The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cge0grppe3po

by blondie9x • 3 months ago

303 122 3 months ago

bbc.com

N_Lens• 3 months ago

"Suspicions" doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Terr_2• 3 months ago

In the sense of extreme understatement, yes, which is amusing since the "heavy lifting" is the other way around.

Much like "There are looming suspicions over the effectiveness of colored quartz and homeopathic water." [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0

Terr_2• 3 months ago

s/is the other way/is usually the other way/

none25852• 3 months ago

Why bother reporting this - it's obviously happening and it's obvious that nothing is going to happen about it.

fnordpiglet2• 3 months ago

Well, given it’s a federal crime, pardons will happen.

none25852• 3 months ago

lol touché

jfengel3• 3 months ago

Is it a crime?

rubyfan2• 3 months ago

Nothing will happen until the mid terms or 2028.

This administration highlights why the pardon provisions of the constitution need amendment.

e2le2• 3 months ago

In such a scenario, people shouldn't acquiesce. Be creative and find ways of bringing hurt to those in this administration who feel they can dodge consequences. If no example is made of them, it will happen again.

malshe2• 3 months ago

For sure nothing will happen with the defeatist attitude

jfengel3• 3 months ago

It does encourage you to focus on something that you might be able to fix, instead of being constantly dragged from one outage to the next.

e2le2• 3 months ago

Despite the apathy of Americans, I continue to have hope that there will be consequences for all recent and past actions. It's unfortunate that recent events are only the tip of the iceberg, too many to even remember.

zx8080• 3 months ago

What were the consequences after 2008 financial crisis?

chollida12• 3 months ago

What were the crimes you believe were committed in 2008 and who do you think committed those crimes?

r0fl• 3 months ago

Nothing

Stock market at all time highs

Miami houses selling north of $150,000,000.00

No one cares about that crisis anymore

The markets keep ripping no matter what

Just some hiccups along the way

malshe2• 3 months ago

Yeah both Bush and Obama ignored those crimes

jfengel3• 3 months ago

We created a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to try to head off that kind of crisis before it happened again.

We got rid of it last year.

amazingamazing4• 3 months ago

Given the scope of all government officials it should just be the case that you cannot trade individual equities, stocks or have any outside investments wholesale.

Otherwise how could you stop it? It’s not like when you work at big co and you just stop trading their stock. You get access to information that clearly will be material potentially months in advance.

SilverElfin• 3 months ago

The problem is Trump’s family and friends and donors and people who have otherwise bribed him all can benefit from actions the administration takes. It’s not as simple as restricting the current officials.

renewiltord2• 3 months ago

Why does making this rule matter? The pardon makes it all irrelevant.

amazingamazing4• 3 months ago

My hot take is that the presidential pardon will be eliminated in our lifetime.

gdhkgdhkvff• 3 months ago

Why do any rules matter for government officials? Should we just make all laws not apply to them because of the pardon?

stingraycharles2• 3 months ago

How about we start with congress and see how that goes? Been a point of discussion for a long, long time and politicians do not seem to be interested in regulating themselves at all.

amazingamazing4• 3 months ago

Yeah. Lots of problems. If I could only get three wishes I’d choose implementation of score voting for presidential election and congress, introduction of recall votes and introduction of national ballot questions.

Those should fix most of the problems with time.

eli_gottlieb• 3 months ago

Ok, let's make it Congress and everyone working an elected position or political appointment in the executive branch as well. All good!

yegle• 3 months ago

Nit: MNPI (material, non-public information) has strict definitions. Not all internal information are considered MNPI.

toast0• 3 months ago

My spouse was a minor elected official in california, so we had to fill out form 700. I was already pretty much ready to go on broad based mutual funds, but needing to fill that out for anything that isn't a broad based mutual fund put any thoughts of individual equities out of my mind. (Other than employment based stock, which we reported out of caution, even though my employer had no operations in or near the district)

jonstewart• 3 months ago

The vast majority of government employees would not have access to MNPI.

phyzix5761• 3 months ago

They'll just do something similar to what some engineering managers do in the software industry. They'll tip off their cousin or friend of a friend of some opportunity (like needing to hire 10 engineers for a new initiative) and when they make money by acting on the information they reward the tipper with cars, vacations, homes, etc.

Sometimes managers will only hire through staffing agencies owned by family friends and get indirect kickbacks.

When I first heard about this my initial question was how do they not get caught when the assets are gifted or transferred to the manager's name. Turns out they don't actually transfer the assets to their name but they effectively own it through free usage.

oatmeal12• 3 months ago

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"

throwaway27448• 3 months ago

I don't think good men have been allowed near government for many decades

helterskelter2• 3 months ago

It's very nearly a contradiction of terms.

joquarky• 3 months ago

Who defines what "good" is?

matheusmoreira• 3 months ago

There were bets on BRL/USD exchange rates just prior to Trump's tariffs announcement too. No doubt some people made a lot of money.

ipython• 3 months ago

Add onto all that Trump suing the IRS for $10 billion.

idle_zealot• 3 months ago

Some analysts say it bears the hallmarks of illegal insider trading, whereby bets are made by people based on information that is not available to the general public. Others say the picture is more complicated and that some traders have become more adept at anticipating the president's interventions.

This and the title are journalistic malpractice. This is an article designed to report on obvious insider trading, and the writer clearly knows and agrees that it's obvious, but goes out of their way to throw in concessions and a build a veil of neutrality. You are legally allowed to accuse public officials of crimes. You do not have to gesture at "looming suspicions." A neutral reporting of the facts would make such an accusation, and tie it into the broader pattern of criminality. But it's more important to perform neutrality than to be honest, so we get this garbage. "Mr President, would you please comment on the allegations that-" "Shut up, piggie."

davidw2• 3 months ago

Once you start seeing all the "both sides" and "sanewashing" you can't unsee it. And they lean on both so hard.

red-iron-pine2• 3 months ago

who is "they"?

dlenski• 3 months ago

Thank you. I was going to simply comment "Suspicions"!?!

… but you've explained it more thoroughly.

awakeasleep• 3 months ago

It may be different in the UK. They have defamation laws that seem insane to a USA person. (Burden of proof on the speaker to prove what they said is true iirc)

ruszki2• 3 months ago

I never understood this. Basically every country, including the US, has libel and slander laws, and almost the same everywhere in the West. People were thrown to jail even in America for "a single tweet", the exact same way as in the UK. And for example, saying that you support violence in specific cases, like there is an ongoing riot, and you tweet "kill them all", that's not protected by any free speech laws in the world, not even the American, or any states' in America.

testfoobar4• 3 months ago

Allegations of insider trading are not the same as convictions of insider trading. No publication should be in the business of allocating criminal responsibility in advance of legal proceedings. If a crime is suspected then it should be reported to the authorities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence

SpicyLemonZest5• 3 months ago

I don't understand this response. Certainly they shouldn't say "Mr. John Smith is guilty" if a court hasn't found that. But there's nobody in particular being named here, just clear evidence that someone must have done it. If the police find a dead body, should newspapers pretend the victim might be alive somehow to avoid allocating criminal responsibility for murder?

zeristor• 3 months ago

Justice or Just ICE?

The rule of law hasn’t been an impediment for some, when the legal machinery has been co-opted

cosmicgadget3• 3 months ago

What if they just said "insider trading (the act)" and not "insider trading (the crime)"?

librasteve5• 3 months ago

yeah, and Trump will no doubt retort that this is BBC fake news in the light of their legal battle over (improperly) editing his speech

the BBC is required by its charter to provide a “balanced” view and this often result in unbearable smugness and vaulting to “we are the ultimate arbiters of truth”

this is a big pity, because the alternative is Fox News / GB News

sometimes_all3• 3 months ago

the BBC is required by its charter to provide a “balanced” view

I find this hilarious; the BBC has rarely provided a balanced view on many things. Indians (at almost every point in the political and social spectrum) will easily notice the bias and smug holier-than-thou attitude on India-specific news/opinion.

GJim2• 3 months ago

the BBC is required by its charter to provide a “balanced” view

You say this like it is a bad thing.

The BBC journalism is rather good and quite rightly seeks to be as impartial as possible. To compare the likes of Rupert Murdoch as a credible alternative to be BBC (or indeed, any news media which lacks a 'fairness doctrine') is simply idiotic.

imglorp• 3 months ago

The term is sanewashing.

None of this kleptocracy is normal, or sane, or acceptable.

dwd• 3 months ago

While insider trading is always a possibility, what often happen is trades are made in anticipation of an announcement without knowing what the announcement actually is, and Trump really is fairly predictable. You know hes going to TACO, question is when.

I would be more interested to know if the traders had insider knowledge of timing of the announcement or if it was leaked.

cosmicgadget3• 3 months ago

It found a consistent pattern of spikes just hours, or sometimes minutes, before a social media post or media interview was made public.

SilentM68• 3 months ago

I don't see any actual evidence given in the story by the author.

The BBC is not exactly known for unbiased reporting. It's been accused of systemic anti-Trump bias, including the misleading 2024 Panorama edit of his Jan 6 speech for which the network was forced to apologize.

Again, proof or evidence? No direct names mentioned of insiders, or any leaks traced. I do not see it. The BBC cites trade volume spikes that were timed to the announcements and analyst opinions. But is that not how Forex and Future exchanges/trades work? Are they not driven by geopolitics? If anyone is calling for a SEC probe, then the investigation should start with the entire congressional body. If it were me, I would start by enacting term limit legislation for senate and house. I'd then start speaking to any politicians that have been expelled out or sacrificed by their own political parties. I'm sure they'll have a rather good story to tell. It will be interesting to see how many of these people will be open to public hearings on the matter.

jmyeet3• 3 months ago

Here are the lessons:

1. The Supreme Court is not some neutral arbiter of a hallowed intractable document. They are political actors. Just like history books now write about the disastrous Court of the 1850s that went completely off the rails (Reconstruction wasn't much better), history will likewise write about the Roberts court as (IMHO) the worst in American history, particularly Citizens United and Trump v. United States. The latter is most directly responsible for all of this. There is now absolutely no prospect of consequences for any of this. The president himself is immune and is now free to openly sell pardons for anyone gets indicted. And let's be real, nobody is getting indicted. This is brazen, unfettered kleptocracy; and

2. The Democratic Party itself, the donor class and the consultant class is completely on board with everything that's happening.f The term here is controlled opposition. Now you just feckless pronouncements like "Trump bad" but, for example, no objection to policy. Instead the objection is to process. For example, Hakeem Jeffries saying Congress should've authorized the Iran War. That's not an objection to the war. The Democratic establishment likes the war. All of these political careers are just stepping stones to their eventual private industry paydays. It's their children getting fake jobs at thinktanks, management consultancies, lobbying firms and so on.

My personal opinion is that nothing will be solved. It's too late to do anything about this with electoral politics. Democratic politicians and the mainstream media has spent more effort attacking Hasan Piker in the last month than attacking Trump's foreseeably disastrous war or outright corruption with insider trading and pardons.

This feels like a "So long and thanks for all the fish" moment.

Princeton did a study on the effect of public opinion on what Congress does, specifically the impact of popularity of a bill passing and it actually passing [1]. It should surprise no one that public opinion has almost zero impact.

[1] https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba

gcanyon• 3 months ago

For example, Hakeem Jeffries saying Congress should've authorized the Iran War.

Did he say, "Congress should have authorized the Iran War," or did he say "Congress should have to authorize the Iran War." Those are two very different statements.

More to the point, did he say he would personally vote to authorize the Iran War? Did he say Democrats should vote to authorize the Iran War?

andsoitis• 3 months ago

More to the point, did he say he would personally vote to authorize the Iran War? Did he say Democrats should vote to authorize the Iran War?

Jeffries does not support the war with Iran; he has strongly criticized it as a "reckless war of choice". He is actively leading efforts to pass a War Powers Resolution to force the immediate cessation of hostilities.

rcbdev• 3 months ago

The U.S. Americans really give Hassan Piker this much importance? Wow. I thought he was just a washed up Twitch streamer.

defrost• 3 months ago

Respect where due, please, he's #30 on Twitch's all time list of most subscribed washed up streamers!

To the point, I'd never heard of him before this and he's clearly being used as a low bar of zero importance .. being used as such to indicate just how little effort opposition politicians and mainstream US media have devoted to Trump's biggest grifts and unforced errors.

SpicyLemonZest5• 3 months ago

My personal opinion is that nothing will be solved. It's too late to do anything about this with electoral politics. Democratic politicians and the mainstream media has spent more effort attacking Hasan Piker in the last month than attacking Trump's foreseeably disastrous war or outright corruption with insider trading and pardons.

What? This is obviously untrue. You can add up every piece of Hasan Piker content CNN has ever run and it won't add up to a single day of Iran war coverage. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have not, as far as I can tell, ever so much as mentioned the guy.

We all get over our skis sometimes, but if this claim sounded even a tiny bit plausible to you, I beg you to reevaluate your media consumption diet. Someone's working hard to convince you that things are worse than they are and that Democrats stand for things they don't.

jmyeet3• 3 months ago

Democratic politicians have been remarkably silent on the war as a policy issue. The complaints are primarily around process. Even the milquetoast War Powers Resolution, which was doomed to fail anyway, was just process.

Back in the presidential election, Kamala called Iran our greatest threat. Today’s leaders are variations of this.

The most prominent race in this time has been the Michigan Democratic Senate primary where Al-Sayed is against it but I’ve honestly seen more hit pieces about Piker campaigning with him than anything about Iran as an issue in the race.

Look past all the stories like “this is the Strait of Hormuz”, “it’s open/closed”, “rising gas prices” and peace talks. Those are just telling you what’s going on.

What Democrats have you really seen that have talked about being against the actual policy? It’s surprisingly little.

wyldfire• 3 months ago

The cult of personality is impenetrable. He won't be held to account, ever. Nor his sycophants in the administration.

yanhangyhy• 3 months ago

Can anyone tell me why a great democratic system is unable to prevent this kind of problem? Even when it happens, there seem to be no effective measures to deal with it.

cosmicgadget3• 3 months ago

The pardon power is absolute, so his accomplices have an out. The president has broad immunity that likely applies here or at least would be years of litigation. The only way to stop this is impeachment and 2/3rds of the Senate voting to convict. It is hard to imagine anything that would get the GOP to convict their president.

mktk1001• 3 months ago

When all three branches of government fall under the grip of corrupt officials and their elected enablers, the checks and balances meant to safeguard the republic become little more than decorative machinery.

lawn• 3 months ago

It's not a "great" system.

The American system is flawed and has been continuously eroded and dismantled.

tsoukase• 3 months ago

The US people have difficulty to understand how easy is for a politician to take advantage of his position. This government sends a specific signal of corruption (glorious words, deactivation of control agencies, insider trading and who knows what else dye to pre-election commitments)

red-iron-pine2• 3 months ago

"suspicions"

marysminefnuf• 3 months ago

When authors are neutral like this its self censorship to the point where it gives readers literal misinformation. Its obvious that the admin is driving mad with insider trading not just mere suspicions lol.

insane_dreamer• 3 months ago

The Trump admin is so openly self-dealing -- so many incidents that they don't even try to hide, or not much -- that the chances that the suspicious trades are coincidental or not the result of insider trading, are pretty much zero.

digimantis• 3 months ago

American legal system is turning into a joke. no one gets arrested

burnerRhodov2• 3 months ago

It's wild to me that this is blamed specifically on Trump. All members of congress, Democrat or Republican, have insider information. Why is this a hit piece aimed at Trump and not Congress?

The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump's presidency

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