Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Wow, let's talk about Congress.
Speaker 1: It's the number one tourist destination for people trying to
Speaker 1: hang Mike pants. Now, you may not know this, but
Speaker 1: most members of Congress are forced to scrape by on
Speaker 1: am easily two hundred thousand dollar a year salary, which,
Speaker 1: when you think about it, is barely enough to afford
Speaker 1: a good prostitute. So naturally they need to supplement their
Speaker 1: income by investing in the stock markets. It's a natural thing,
Speaker 1: but if you can believe it, there's now a new
Speaker 1: movement in Congress to stop members from trading stocks altogether.
Speaker 1: It's rare these days for this divided Congress to agree
Speaker 1: on absolutely anything, but there may be one issue. It
Speaker 1: has the likes of Alexandria Occasio Cortez and Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: on the same side. They're both among members of Congress
Speaker 1: pushing for new restrictions on how lawmakers trade stocks. Democratic
Speaker 1: Senator John Ausoff just released a bit tonight that would
Speaker 1: force lawmakers to put their assets into a blind trust
Speaker 1: or pay a fine of their entire salary. GOP Senator
Speaker 1: Josh Holly is working on a version too, and in
Speaker 1: the House there's already a bipartisan bill called the Trust
Speaker 1: in Congress Act. This comes only a few weeks after
Speaker 1: a House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi doubled down on members right
Speaker 1: to invest in the stock market. Members of Congress that
Speaker 1: there's thouses de band trading individual stocks while burning longer. No,
Speaker 1: I don't know to this second one. This is a
Speaker 1: free market in people. We're free market economy that should
Speaker 1: be able to participate in that. Okay, Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I can't believe there's an issue that AOC and Kevin
Speaker 1: McCaffey agree on. Those people don't agree on anything except
Speaker 1: that those kids on E. Fourie are way too horny.
Speaker 1: Don't you guys have homeworker. I'm pretty sure you can't
Speaker 1: put cocaine on a college application. And by the way,
Speaker 1: this bill, it's quite a move for a new senator
Speaker 1: like John Ausof. Think about it. The guy just got
Speaker 1: to the Senates and he's already coming after the wallets
Speaker 1: of his coworkers. It's like showing up to prison on
Speaker 1: your first day and being like, hey, Warden, I think
Speaker 1: these guys are using spoons to dig something. But the
Speaker 1: question still is why do so many representatives from across
Speaker 1: the political spectrum want to ban Congress from trading stocks,
Speaker 1: and why is Nancy Pelosi against that? Well, let's find
Speaker 1: out in another installment of If you don't know, Now
Speaker 1: you know. The first thing to know is that historically
Speaker 1: Congress has had no restrictions when it comes to trading
Speaker 1: stocks for most of American history. Inside of trading, laws
Speaker 1: that affected CEOs didn't apply to members of Congress. So
Speaker 1: if Thomas Edison testified behind closed doors, senences could just
Speaker 1: call up their broker going dump all my shares and candles.
Speaker 1: That ship's over. I tell you you see. They could
Speaker 1: use all of this advanced secret knowledge to make money
Speaker 1: for themselves and it was illegal for everyone else to
Speaker 1: do it. But for some reason, Congress could. I mean
Speaker 1: it may have something to do with the fact that
Speaker 1: they were making the laws. Who knows. So it's no
Speaker 1: surprise that members of Congress have been really good at
Speaker 1: timing the stock markets. Economists of studying the portfolios of
Speaker 1: members of Congress and find they systematically outperformed the stock market.
Speaker 1: A study of data from the nineties showed senators trades
Speaker 1: outperformed the market by twelve percent per year. That crushes
Speaker 1: investment guru Warren Buffett, who only managed to beat the
Speaker 1: market by two point five percent of that decade. The
Speaker 1: two thousand eight financial crisis turned out to be a
Speaker 1: free for all for insider trading on Capitol Hill. According
Speaker 1: to a Washington Post expose, a thirty five members cashed
Speaker 1: out on information they received from meetings with Treasury Secretary
Speaker 1: Hank Paulson and others. One of those attending was Alabama
Speaker 1: Representative Spencer Bachus. While Congressman Bacchus was publicly trying to
Speaker 1: keep the economy from cratering, he was privately betting that
Speaker 1: it would. Buying option funds that would go up in
Speaker 1: value if the market went down, he would make a
Speaker 1: variety of trades and profit at a time when most
Speaker 1: Americans were losing their shirts. Now, look, I know seeing
Speaker 1: politicians profit off of an economic meltdown might make you angry,
Speaker 1: but don't forget they suffered to Do you have any
Speaker 1: idea how hard it is to pretend to be sad
Speaker 1: when you're making bank. They had to give speeches of
Speaker 1: fighting the urge to do the dougie live on camera,
Speaker 1: and obviously something fishy is going on when members of
Speaker 1: Congress are doing better in the stock market than Warren Buffett.
Speaker 1: I mean, it definitely makes those fundraising emails even more annoying.
Speaker 1: I need five dollars by midnight, bitch, gonna talk to
Speaker 1: your trade. What are you talking to me for? I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe I'm just jealous. Maybe I'm just
Speaker 1: jealous because members of Congress they get all the coolest secrets.
Speaker 1: You know, which stocks to buy, who the CIA is killing,
Speaker 1: where they're keeping the aliens. Every other workplace has stupid secrets.
Speaker 1: Like my coolest secret right now at the show is
Speaker 1: that our producer Shelley is pregnant and she's going to
Speaker 1: surprise her husband on Valentine's a ball room. But when
Speaker 1: people found out about Congressman making money off of the
Speaker 1: financial crash, there was a big enough outcry that Congress
Speaker 1: was finally shamed into regulating themselves. They passed the Stock Act,
Speaker 1: which banned members of Congress from trading stocks based on
Speaker 1: private information and forced them to publicly disclose all their
Speaker 1: trades within forty five days. But it turns out that
Speaker 1: legislation is like most members of Congress before, bed, completely toothless.
Speaker 1: It is certainly illegal for members of Congress to partake
Speaker 1: in insider trading, proving that is very difficult. If you
Speaker 1: want to nail them on insider trading, good luck. You
Speaker 1: can essentially say, listen, I was reasonably told by my
Speaker 1: broker I should sell, or I heard similar stuff from
Speaker 1: a third party. D O J has yet to successfully
Speaker 1: convict an elected member of Congress based on this law.
Speaker 1: Even if the law is followed, it barely has any teeth.
Speaker 1: Nearly fifty lawmakers, with Republicans and Democrats, and nearly two
Speaker 1: hundred of their staffers have repeatedly violated the Stock Act
Speaker 1: with almost no consequences. You can make tens of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars with privilege information. And what's the penalty for
Speaker 1: failing to report these purchases. It's a joke. It's as
Speaker 1: low as two hundred dollars. Who two hundred dollars is
Speaker 1: the penalty? I mean, look, I'm I'm no math expert,
Speaker 1: but but if I have to pay a two hundred
Speaker 1: dollar fine to make a trade that earns me millions
Speaker 1: of dollars, I feel like I'm coming out ahead, Like
Speaker 1: I'm making a thousand dollars in profit at least right
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars is not a penalty, people, that's the
Speaker 1: chip you throw to the deal after you win the
Speaker 1: poker tournament. Hell, you lose two hundred dollars just carrying
Speaker 1: the million dollars to the bank. So it turns out
Speaker 1: that the Stock Act is just another one of those
Speaker 1: laws that no one enforces, you know, like jaywalking or
Speaker 1: pushing all the buttons in elevator. And don't forget, it's
Speaker 1: really hard to prove inside of trading. You just say
Speaker 1: you weren't even paying attention during that private briefing that
Speaker 1: you've got, which as a member of Congress is actually
Speaker 1: a very believable alibi. So the Stock Act really did
Speaker 1: nothing to stop inside of trading. Like remember remember how
Speaker 1: those congressmen sold those stocks before the crash in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. Well, the same thing happened again a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago before COVID hits multiple sentences, dumped
Speaker 1: their stocks off to intelligence officials told them in a
Speaker 1: private briefing that all those coughing people in China were
Speaker 1: about to tank the world economy, and still no one
Speaker 1: got punished, which is why even after the Stock Act,
Speaker 1: members of Congress continue to do so well that Some
Speaker 1: of them have their own financial groupies, and no one
Speaker 1: has more than Nancy Pelosi. Some TikTokers are getting stock
Speaker 1: market ideas by tracking members of Congress, and one of
Speaker 1: their favorites is how speaker Nancy Pelosi. Nancy Pelosi just
Speaker 1: purchased millions of dollars in call options. You've got to
Speaker 1: see this. Shout out to Nancy Pelosi, the stock market's
Speaker 1: biggest whale. Apparently she's decided to go very heavy and
Speaker 1: text docks. I'm gonna show you guys which one she bought.
Speaker 1: The Queen of Investing just spent three hundred tho dollars
Speaker 1: on this one stock, So I think I'll be picking
Speaker 1: up a couple of shares on Monday. This talk is
Speaker 1: about to go crazy because Nancy Pelosi bought it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Nancy Pelosi is a star on TikTok and
Speaker 1: she didn't need to steal any black people's dance moves
Speaker 1: to do it. That's amazing. In fact, I almost respect
Speaker 1: Pelosi's hustle. She's eighty one years old. Most of her
Speaker 1: friends are probably playing the nickel schlots right now, but
Speaker 1: she knows that it doesn't matter if it's casinos or
Speaker 1: Wall Street. The house always wins. Baby. Now has Pelosi
Speaker 1: been so successful because of inside information? There's no way
Speaker 1: to know. But what's clear is that just being a
Speaker 1: member of Congress means that you'll probably know about the
Speaker 1: bad stuff that will crash your stock before the rest
Speaker 1: of us. Yeah, whether it's a housing bubble, elon musk
Speaker 1: coasting SNL and so all members of Congress are banned
Speaker 1: from trading stocks, Congress will keep having an edge over
Speaker 1: regular people, and it will all be completely legal, or
Speaker 1: at the very least so unenforceable that it's legal by default.
Speaker 1: What you gotta admit is such a smooth way to
Speaker 1: do corruption. In fact, it's such a smooth way that
Speaker 1: leaders in other parts of the world are starting to
Speaker 1: take notice. Gentlemen, welcome to today's lesson. Say that to
Speaker 1: your people have given you the secret trust of political office.
Speaker 1: How do you use that trust to get rich? I
Speaker 1: will pass laws that help those corporations in exchange for money. No,
Speaker 1: that is corruption. What you do is you buy the
Speaker 1: stock in the company and then you pass the law.
Speaker 1: But that is also corruption. No, that is the free market.
Speaker 1: Say it with me, free market, free market. You do
Speaker 1: it in free markets. Free markets. Put it in your bonds.
Speaker 1: Free markets markets good in America. If you say the
Speaker 1: word free markets, you can't do anything. It is like
Speaker 1: their witchcraft. But teacher, what if I get caught trending
Speaker 1: on my inside knowledge? Then you pay the pen out.
Speaker 1: But as the lawmaker, you get to decide the penalty.
Speaker 1: I'll pay two hundred dollars. That is insultingly low. Good
Speaker 1: job for your students. You know what to do. I
Speaker 1: will want the people, I'll save the children. I would
Speaker 1: buy stocks in a process. You have passed the test.
Speaker 1: There's no time or no the East Plus. Watch the
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