Rep. Susan Davis, a California Democrat, sold shares in Alaska Air and Royal Caribbean cruise lines

[Demovictory9]

House members, Senate aides traded stocks in early days of coronavirus
Rep. Susan Davis, a California Democrat, sold shares in Alaska Air and Royal Caribbean cruise lines on Feb. 11.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/21/coronavirus-trading-house-senate-140260

While Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) sought on Friday to explain sales of stock made at a time when they were reassuring the public about the coronavirus threat, they weren’t the only elected officials to buy and sell stocks at key moments in the unfolding crisis.

A POLITICO review of stock sales and purchases reported by members of Congress and senior aides found that while none had engaged in sales of the magnitude of Burr and Loeffler, several had traded shares at times or in industries that bore a relationship to the coronavirus threat.

Previously unreported lawmakers who sold assets in the weeks leading up to the market crash include Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.), who unloaded thousands of dollars of stock in Alaska Air and Royal Caribbean cruises. A senior aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell made a mid-January purchase of Moderna, Inc., a biotechnology company that had four days earlier announced it would begin developing a coronavirus vaccine. And an aide to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sold off stock in companies including Delta Airlines in late January and later bought stock in Clorox, Inc., which makes bleach and sanitary wipes.


The trades show that -- as much of the public was blindsided by both the pandemic and the economic meltdown over the last two weeks -- a number of lawmakers, aides and their brokers helping manage their portfolios adjusted their investments. Lawmakers in both chambers were being briefed via both classified and non-classified meetings about the coronavirus in late January and February, giving people on Capitol Hill a closer look at how the coming pandemic might shape their lives and finances that much of the country was lacking.

“The reality is that if you work on the Hill, or you work in government, you have access to information that the public doesn't have or, if they have it, they can’t always see the signal through the noise,” said Meredith McGehee, executive director of the watchdog group Issue One. “If you’re on the HELP Committee, you’re going to grasp threats much faster than the general public. You see things much more clearly.”

[BusyBeingBest]

1. Assholes, all. Busy managing portfolios for themselves instead of figuring out ways

to deal with a pandemic for the rest of us.

[Indykatie]

2. Did You Really Need Insider Information to Know that Cruise Lines Were a Bad Investment?

Same with airlines.

[drray23]

3. By Feb 11 it was pretty obvious that cruise lines weren't a good investment

You did not need insider information for that.
But if course we Democrats are always holier than thou and are going to hound our own reps instead of looking at the situation.

[Ponietz]

4. I agree with Senator Warren

It reeks, regardless of party.

[Lulu KC]

5. By February 11, it would have been obvious to anyone

really paying attention that the sh*t was going to hit the fan.
From the CDC: As of February 11, 2020, a total of 44,795 cases of COVID-19 had been reported in China.

We can't penalize people for staying up to date on the news.

[Demovictory9]

6. ok. glad a dem wasnt being shady

[Igel]

7. It was clear early on that there was a big risk.

Some people saw the risk and acted to protect themselves (or position themselves for gains) earlier than others.

Some people saw the risk in the news *and* saw additional reports and acted in the same way.

It'll be very hard to distinguish the two sets of people because the difference is statistical. If you're in the top 1% of worriers or risk-adverse, the public knowledge by itself was sufficient. If you're in the top 5%, you might have also needed the "additional reports" to make you act that early.

But people seem to have found an ironclad way of telling the good guys from the bad guys. The good guys are the good guys we've always known were good, and the bad guys are the usual suspects. Reality, of course, had to fall perfectly in line with our perceptions of assumed guilt and innocence. Yeah, that sucks from any vantage point except Bias Peak.

By early February there were people on DU tolling the church bells and saying, "Take cover, level-10 shit storm on its way." Probably by late January.

We also seem to lose track of an additional point. (I had two, but seem to have lost track of one of them.)

If you're in a position of public trust, when there's a problem coming along you need to do two things: (1) say how serious the problem is and what needs to be done to mitigate it; (2) prevent panic, which almost always serves to make the problem worse. Thing is, often (2) and (1) clash, and there's a wide variety of people not prone to panic who find all panic-prevention to be soft-peddling. There's also a wide variety of people prone to panic that find any suggestion that it's serious and *something needs to be done!!@!* panic-inducing.

In my own petty-scale experience I've had trouble balancing the two, and I'm near to concluding that it's impossible. To balance the two merely means that the two sets of people, the panicked and the "how dare you lie" folk, are present in either equal numbers or equal decibelage. And that only seems to create two groups screaming at you as you try to work to solve the problem.