Lawmakers Shuffled Their Financial Portfolios Following Meetings With Treasury, Fed During Crisis

Lawmakers Shuffled Their Financial Portfolios Following Meetings With Treasury, Fed During Crisis

"It might not be illegal, but it's certainly sketch.
Throughout 2008, members of Congress met repeatedly with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, his successor Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to discuss the implications of the broad financial crisis that sweeping across the globe. Within two days of those meetings, a number of Congressmen altered their financial portfolios, the Washington Post reports. In total, lawmakers shifted their finances 166 times in the days directly after those meetings.
The changes are allowed under congressional ethics rules, WaPo reports. But at a time when so many other Americans raced to rearrange their portfolios, lawmakers may have been exposed to financial information not yet available to the wider public."