NYC Rep. Dan Goldman Making Big $$$ Stock Trading as Congress Considers Bill to Ban It

Edited by: TJVNews.com

It appears that some people have either tremendous insight or just plain luck when it comes to making highly successful stock market trades and New York Rep. Dan Goldman is one of them.

According to a New York Post analysis of his disclosure forms, the multimillionaire Democrat and heir to the Levi Straus & Co. fortune has made more than 500 trades worth between $10 million and nearly $31 million since being sworn in as a congressman in January, the paper reported.

The Post also reported that the brisk trading activity on Goldman’s part would make the Gordon Gekko character in the iconic film. “Wall Street” envious as was apparent in his most recent filing. The problem here is that Congress is considering a bipartisan bill that would prohibit members and their families from trading stock while they hold office.

The Raw Story reported that other Congress members who fall into the category of super-traders are  Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), according to the Post story.

Goldman has quite a diverse portfolio and the Post reported that trading activity were in major sectors, including defense work, energy, pharmaceuticals, real estate, technology and tobacco.

Goldman’s congressional district includes the famed Wall Street financial area in lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn.  The Post reported that his congressional committee assignments include the Committee on Homeland Security and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

Of his recent sales and purchases, Goldman took an interest in Northrup Grumman stock and bought up $50,000 worth, just last month, the Post reported.

Whether Goldman had any inside information or not is not known but the Post also reported that he picked up  $15,000 worth of stock in defense firms Raytheon Technologies and L3 Harris Technologies. The companies continue to rack up plenty of government work, with Raytheon being awarded a $237 million U.S. Army contract earlier this month to help detect and defeat unmanned aircraft, the Post indicated.

Goldman sold up to $15,000 in stock in Credit Suisse on March 20, days before the Senate Finance Committee found the embattled banking giant is continuing to violate a 2014 plea deal with US authorities by helping ultra-wealthy Americans evade taxes and concealing more than $700 million from the government, the Post said.  The stock has since dipped slightly.

On April 19, the Associated Press reported that lawmakers accused embattled Swiss bank Credit Suisse of limiting the scope of an internal investigation into Nazi clients and Nazi-linked accounts, including some that were open until just a few years ago.

The Senate Budget Committee says an independent ombudsman initially brought in by the bank to oversee the probe was “inexplicably terminated” as he carried out his work, and it faulted “incomplete” reports that were hindered by restrictions, the AP reported.

Credit Suisse said it was “fully cooperating” with the committee’s inquiry but rejected some claims from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights group, that brought to light in 2020 allegations of possible Nazi-linked accounts at Switzerland’s second-largest bank.

In terms of sales, Goldman unloaded $15,000 worth of First Republic Bank on March 15, as its stock plummeted following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and three weeks before the company announced it was suspending dividend payments to conserve capital, the Post reported.

Other trades last month include purchasing up to $300,000 worth of stock in Elon Musk’s Telsa Inc. and selling up to $265,000 in Bristol Meyers Squibb and up to $100,000 in Amazon.

Speaking to the Post, Nick Penniman, CEO of Issue One, a nonprofit seeking to keep big money out of politics, said it’s long overdue for Congress to pass the Trust in Congress Act. When informed of Goldman’s trade activity, he told the paper that, “Trading stocks while in office can give the appearance of profiting from your position as an officeholder by leveraging non-public information to your own financial advantage. It’s vital that Congress pass new legislation to prevent insider trading by lawmakers and their family members.”

Also speaking to the Post was Simone Kanter, a spokesman for Goldman who said that the New York congressman “is not involved in trading stocks in his portfolio,” and added that it is “managed entirely by an investment adviser, with whom he has had no discussions about any stock trades since entering Congress.”

Kanter also told the Post, “The congressman believes that no member of Congress should have even the appearance of a conflict of interest, which is why immediately upon being sworn in he initiated the complicated process of entering into a blind trust, giving another party full control of his assets.”

According to Bloomberg News, Goldman’s net worth is valued at between $64 million and $253 million, with over 1,700 assets, making him among the wealthiest member of Congress, the Post reported.