In mid-October 2008, as the Treasury was discussing which banks would be bailed out in the Trouble Asset Relief Program (TARP), Kerry bought up to $550,000 worth of Citigroup stock and up to $350,000 worth of Bank of America shares. Days later, the American public learned that Citigroup would receive $50 billion from the TARP fund and up to $277 billion in additional loan guarantees. Bank of America also received $50 billion from TARP.
During the contentious healthcare debate in 2009, Schweizer noted, Kerry loaded up on pharmaceutical stocks, purchasing close to $750,000 worth of shares in one company—Teva Pharmaceuticals—in the month of November alone.
Drug companies were viewed to be among the major beneficiaries of the Democratic healthcare legislation. Pharmaceuticals “kicked in $80 billion to help make the bill work, but stand to make 10 times that amount in revenues from added government and government-subsidized business,” liberal columnist Howard Fineman wrote inNewsweek.
Teva stock was trading at about $50 a share when Kerry started buying, but jumped to $62 a share after the healthcare bill was passed, an increase of nearly 25 percent. After Obama signed the bill into law, Kerry sold his Teva shares, realizing tens of thousands in capital gains.
Kerry also bought shares of ResMed, a company that makes medical devices, which surged more than 70 percent after the healthcare bill’s passage. Throughout the healthcare negotiations, Kerry consistently opposed efforts to increase taxes on companies like ResMed.
He also purchased stock in Thermo Fisher Scientific, a firm providing products and services to hospitals, at $35 a share. After passage, they were trading at $50 a share, an increase of more than 40 percent.
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Don’t forget Brad Sherman! Maybe you already posted but just in case… http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/75859.html
One has to wonder, who has a better chance of making it in finance, a junior analyst/trader, or a congressional aide?
Recent publicity may slow this practice down, but until the words “blind trust” are signed into law, this is only going to get worse.
this is why the democrats are the ultimate scumbags. fucking twisted shit. the liberals in these hallowed halls will never admit it, but they know it is true.
It is only investing like a congressman if you are a bit too lucky in your timing and/or stock picking. There was ample public information to encourage any one of us to have made trades similar to what Kerry made. based on public information –
Citi and BofA were in the “too big to fail” category, so a rescue was a given.
And it wasn’t hard to figure that legislation aimed at expanding healthcare coverage to millions of new patients would be good for companies providing products and services for those patients.
But the real tell of the full article is the silly cherry picking.
Sure, Kerry invested in an electric utility that bought a solar energy project with a large federal loan guarantee, but his investment was between $2k and $31k. Meanwhile, he holds $600k to $1.2 million of News Corp.
Are you saying he didn’t trade on inside info?
Persoanl question, is that photo on your linked in profile a recent one? You’re younger than i expected.
I know nothing about the motivation or knowledge behind the trades, or even who directed them.
I’m saying that the selection and timing of his investments are unremarkable and made sense given widely available public info at the time of the trades.
I’m further pointing out that inclusion of the Exelon investment in the article indicates that the article is not one to take seriously. The EXC investment was only a few $1000s of Kerry’s $190 million, and the loan guarantee covers less than 2% of EXC’s assets.
My age is relative, a function of the speed of the observer’s travel through space since the time of my birth.
Oh, yes, we can all predict the future, and just “guess” which banks will get bailed out and magically buy stock in those that will but not those that won’t. And we all knew ahead of time the govt was going to bail out banks. Kerry didn’t know anything special. *eyes rolling…
It took special knowledge to guess that the country’s major banks would be supported by the $700 billion bailout plan?
Whatever you say, Homer.