President Obama joined a bipartisan group of Congressional leaders in a signing ceremony to enact and praise their STOCK Act (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act) to ban ‘insider trading’ on Capitol Hill.
“The STOCK Act makes it clear that if members of Congress use nonpublic information to gain an unfair advantage in the stock market, then they are breaking the law,” he explained during a rare moment of cooperation between the White House and Capitol Hill.
The law creates new disclosure requirements and new measures of accountability and transparency for thousands of federal employees who previously had been free to use the insider information to benefit financially in the stock market.
New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D), who first introduced the STOCK Act in 2006, was unable to attend because of breaking her leg the previous day. A handful of Democrats attended along with Vice-President Biden and Republican Reps., Sean Duffy (WI), Robert Dold (IL), Michael Fitzpatrick (PA) and Sen. Scott Brown (MA).
“It shows that when an idea is right that we can still accomplish something on behalf of the American people and to make our government and our country stronger,” Obama said.
(READ more in the LA Times)