House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is worth $114 million and just 2 months ago was railing about how capitalism has “not served us well” and “needs improving” is all of a sudden a bold advocate for free market economics.
All it took was potentially taking away her (and her husband’s) stock trading privileges. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
“We are a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that,” Pelosi said of the idea of barring members of Congress from trading individual stocks while in office.
“If people aren’t reporting, they should be,” Pelosi responded to Insider, who asked for comment after 49 members of Congress and 182 staffers had violated the STOCK Act that prevents insider trading.
“We’re a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that.” — Pelosi’s rationale for why spouses of members of Congress should be able to trade individuals stocks is not very convincing pic.twitter.com/NuOw0VznVm
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 15, 2021
This stance puts Pelosi immediately at odds with both Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have spoken out against members of Congress trading individual stocks.
“It is absolutely ludicrous that members of Congress can hold and trade individual stock while in office,” AOC said earlier this year, via Twitter. “The access and influence we have should be exercised for the public interest, not our profit. It shouldn’t be legal for us to trade individual stock with the info we have.”
Warren referred to the trading by members of Congress as “brazenness” when asked by Insider for comment.
She continued: “We need both tougher laws and enforcement of those laws,” the Massachusetts Democrat said. “The American people should never have to guess whether or not an elected official is advancing an issue or voting on a bill based on what’s good for the country or what’s good for their own personal financial interests.”
“We are a free market economy,” says the woman probably insider trading, pushing for socialist programs, advocating for endless regulation, endorsing full modern monetary theory and trying to micromanage commodity markets with a state run economy and price controls. https://t.co/JTnuATdRH5
— Quoth the Raven (@QTRResearch) December 16, 2021
We noted back in April of this year that Pelosi’s husband was using call options to buy names like Microsoft ahead of lucrative government contracts.
Recall, we wrote in September that Pelosi’s criticism of capitalism was that it had “historically allowed workers’ wages, as well as management’s, to rise alongside productivity”. Doing her best Karl Marx impression, Pelosi said at the time: “You cannot have a system where the success of some springs from the exploitation of the workers and springs from the exploitation of the environment and the rest, and we have to correct that.”
But we guess that line no longer plays…right Nancy?
