Self-Regulation Fails in Congress

This week, President Obama signed an amendment to the STOCK Act that essentially guts the important anti-corruption legislation. The original intention of the STOCK Act was to ban legal insider trading by members of Congress. Because certain committees, such as the Senate Finance Committee, are privy to private financial data, many were using that information for their own personal investments, and shared what they knew with anyone close to them (who conceivably made investments accordingly).