[woah]

Anyone with enough power and influence can impact stock options, and everyone has some information not available to the public. For example, Kanye West could buy calls on Uggs, then go out to lunch wearing some Uggs, then sell the calls after it hits the tabloids. Laws applying only to politicians would not stop anyone else from influencing stocks, and would only restrict the types of people choosing to become politicians, reducing the quality of politicians by causing people with better options not to bother.

My sense is that this is one of those feel-good things, like setting politician salaries to a low level, which doesn't actually do anything to improve the quality of government.

[t0mbstone]

A single celebrity attempting to manipulate the stocks they own via public perception is a fundamentally different thing than a bunch of politicians using their legal power to manipulate the stocks they own for their own personal gain.

[joebob42]

I guess this can sort of flow two ways, though. A politician might know a law is coming up, and so buy a stock that is going to benefit from it: your argument is convincing there. But they might also hold a stock, and because of that they might feel more strongly one way or the other about a particular law: that feels like a problem to me.

Unfortunately there is bleed through between these, and no good way to distinguish the two except ok a case by case basis, which seems to me like a credible argument for forbidding all trading.