Long Live the ‘Queen of Stonks’

The Democrats are baying over government officials or members of Congress investing in the markets during the Trump tariff tumult. “Any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now,” warns Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “I’m demanding answers,” sniffs Senator Schiff, if “anyone in the Trump family or administration profited off of this tariff chaos through insider trading.”We’ve heard this kind of talk before when the solons on Capitol Hill worked themselves into a lather over senators and representatives investing in America’s free-market economy. Our view of investigating public figures’ investments echoes today what these columns in 2022 cautioned was an attempt “to curb the bets our legislators are placing on American capitalism.” That struck us then — as now — as just about the last thing the country needs. The contradictions of this campaign were underscored in a column we published by Larry Kudlow. It was headlined “Nancy Pelosi, Queen of Stonks.” Mr. Kudlow’s column explained that the erstwhile House speaker and her husband, Paul, had “traded over $50 million in assets over the past year with annualized returns at 69 percent.” Mr. Kudlow pointed to estimates supplied by the Nancy Pelosi portfolio tracker.Far from calling for Mrs. Pelosi to give up the profits she and her husband had made in the markets or for her to face some other variety of punishment, Mr. Kudlow hailed the speaker’s “trading acumen.” Mrs. Pelosi, he crowed, was the “Gordon Gekko of the New York Stock Exchange,” and marveled that her savvy as an investor had appeared even to surpass that of the so-called “Oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.Mr. Kudlow found, too, that for 2021 one website had even designated Mrs. Pelosi the “Wall St. trader of the year.” Given all that, it was startling back then to see the Speaker turn around and embrace “harsh fines” for public officials for violating a proposed ban on investing. Just weeks before, she had been touting the merits of a “free-market economy” and assuring the press that, as she saw it, lawmakers “should be able to participate in that.”Though Mrs. Pelosi threw her support behind an effort to provide greater disclosure of stock trading by lawmakers, titled “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge,” or Stock Act 2.0, the bill failed to clear Congress. The shrill denunciations coming today from Mr. Schiff and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez appear, if it’s not just a case of sour grapes, to mark a resurgence of this effort to police investment activity by lawmakers and government figures.“I’ve been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez scolds. “Disclosure deadline is May 15th. We’re about to learn a few things.” Mr. Schiff, joined by Senator Gallego, wants to find out what White House figures “knew about the Trump announcement” on tariffs “and when they knew it,” our Matt Rice reports. The Democrats seem particularly incensed by Mr. Trump’s attempt to dispel gloom when he said it was “A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”It’s not our intention to gainsay that scoundrels, of either party, don’t occasionally lurk in the federal government or Congress. No one is stopping the authorities from enforcing the laws on securities trading. What we are saying is that these bad apples shouldn’t trigger an attempt to curb the rights of the honest members of the government to a presumption of innocence and an enjoyment of the opportunity to participate and invest in our market economy. With budget and tax negotiations in full swing on Capitol Hill, the time appears ripe to address the Democrats’ accusations. The best suggestion, in our view, comes from Mr. Kudlow, who, amid the furor over Mrs. Pelosi, urged a cut in capital gains taxes. As he pitched it then, such a reduction would “create the grand opportunity for all Americans to get rich and benefit by superior stock-picking skills.” That goes, too, for lawmakers and government officials.

Long Live the ‘Queen of Stonks’

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