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Congress Doesn’t Understand Why SEC Is Being Such A Killjoy About This Whole Insider Trading Thing

C'mon guys, really. You don't have to do this.
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You're been served.

Photo: Susan Sterner, via Wikimedia Commons

I mean, surely the vaunted United States Securities and Exchange Commission can investigate the matter of how a juicy tip about an impending change to federal healthcare policy (allegedly) went from a Congressional aide’s mouth into a research firm’s clients’ inbox without maybe (but probably not) violating the Constitution and (definitely) minorly inconveniencing the powerful Ways and Means Committee. The House hasn’t oh-so-generouslyfunded the SEC for it to spend that money poking around its business, and after all the SEC has been wasting so much money—money that could be spent in “a host of ways” to “investigate any alleged congressional insider trading” instead of on stupid rules that it’s mandated to adopt.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals plans to hear arguments on enforcing two subpoenas that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sent to Congress as part of its investigation….

Sutter and his former employer, the U.S. House of Representatives' Ways and Means Committee, are refusing to comply with the SEC subpoenas for documents and testimony. Their lawyers argue they are immune from such investigative tactics because under the legal principles of sovereign immunity and legislative independence they cannot be questioned without their consent.

U.S. court to weigh lawmakers’ immunity in trading investigations [Reuters]

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