The Wall Street Journal published an exhaustive piece of investigatory journalism this week about stock trading by senior officials and employees of federal regulatory agencies, You can see the full WSJ article here, and a summary of six “takeaways” from the reporting here. It’s a classic example of old-fashioned shoe leather reporting, but on a big scale. One of the six takeaways describes what the Journal team did:
“The Journal obtained and analyzed more than 31,000 financial-disclosure forms for about 12,000 senior career employees, political staff and presidential appointees. The review spans 2016 through 2021 and includes data on about 850,000 financial assets and more than 315,000 trades reported in stocks, bonds and funds by the officials, their spouses or dependent children.”
The fruits of the investigation justify this enormous amount of work by the reporting team, because the analysis found that thousands of federal administrative officials trade stocks in companies their agencies are actively regulating. The full article is worth reading, but let’s focus today on five of the takeaways.
First, more than 2,600 federal agency officials owned millions of dollars in stocks in companies that were lobbying their agencies. Second, officials directly owned stocks in companies whose businesses obviously would be affected by decisions made by their regulatory agencies, including Defense Department officials owning stocks in aerospace and defense companies, an EPA official owning stock in an oil and gas company, and an FDA official investing in food and drug company stocks that were supposed to be off limits. Even more amazing, some Defense Department officials owned stocks in Chinese companies that the U.S. was considering for blacklisting.
Third, The Journal investigation found dozens of examples of officials trading in stocks of companies shortly before their agencies announced enforcement actions against those companies. Fourth, 1,800 officials owned stock in Facebook, Amazon, Apple, or Google. And fifth, about 70 officials engaged in trading that most normal investors don’t even consider, like options trading or short selling, including some individual trades of between $5 million and $25 million.
The ability of regulatory officials to buy or sell stocks in companies that are under the oversight of their agencies is obviously a gaping hole in federal law. Administrative officials are supposed to be objective and dispassionate in their decisionmaking. When such officials are directly investing in companies they are regulating, often under circumstances–like trades made shortly before regulatory actions are to be announced–such conduct gives rise to reasonable suspicions that insider information might have influenced the buy or sell decision. The potential conflicts of interest are even greater when regulatory officials engage in especially risky trading tactics, such as short selling, or large-money trades. And, perhaps most concerning, the agencies in question apparently had rules prohibiting much of this conduct, but waived the rules so the trades could be made.
It’s time for members of Congress to get off their duffs, stop the constant fundraising, skip another appearance on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News, and take a good look at the conflict of interest and stock trading rules applicable to the administrative state. A statute that requires officials to avoid any direct ownership of stocks during their service in regulatory agencies–and instead participate solely in mutual funds managed by others–seems like a good start. Given the increasing role of federal agencies in making decisions that affect our lives in countless ways, we’re entitled to some meaningful assurance that those decisions aren’t influenced by the regulators’ personal financial interests.
The trade publications and some high-profile departures from publications have depicted newsrooms as kinds of battlegrounds, where political and social issues have come to the forefront and reporters on the newsroom side and writers on the opinion pages are at each others’ throats about just how much opinion, and also what kind of opinion, should be published on the op-ed pages. 
Awesome in terms of its enormous storytelling sweep, taking us from the discovery of weapons by a bullied group of protohumans to a voyage to Jupiter; awesome in its special effects, which kicked off the rapid development of special effects in films, made “space movies” a new genre, and gave all viewers a new perspective on The Blue Danube; awesome in its anticipation of new technology and artificial intelligence; and especially awesome in its absolute embrace of an inexplicable, entirely weird, jaw-dropping storyline. Oh, and there’s some funny moments in the film, too, such as when one of the characters has to figure out how to use a zero-gravity toilet, which involves carefully studying a long set of instructions.
Raise your hand if you remember your Mom telling you to sit up straight and look her in the eyes when you were talking. It turns out that those are two of the visual clues people focus on in deciding whether a person speaking is intelligent. It’s not hard to understand why people have that reaction: those who slouch look slothful and undisciplined and speakers who don’t make eye contact seem shifty and deceptive, whereas people who sit up straight and look you in the eye seem engaged, interested, direct, and honest — all qualities that are associated with intelligence.
The coaches recognized that Oregon was a fast finesse team that specializes in up-tempo offense that sprints to the line of scrimmage and runs plays faster than anybody else. So, how to go about mentally and physically preparing your defense for that challenge? The Ohio State coaches decided to approach the game by asking their defensive linemen to go on diets — reasoning that, by shedding a few pounds, the big boys on the defense would feel lighter and faster, and therefore better prepared mentally for the game. The rest is history, as the Ohio State defense held the fast-paced, high-powered Oregon offense far below its normal point output.
He had been president for almost eight years, had brought World War II to a close, and had presided over the Marshall Plan; he had issued executive orders, launched into the Korean War, and guided the federal government during the first crises of the Cold War. He was an ordinary man who had been a fine President, and after his term ended he tried to go back to an ordinary life. He returned to Missouri and lived with his beloved wife, Bess, highly conscious of not being perceived as trading on his office or his service to the nation.
The Affordable Care Act posed some difficult challenges for insurers. Under the statute, they were required to include a number of new, mandatory forms of coverage in their health care plans. That requirement, obviously, limited the ability of insurers to control the costs of particular plans by tailoring the kinds of care covered by those plans. But the insurers still need to figure out a way to control costs, because their plans need to be competitively priced.
I was working for the Cleveland bureau of the Wall Street Journal as a summer intern. I was paid $200 a week, so I had to find an apartment I could afford on that salary. I found one in a large, brick, multi-story apartment building across the street from the municipal sewage plant in east Cleveland. I remember the age of the place — it was probably built in the ’20s, and hadn’t had much upkeep since — its dimness and general shabbiness, and the paper-thin walls that allowed you to hear couples fighting (and sometimes doing other things) in the adjoining units. But mostly, I remember the cockroaches.
Webner House 