Paul Ryan Acted Immediately After 2008 Bush WH Meeting on Impending Economic Meltdown

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24. See below. They argue that insider trading is just as illegal for members of Congress.

This same assertion has been repeated for years, every time someone observes that Congress members do much better in their personal stock trading than average investors do. Unlike average Joes, the pundits explain, Congress has exempted itself from insider-trading laws, so Congress-people are allowed to trade on private information that they gather in the course of their work while other Americans can't.
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But at least one law professor argues that this is just not true. Insider trading is just as illegal for members of Congress as it is for the rest of the 300+ million Americans, Indiana Law Professor Donna Nagy argues.

Congress never "exempted" itself from insider trading laws, Nagy says — because Congress has never actually passed a law about insider trading.

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-15/news/30400492_1_insider-material-non-public-information-congress

The conventional wisdom says yes: Insider-trading laws don't apply to Congress. Indeed, years after it was proposed, the "Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge" — or STOCK Act — is finally now gaining steam, in hopes of illegalizing such conduct.

Not to discourage that noble enterprise, but trading on congressional secrets is already decidedly illegal. The "misappropriation theory" of insider trading prohibits corporate outsiders from breaching duties of confidentiality to sources of non-public information in connection with securities transactions. To the extent it's constitutional, it's the theory that prevents, for instance, staffers of this publication from trading on information learned at work before it's made public. Those who exempt Congress from this rule typically argue that congressional insider trading violates no duty, or that congressional information is inherently "public" and therefore non-confidential. Neither is true.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2011-11-18/congress-insider-trading-illegal/51274988/1