(Bloomberg) -- Democratic lawmakers are increasingly demanding that U.S. authorities investigate allegations raised in a recent magazine article that traders might be using non-public government information to reap huge illegal profits, even as the exchange where the transactions purportedly took place called the story “patently false.”
In a Monday letter, 14 Democratic senators urged the heads of the Justice Department, FBI, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission to probe “disturbing reports of suspicious trading in our futures and equities markets” described in a Vanity Fair piece. The magazine referred to the transactions as “Trump Chaos Trades.”
Since the story’s publication, the suggestion that White House leaks could be a factor in futures traders making billions of dollars from well-timed bets ahead of major geopolitical announcements has fueled endless chatter from Washington to Wall Street. Still, the article has been met with widespread skepticism from the financial industry.
CME Group Inc., the world’s biggest futures exchange, has dismissed the claims, arguing that the trades highlighted in the story couldn’t have been based on inside information because too many market participants were involved. The article describes five big transactions in S&P 500 e-mini futures from June 28 to Sept. 13, ranging from 55,000 to 420,000 contracts.
“As it relates to the Vanity Fair article published on October 17, 2019, regarding activities in the E-mini S&P futures contract, the allegations about the trading activity are patently false,” CME said in an Oct. 18 statement.
In Monday’s letter, Democrats said they wanted federal authorities “to investigate immediately whether any rules, laws or regulations were violated.” The lawmakers added that “if any wrongdoing is uncovered, we demand that you swiftly hold violators accountable to the fullest extent possible.”
Spokesmen for the SEC and Justice Department declined to comment, while spokesmen for the FBI and CFTC didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Read More...
Democrats Seek Insider Trading Probe After ‘Trump Chaos’ Article
Current News
The NeverTrumper Who Lectured America on the Rule of Law Is Taking a Plea Deal
John Bolton spent years telling you that Donald Trump was a threat to American institutions. That the rule of law mattered. That classified information was sacred and the men who mishandled it were unfit for public trust. Read more
From ‘Mother’ to ‘Gestating Parent’: A Civilization Loses Its Words and Then Itself
The Roman Republic did not collapse because its legions were defeated in the field. It eroded, gradually and almost imperceptibly, from within. Sallust, writing in the generation before the Republic’s final crisis, identified the mechanism with uncommon clarity: when a civilization abandons the virtues that built it, the language through which those virtues were expressed becomes the first casualty. Words grow contested. Then they are redefined. Then they are replaced. By the time a republic wakes to what has happened, the vocabulary of self-governance has already been emptied of its meaning. Read more
The Lie of Institutional Neutrality: What Pride Month Reveals About Who Controls the Cathedral
Alexis de Tocqueville, writing of democratic despotism in Democracy in America, described a system that would not tyrannize through violence but through the steady degradation of citizenship — a society in which an “immense and tutelary power” would keep citizens “in perpetual childhood,” covering the surface of society “with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform.” He envisioned an authority that would not break wills so much as soften them, not forbid but prevent, not punish but enfeeble. Read more
Marc Elias Went to Court to Kill the Fund That Would Pay Back His Victims. Senate Republicans Are Helping.
Marc Elias went to federal court to kill the fund that would pay back his victims. Senate Republicans are helping. Read more
They Called It a Peaceful Protest. A Reporter Had to Hide Her Network Logo to Stay Safe.
They called it a peaceful protest. Read more
Thucydides, Tehran, and the Temptation of a Quick Settlement
In the seventh year of the Peloponnesian War, Athens found itself holding a position of unexpected strength. Its navy was dominant, its treasury sufficient, its enemies fractured. Sparta, exhausted and humiliated by losses at Sphacteria, sent envoys seeking terms. The peace was theirs to dictate. Read more