Now Congress members are trying to evade tighter controls on stock trading by suggesting they disclose their trades in advance. Via Yahoo Finance:
As lawmakers outlined it, pre-disclosure of stock trades could provide a way to limit congressional day trading while still allowing lawmakers to play the market.
"I think pre-disclosure is something that we ought to consider," offered the Manhattan Institute's James Copland as he testified before the House Administration Committee on Wednesday. He later noted, "This is exactly what happens in certain types of corporate situations."
The idea was immediately dismissed by advocates as a hollow idea that could undercut recent political momentum for their cause for the stronger measure of a ban on lawmaker trading. But the notion of forcing lawmakers to disclose their trades on the front end — as opposed to 45 days afterward as the rules now state — came up six separate times during the 82-minute hearing, according to Yahoo Finance's count.
[...] "Look, it's an interesting idea," acknowledged Mark Greenblatt, an expert on government ethics and a former inspector general at the US Department of the Interior who has called recent scandals a bipartisan failure.
But he added that underneath any rhetoric, lawmakers may simply "want to be able to trade as much as they can trade, but they also want to take some nominal action to address the concerns in the American public."
