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Like everyone else but two members of the House, Paul Ryan voted for the STOCK Act, a watered-down version of a bill that would ban insider trading among members of Congress. Before he did that, however, Ryan spent 2008 wheeling and dealing his bank stock portfolio to match his knowledge gained as a member of Congress during the financial crisis.
Republican Vice Presidential Pick Paul Ryan sold shares in a number of financial companies including Citigroup, General Electric, Wachovia, and JP Morgan Chase on the same day as then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke held a closed meeting with congressional leaders during the financial crisis.
At issue are the sale of troubled banks like Wachovia and Citi, as well as General Electric’s struggling capital unit, dated on September 18, 2008 — the same day as the meeting with Bernanke and Paulson according to the Associated Press [...]
The sales total as much as $60,000 — although they could be considerably less. The House disclosure forms do not require specific values from members.
OpenSecrets.org estimates Ryan has a net worth between $927,100 to $3,207,000.
Ryan’s disclosure also shows the purchase of shares in Goldman Sachs, which was considered a relatively safer bank at the time.
This information was first uncovered by the Richmonder. The September 18 meeting was held at night, and you would assume that these trades occurred during the day. But Ryan was trading a lot of individual bank stocks throughout 2008, when the financial crisis reached its peak. I think Brad DeLong gets this right:
The impression I get from these 27 transactions in individual bank stocks in 12 months, 17 of which involve not net injections or withdrawals but rather switches between banks, is of a guy who simply does not know what he is doing [...]
At the level at which part-timer Paul Ryan plays this game–Oh! Goldman is undervalued relative to Citigroup on January 22! Oh! Citigroup is undervalued relative to Goldman on February 22! Oh! Goldman is undervalued relative to Citigroup on June 16! Oh! Goldman is undervalued relative to Citigroup on September 18! Oh! Goldman is overvalued relative to Citigroup on October 20!–he can no more win than Reagan-era ex-Secretary William Bennett could win as he dropped $7 million over the years in Las Vegas. An intelligent man takes the advice of the computer in the movie “Wargames”: “A very interesting game. The only way to win is not to play.”
I don’t want to hire as my vice president and federal budget czar somebody who uses Congressional inside information to profit by switching his portfolio back and forth between Citigroup and Goldman five times a year: I want somebody with better ethics [...]
I don’t want to hire as my vice president and federal budget czar somebody who investing very part-time with no analytical support and without inside information switches his portfolio back and forth between Citigroup and Goldman five times a year: I want somebody with a better brain.
I think we can assume that the Citi-to-Goldman shifts and the other shifts we see in Ryan’s portfolio are, as DeLong suggests, an attempt to profit off inside information. He hears something about one bank going up or down and moves his money around. Rumors were flying at that time, and especially in Washington.
But people like this always seem to fail upwards. That net worth comes despite a career in public service, including an early career with low-wage staffer jobs that necessitated moonlighting as a personal trainer. Ryan always had a safety net, unlike what he wants to give to the country, in the form of a wealthy family with a major local construction business in Janesville, Wisconsin. Also, his wife comes from an oil fortune. Based on these haphazard trades, it’s a good thing there was a well of money to draw from.
UPDATE: Ryan’s alibi is that these were mechanized trades based on a holding in the Russell 1000 index. Based on the available information, I would say that it’s really stupid to hold a Russell 1000 index because it seems almost impossible to make any money off it. But it satisfies the question of insider trading for me, at least.
… this is also true. If it were an index fund you would see the trades on the index fund. You wouldn’t see individual trades within the index fund. In addition, “There are many too few transactions listed on the financial disclosure form for Ryan to have been rolling his own Russell 1000 tracker.”
I don’t know now that this had to be updated. I already refuted the allegation about the September 18 trade being tied to that meeting. The record shows a series of haphazard trades. They can’t be inside a fund. Maybe Ryan isn’t doing this himself; that’s his claim. Whoever is doing it is a really bad financial consultant, and the fact that this is so heavy on bank stocks at a troubled time for banks should raise some eyebrows.
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About FDL News Desk
He disgusts me.
Shouldn’t we be celebrating the Efficient Market Hypothesis in action?
Evil or stupid?
With Paul Ryan, America needn’t choose just one.
Business experience!
Ah, but she wears the $75 dresses from Kohl’s so it’s all good.
I would say this ass-hat Ryan is as dumb as a bag of hammers, but that would be an insult to the noble tool.
I’d bet finding unethical, if not illegal stuff, in this guys background is gonna be lke looking for the Goodyear blimp in your driveway, at NOON.
Teddy, Teddy, Teddy, you know how I always tell you,, not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Agreed. Dumb as a box of rocks, maybe.
Thanks DDay.
In November 2011, the granny slayer said ‘I Agree’ We Need To Reinstate Glass-Steagall.
Here’s a bigger picture of insider trading by Congresswhores:
FROM: http://www.newser.com/story/148766/congress-riddled-with-insider-trading.html
“The Washington Post has pored over the 45,000 stock transactions made by members of Congress between 2007 and 2010, in a mammoth investigation into just how bad the government’s insider trading problem is. The result—130 members of Congress or their families bought and sold up to $218 million in 323 companies registered to lobby on legislation that comes before their committees. That amounts to 5,531 trades, or nearly one in eight (although the Post notes that not all these trades are insider trading, only that the trades represent potential conflicts of interest).
It is also a problem split fairly evenly between the parties, with 68 Democrats and 62 Republicans…”
Ryan’s first job, after graduating from Miami of Ohio, was marketing consultant to his family’s construction company. Even assuming that he had any qualifications for that job (other than the surname of Ryan), I would love to know what kind of hours he spent, what his marketing strategy looked like, who worked under him, and how much money he was paid for his services.
If she paid $75 for a $75 dress at Kohl’s, she’s beyond dumb. That store runs all kinds of specials, even if you don’t have a Kohl’s credit card.
even though he had already established himself as the ultimate darling of Wall Street and even though they had mapped out a bright future for him. (Wall Street shills inside the corrupt Inside-the-Beltway Establishment, particularly Rahm Emanuel, Chris Van Hollen, Steve Israel and Joe Crowley had already set the DCCC on a path of giving Ryan, who represents a swing district, a career-long free pass. On behalf of the same Wall Street interests who have financed Ryan, Emanuel, Israel and Crowley have made sure Ryan would never have to worry about reelection.) The first most people heard of Paul Ryan was when one high-ranking Democrat publicly admired him by asserting he was “absolutely sincere about wanting to reduce the deficit,” though he quarreled with his approach. “I give him credit for at least being willing to put out there some tough choices.” That wasn’t Emanuel, Israel or Crowley. It was Barack Obama. Many of us have been working to discredit that perception ever since. Welcome aboard, Barack.
America might have been better served if, instead of talking about some bullshit “sincerity,” he would have mentioned that Ryan is a sleazy, self-serving crook who’s grown into a multimillionaire while working as a congressman. Obama could have pointed out, for example, that Ryan had– and has– ownership stakes in companies that benefit from oil subsidies while he was pushing $40 billion in taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil. How sincere is that? Aside from serving Wall Street as their top shill for the Bush TARP bailout for banksters, “in 2011, Ryan joined all House Republicans and 13 Democrats in his vote to keep Big Oil tax loopholes as part of the FY 2011 spending bill. His budget would retain a decade’s worth of oil tax breaks worth $40 billion, while cutting “billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil.” For instance, it “calls for a $3 billion cut in energy programs in FY 2013 alone” and would spend only $150 million over five years– or 20 percent of what was invested in 2012– on energy programs.” Not too sincere, huh? Especially not when you consider that Ryan “and his wife, Janna, own stakes in four family companies that lease land in Texas and Oklahoma to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryan’s budget plan,” the Daily Beast reported in June of 2011. “Ryan’s father-in-law, Daniel Little, who runs the companies, told Newsweek and The Daily Beast that the family companies are currently leasing the land for mining and drilling to energy giants such as Chesapeake Energy, Devon, and XTO Energy, a recently acquired subsidiary of ExxonMobil.”
must be a buddy of Bill CHEVRON Keller