Staying in touch with Congress:
- 8 Things You Didn’t Know about Payroll Tax-Cut Deal.
- Louise Slaughter, Tim Walz Press for STOCK Act Conference Committee.
A hang up with the STOCK Act is whether it will require "political intelligence consultants" to register in the same way lobbyists do. House Republicans want to remove these provisions, the bill's authors do not.
If you, like me, have no real idea what the political intelligence business industry is, here's background.
It turns out that the political intelligence industry is something that sprang up as a way to convey inside information to hedge funds and mutual funds. Although it’s illegal to trade on the basis of inside information about public companies, it’s perfectly legal, in most instances, to trade on the basis of inside information about stuff the government does. So these hedge funds and mutual funds (and, to a lesser extent, other Wall Street investors) hire “expert network” companies like Gerson Lehrman, Coleman Research Group, Inc., and Public Insight LP to tell them the latest on what Washington will or won’t do, and when. The expert network firms operate worldwide collecting all kinds of information for investors, but lately they’ve been ramping up their activities in Washington.
