The One Percent's "honest" graft

The Atlantic Wire summarizes a story in today's Wall Street Journal detailing another way the One Percent rig our political and economic system for their benefit. And it's all perfectly legal . . . if not exactly ethical.

Proving that insider trading in Congress can work both ways, The Wall Street Journal reports on a disturbing trend of hedge funds gaining valuable tips from lawmakers voting on and making multi-million dollar decisions. Sure, it doesn't seem like Congress can agree on much at the moment, but when decisions like the 2009 healthcare compromise was reached, it was the hedge funds that knew first--hours before the public announcement. "The news was potentially worth millions of dollars to the investors, though none would publicly divulge how they used the information," report The Wall Street Journal's Brody Mullins and Susan Pulliam. "They belong to a select group who pay for early, firsthand reports on Capitol Hill" who are, as one lawyer puts it, "buying information from members of Congress in a perfectly legal way."

Click through to continue reading.

Reminds me of this clip from the documentary Inside Job, which I reviewed earlier this year.