even to make the country better, but just make it a little more fair, well, then they also start eliminating options for the common person to enact change

and they turn to drastic measures, like, I don't know, voting for a bunch of MAGA folk in the midterms who run on passing these anti-trading bills. Because while the GOP is just as guilty here, the poster child for the opposition, the rich moneybags gripping to their satchel of sweet gold is Pelosi and by extension, the Democratic Party.

And so once again, while it really seems like the bar should be incredibly low for winning the midterms, we apparently have to keep bullying these silly rich freaks while patiently looking at our watches and hoping that some of these people will mercifully retire. What are they even taking to live this long anyway? Like, sure, we all drink the blood of the young, but they clearly have some really good stuff, like panda blood or something. God, I would love to eat a panda.

Heya, Skippy, I would love to eat a panda. Heya, Skippy, I am back. Gah! So, did you solve your banana problem yet and learn how to peel it the right way? What? No, this was about you wanting to trade stocks and me looking into it and discovering that the only reason we allow people like Pelosi to get rich trading said stocks is because of a stubborn inability for our politicians to grow with the times. Kinda like someone insisting on peeling a banana the wrong way, huh? Anyway, I already invested in that Enron you were so excited about.

Are they even still a company? Nah, but I found a guy who took the cash. Okay, bye! That is much easier. It's some news. Yum! Here's some news. Yum. Ooh, ooh, ah, ah. I am a monkey made of bananas. Thanks for watching and like and subscribe and do whatever you want to do on YouTube.

I'm not your boss. I'm not even, I don't know you. Maybe I do. If you're watching and we know each other, how's it going? Hope you liked it. And if not, maybe we'll meet one day. In which case, I, glad we're friends.

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