As everyone has heard politicians can do 'insider trading' and not get in any form of trouble doing it. If you remember Martha Stewart, went to jail for this, and it was said "this type of conduct won't be tolerated". Well I guess that's only true for the average citizen, because politicians have been doing this for years.
And now other politicians are trying to pass a law that prohibits politicians from using their inside knowledge about the stock market to profit from it.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-5... The politicians call it the game of "Pay-To-Play", like Congressman Spencer Bauchus who met with a Federal Chair member Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Paulson about the Stock Market. The inside information they discussed, led Bauchus to make $50,000.00 in 2008 from July to November, and just by coincidence, Bauchus also got his personnal stocks into a safety account, just before the market went under.
These are only a couple of them you hear about, but there is a list of others, like John Kerry, who bought $750,000.00 worth of stock in the 'Teva' pharmaceutical company that the Obamacare was under. Kerry did sell some of the stock in 2010 for tens of thousands of dollars of pure profit.
Dennis Hastert Speaker of the House in 1999 came in worth a little over $200,000.00 and when he left in 2007 his worth was a surprising $11 Million dollars. Congressmen made a killing when the were buying bank stocks during the bank bailouts.
Most Corp companies barely made it through the stock market seeing maybe a profit of about 7% while the average Congressman or Senator were 'always making profits of about 12%. And it's ok for them to do it, and they can't go wrong because they have the insider information that is telling them what's going under and what's going to profit. And for whatever reason, when a politician does the inside trading they always have a reasonable explanation that they'll never go to jail over it. They get to keep the profits, and basically 'spit on the citizens' when they know they'll get away with it.
Most politicians don't even seem like they're fighting for the American people anymore, but they sure are using their energy and position for their own personal gains.