Politicians are Excellent Investors!

A recent Georgia State University study concludes that Senators beat the market by an average of 12% a year. That is incredibly high for supposedly non full time non professional investors. In the Sep/Oct 2005 edition of Mother Jones Magazine, Sheila Kaplan covers a wide variety of eye popping items about political advantage. She even reports that the university authors credit the politicians with "a substantial informational advantage over ordinary investors"

Politicans should be able to invest. In order to maintain at least the semblance of fairness in the marketplace they should be required to report daily into a public data base what their buy and sell activity is. Transparency will go a long way to solving the problems. If we can track voting records, policy positions and travel habits the investor should know what elected politicans are buying and selling.