It recently came to light that Representative Eric Cantor has been engaging in a form of insider trading by walking out on the congressional deficit talks while shorting treasury bonds in his personal accounts. Insider trading is generally defined as 'having information that would cause a reasonable man to either buy or sell more of a particular security or investment.' Since Cantor knew that his walking out of the talks on raising the debt ceiling would cause treasuries to decline, some people may have raised their eyebrows over the fact that he was simultaneously shorting United States treasury securities. While this story has probably been overblown, after all-Cantor owns a significant amount of treasuries as well and his congressional pension relies upon the solvency of the U.S. treasury--there is still reason to be uncomfortable with politicians trading bonds, stocks, and other investments that can be directly influenced by a politician's actions.
If you're interested in reading about pending legislation that could restrict a politician's ability to act on insider information, check out this blog post from the website My Journey To Millions: http://www.myjourneytomillions.com/articles/congressional-insider-trading-not-illegalyet/ . It's a worthwhile read.
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