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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday April 15 2020, @05:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the follow-the-money dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In the wake of reports last month that four US senators sold stocks shortly after a classified briefing on January 24 about the risk posed by the novel coronavirus, Timothy Carambat, a mechanical and software engineer, created a website to make stock sales by every senator more visible.

In an email to The Register, Carambat, who runs a design firm based in Covington, Louisiana, called Industrial Object, explained he was motivated to create Senate Stock Watcher after news broke that Senators Richard Burr (R-NC), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), James Inhofe (R-OK), and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) had dumped stocks before most people in America understood the implications of the outbreak. It is illegal for senators to buy and sell shares using non-public information.

Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been sued for alleged securities fraud, a charge he has denied. It is said he unloaded up to $1.7m in stocks in mid-February, particularly in hotel groups that would be later hit hard by the virus pandemic, all while receiving daily confidential briefings about the impact of the bio-nasty – and reassuring the public everything would be fine.

"As public servants, there are some senators making alarmingly large money movements at what would seem to be very fortunate timing in the market," Carambat said.

"I understand some senators were previously very accomplished businesspeople, but in my opinion, the level of access they have to information currently is highly privileged and it would only make sense to keep their own financial best interests at heart."

Details about the stock sales in news reports prompted Carambat to look into the source of the data, which turned out to be the US Senate Financial Disclosures website.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2020, @06:37AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2020, @06:37AM (#982959)

    By late January America had already had its first case. Anybody with more than half a brain cell had already realized we were likely going to hit the shitter fairly soon, let alone by mid February. Even the CDC was telling people as much, though in less panic inducing terms. It was also just reasonable prophylaxis. What do you stand by unloading investments in e.g. hotels, etc for a couple of months? Whatever those stocks might appreciate during those months which, given the clearly escalating pandemic was going to be minimal *at best*. What do you stand to lose if shit hits the fan? Immensely. It's a very obvious risk:reward scenario.

    No love for any of these guys, to say the least, but I think allegations like this are stupid since they make more meaningful things look just as spurious - when they are not.

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  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday April 15 2020, @11:55AM (3 children)

    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday April 15 2020, @11:55AM (#983006) Journal
    Looking at the Marriott stock price, it was going gradually up until around February 20th. My March 17, it had lost around 2/3 of its value. Selling around the middle of February would have been a good idea.
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    sudo mod me up
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2020, @01:04PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2020, @01:04PM (#983036)

      Maybe buying more now is a better thing?

      • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday April 15 2020, @02:33PM (1 child)

        by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday April 15 2020, @02:33PM (#983063) Journal
        It's starting to recover. I bought some at the end of March, which are up a bit already. I'm expecting to hold them for at least a couple of years, so I'm not worried too much about the 5-10% fluctuations (though short-term traders are likely to be making a killing from the volatility) - I'm expecting a 30-50% ROI in the recovery.
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        sudo mod me up
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2020, @07:26PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2020, @07:26PM (#983168)

          Something I'd mention that's as obvious to me as this thing was in mid February: Right now we're starting to bring the curve down, but that's only by completely suiciding our economies and engaging in massive lockdowns. Many countries, including South Korea, have reported multiple repeat infections. And there are also at least 8 known strains in the wild. Even people who overcome the virus are, sometimes, inexplicably showing no antibodies against the virus.

          The point of this is that both natural immunization and vaccine based immunization are likely going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible. And the point of *that* is that once you reopen the economy, this whole thing's just going to start all over again.

          There's an extremely good chance we're not only not at the bottom, but nowhere even remotely near it. And keep in mind that the current rebound is almost entirely fake. The Fed is pumping obscene amounts of funny money into the economy to try to give some chub to our otherwise limp and shriveled cock of an economy. Once the funny money stops, so does the chub. And at the same time, if you pump too much funny money into the economy, your risk the entire dick just falling off.

          And seriously if you can't take financial advice from an anon using dick metaphors on the internet, who really can you take advice from? However, I am right.