Senator Durbin Sold Off Stock After Getting Non-Public Briefing From Treasury, Federal Reserve
Hope. Change. Chicago politics.
As U.S. stock markets plummeted last September, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, sold more than $115,000 worth of stocks and mutual-fund shares and used much of the money to invest in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
The Illinois senator’s 2008 financial disclosure statement shows he sold mutual-fund shares worth $42,696 on Sept. 19, the day after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged congressional leaders in a closed meeting to craft legislation to help financially troubled banks. The same day, he bought $43,562 worth of Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B stock, the disclosure shows.
Durbin’s spokesman said that Senator Dick didn’t act on anything that wasn’t public knowledge, and that the information he got from the Treasury and the Federal Reserve was released publicly the next day.
Even so, I’ll bet most of the public wished they’d gotten the information at the same time Senator Durbin did.
It’s good to be a member of the ruling class, I guess.
