How ‘political intelligence’ can come from Congress itself

[Octafish]

Seems Sen. Hatch and Co. have a lot of explaining to do. From the There Ought to Be a Law Department...

How ‘political intelligence’ can come from Congress itself

By Jia Lynn Yang, Tom Hamburger and Dina ElBoghdady
The Washington Post, Published: May 6, 2013

EXCERPT...

“Political intelligence” firms — companies that sell their analysis of federal actions to investors — have drawn much of the scrutiny from lawmakers and investigators worried about potential insider trading. Last month, federal regulators issued subpoenas to the law firm Greenberg Traurig and an analyst at the brokerage firm Height Securities in connection with another spike in trading that occurred after information was shared about the government’s health-care decision.

But it is not just boutique firms and lobbyists offering political intelligence. Congress itself has become a source of sophisticated political analysis for investors, for whom every nugget of exclusive information can translate to millions of dollars in profit.

SNIP...

Insider-trading laws dictate that information that’s “material” and not public has to be treated with the utmost care. The Stock Act, passed last year, makes explicit that members of Congress, their staff members and government officials must treat certain information as confidential.

Yet there is a whole gray area of information — call it analysis — that is not easy to judge. Lobbyists with close ties to former colleagues on the Hill, or congressional staffers themselves, can sometimes offer their best sense of what is happening in Washington, offering to investors a composite of what they are hearing from various sources.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-political-intelligence-can-come-from-congress-itself/2013/05/06/a2998e4c-b68a-11e2-b94c-b684dda07add_story.html?hpid=z1

What if someone who had access to all those phone calls and emails and intelligence that's harvested every day by NSA decided to do some day trading? Who's gonna know? I mean: Apart from the rich who keep getting richer.

[DCKit]

1. Your title made me LOL. nt

[Octafish]

2. There is a certain irony in gold. Ask Greenberg Traurig.

The Insider's Insiders have a track record for going for the gold.

Greenberg Traurig law firm at the center of ‘political intelligence’ case

By Jia Lynn Yang and Jerry Markon
The Washington Post, Published: May 6

A lobbyist hears from “very credible sources” that the White House is going to reverse a major health-care proposal. He tells a client in an e-mail, and that person then tells his own clients in a research note.

It sounds like the game of telephone that lobbyists, government officials and even reporters are drawn into every day in Washington. Except in this case, the chain of information may have triggered a spike in trades on Wall Street — and has now led to a government investigation into possible insider trading.

How the lobbyist, who works at the law firm Greenberg Traurig, stepped into this morass offers a window into what has become a routine and profitable practice at law firms and lobbying shops: In addition to their usual work, lobbyists share with financial firms the latest political tidbits they are gathering from sources, sending an e-mail here and there with the latest “political intelligence.” The financial firms value the information because it can inform their investments.

Recent attention has focused on a new breed of companies that offer political intelligence exclusively for investor clients, but some of the country’s most prominent law firms have gotten into the business, too.

The latest investigation has put an unwelcome spotlight on Greenberg Traurig, one of the country’s biggest law firms — and also known for having weathered the controversy surrounding one of its top lobbyists, Jack Abramoff, who was sentenced to prison for his part in a wide-ranging corruption scandal in 2006.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/greenberg-traurig-law-firm-at-the-center-of-political-intelligence-case/2013/05/06/7e0b01fa-b437-11e2-bbf2-a6f9e9d79e19_singlePage.html?tid=obinsite

Greenberg Traurig also is famous for helping out Ponzi fraudster and until-then successful hedgefund manager R. Allen Stanford, among others.