[houseinthesky]

I believe the insider-trading thing pretty small in real world impact.

Paid speeches, book deals, consulting payments and jobs for family members or after holding office are the more significant items.

We have a funny system where paying a politician $250k for a one hour speech to your company, trade group, union, political action committee or whatever is treated as a perfectly reasonable speaker fee, and totally different than just handing the politician the money in a briefcase. Or hiring a politician's 22 year old new-grad child at an executive salary.

[bobthepanda]

IIRC most congress people do not beat the S&P.

[djkivi]

While some of them beat Warren Buffett.