Oh, Please Tell Us Why

I had to do it. The situation demanded it.

I called the keeper of my 403(b) yesterday. I had to find out how much money I've lost so far. The economy is tanking, as you might expect, since most stores are now closed due to the coronavirus epidemic.

He said about 13 percent or so, since February 25. I've checked around: Others have lost similar amounts.

Now, let me say: 13 percent of what I had wasn't all that much. It wasn't six figures. In fact, nowhere near it.

And so I had to ask: Is it time to bail it out, take the tax hit, and bite the bullet? At least there would be some money there, and its value probably wouldn't diminish all that much, what with the Fed dropping its prime rate to 1.25%. That's like, well, nearly nothing.

He said no, which I think is what they've been trained to say. The market will recover, they say. It just won't be tomorrow, or next week, or next month. But it will come back, he said.

Yeah, okay, but that 13 percent or so has been lost before the main rush of coronavirus has hit us, It is yet to arrive, but it's just around the corner. Governors in six states are still not worried enough to close businesses or schools. But that will show up pretty soon.

Most of us who have anything invested are going to take a pretty big hit. Most of us.

A few U.S. Senators won't. They were briefed at the end of January, and were told that the virus was coming. They took their investments and traded them, while their values hadn't yet dropped.

The phrase for that is insider trading. You aren't supposed to do that. You aren't supposed to take information that is guarded and prioritized and not publicly shared, and act as if you just decided to sell a whole bunch of securities 'just because.'

That is theft in another phrase. If their transactions hadn't already been started--they can't always be done all at once--they cheated the rest of us. That is a crime.

Raw Story says four U.S. Senators did exactly that: Richard Burr (R-NC), Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), James Inhofe (R-OK), and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The story didn't specify exactly how much money the four of them saved, but with Burr and Loeffler, we know that they saved several hundred thousand dollars.

Four of them isn't a whole bunch, but it's enough to raise eyebrows. One of them is too much. And for people like me, who have already lost 13 percent of what I had, this looks pretty lousy.

Because I left that money alone for eleven years, believing that I could gain from it. My gamble--and that's what it is, after all--was starting to pay off. It was starting to look like that original financial investment, done by contract through my school district, was paying off, I could reasonably look ahead to the time when the money would be doubled, and I could use it for, well, stuff I'd always looked forward to.

But you see, I hadn't had the information that these U.S. Senators had. And though my financial advisor might be right about getting it back, I'm no longer as young as I was when the investment was first made. Allowing for survival--and with heart disease, I'd better watch my step--I will be over 70 when I get that money back.

Maybe Jim Inhofe thought about that, too. He's 75. Dianne Feinstein will be 77 in June. But that doesn't mean they can utilize information the rest of us don't have.

So of course, we have to float this question: What the hell were they thinking? That they could get away with it?

Well, we have just had a president get away with bribery. There was no quid pro quo stated, but that doesn't matter and we know it doesn't. His party voted in near-lockstep to acquit him. The evidence didn't matter. The information didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

If that happens to the person who's supposed to be the prime example of what's good and right and true in our country, why the hell wouldn't someone else try to get away with actual theft? If they were thinking that if the president can get away with his nonsense, so can they, well. then, who's to stop them? If we didn't care enough to stop that crime, what's a couple thousand bucks to you and me?

Oh, I want to hear them walk this back. Because you know they will try. They'll justify it somehow. They'll raise enough doubts to fudge over what they did--or try to.

Inhofe, by the way, is up for re-election this year. Oklahoma hasn't had a Democratic Senator since 1994. It has most recently elected a Democratic member of the House, so there's hope there.

For the rest of them, well--I can't hope they get sick with the virus. That would be cruel.

I hope they go to jail. That would be fitting.

The only way they can get out of this clean is to sell the securities in question and donate the proceeds to something reasonably charitable. Sell it all. Then there are no profits worth investigating.

Or, resign. But if the president didn't, crook that he is, why should they? This is what happens when corruption infests the system; it can't be isolated. You can't just say, well, that's the exception. Someone else will try it.

Otherwise, this should be good. I want to hear why they suddenly ditched their securities. I want to hear them discuss how it was just a matter of circumstance.

Please, tell us why. Tell us why you suddenly made a profit the rest of us couldn't. Tell us why you couldn't absorb losing 13%, at least, of what you've earned over time.

Because the market's coming back, right? It always does. That's what they say. You could have waited. Couldn't you?

Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark