A funny thing happened this morning while I was watching the morning news. The announcer said, “The Senate has passed a bill to handle the problem of senators inside trading.” I began to laugh and the humor of the topic became so intense I rolled off of the couch and was rolling and laughing on the front room floor.
My wife just emerged from the shower wrapped in a huge bath towel and she kept asking me what was wrong. I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes and I couldn’t speak for several minutes. When I was finally able to regain control of myself I explained.
The Senate passed a bill to take care of illegal insider trading by the senators. I explained that was like a bill to appoint the mafia to rewrite the criminal statutes. If we could only bring Al Capone back he could do a good job with that.
It is really more akin to having big banks and investment firms monitor themselves and make their own trading rules.
When I thought about it really hard it is more like subletting part of your hen house to the local fox. I haven’t read the bill but I would bet it is very funny.
John W. Robinson
Corvallis