[zucked]

I honestly don't know how you put a cone of silence around congresspeople such that insider trading anywhere in their sphere of influence is impossible. My intent would be to make it difficult for the congressperson to directly benefit from passing along insider info and compensate them enough such that it isn't a practical path. Sure, they could still tell friends to buy/sell, but if the friend *does* act on that, it's sure going to raise eyebrows when they try to wire $1M worth of proceeds to the congressperson for "movie & pizza night".

And I know that the next stone to be cast is "yeah, but if they help friends/business associates beat the market, congresspeople can still benefit with board seats and jobs when they're done with congressional terms". That's totally valid, and I have no idea how to combat that.

[kspacewalk2]

Forget pizza night IOUs. Lots of very smart people have come up with lots of clever ways to pay someone for a service, ways that don't even register when it comes to public awareness. I could have bought this house from you for 1.5 million, but I'm going to buy it for 2.5 million because I simply must have it. Man, what a sucker, eh?