House Speaker Nancy Pelosi laughed Wednesday at the suggestion of banning Congress lawmakers and their spouses owning stock shares in individual companies. This despite possible conflicts between their personal finances and legislative duties.

Pelosi (D-Calif.) said “No” to reporters during a press conference, when she was asked if she supported such a ban.

She stated, “We’re free-market economies.” They should have the opportunity to take part in it.”

Pelosi rejected the idea of banning stock-purchases in an answer to a question regarding a Business Insider report on stock ownership this week by legislators and following controversies about stock purchases by several senators since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic.

According to Business Insider, 49 members of Congress 182 senior-level congressional staffers had violatedThe so-called STOCK Act requires that family members and their immediate relatives disclose within 45 days any sales or purchase of stocks, bonds, and commodities futures.

In 2012, the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act was passed. It is intended to stop lawmakers and staffers trading on information they glean in their job, as well conflict of interest.

However, fines for violations of the STOCK Act are usually only $200.

Pelosi declared Wednesday, “We have a duty to report” stock exchanges.

According to the speaker, she didn’t know anything about the Business Insider findings.

“But, if people aren’t reporting [stock trades]Pelosi stated, “They should be.”

Earlier Monday, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler called for tougher rules limiting stock trading by corporate chief executive officers and other top executives.

Federal Reserve officials were prohibited from holding individual stock and bond securities by the central bank in October.

This ban was imposed in the wake of Robert Kaplan, a Dallas Federal Reserve regional president, and Eric Rosengren, a Boston Federal Reserve regional President. after disclosuresIn 2020, they traded individual securities. The trades occurred as markets were shaken by the coronavirus and even while the Fed engaged in large-scale asset purchases to keep markets stable.

A number of good-government groupsSome legislators have asked for the prohibition of stock purchases or the mandating that Congress members refrain from owning stocks. put their financial holdings in a blind trust while they are in office.

The ability to keep index funds owned by lawmakers, which tracks sectors of the financial market, allows them to make investment returns. However, it limits their potential to benefit from any information about companies they get or be perceived to do so.

2019: Chris Collins, R.N.Y., plead guilty to federal charges for tipping off his child about confidential information about the failed trial of a drug company. The information was obtained shortly before it became public and sent stock prices into free fall.

Collins, who had long ago praised the potential of Innate Therapeutics and was on the board of its directors, even though he was serving in Congress, did so for many years.

Collins also was Innate’s biggest shareholder in early 2016,Owning over 17 percent or nearly 34 million shares, Cameron and Caitlin, his children, were the fourth and third largest shareholders at the time. They each owned 2.65 percent, which is 5.2 million shares, respectively.

Collins, who had been serving a 26-month prison sentence, was pardonedDonald Trump, just before Trump left office in December 2020. Collins was the first congressman to support Trump’s 2016 run for the White House.

In the last year federal prosecutors investigated stock sales made in advance of a Covid-sparked market plunge by and connected to Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

These investigations were closed without the filing of criminal charges.

But the Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting a civil investigationWhether Burr, his brother-in law Gerald Fauth, and Fauth’s wife participated in insider trading off non-public information Burr received about Covid during his job. Fauth heads the National Mediation Board which facilitates labor-management relationships in U.S. railway and airline industries.

This August Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky revealed for the first timeKelly, his wife, disclosed in a disclosure that he had purchased shares of the drug firm. Gilead SciencesOne day following the event, in 2020. first U.S. clinical trialGilead started for Gileads’ remdesivir to treat Covid-19.

Paul and his wife have never previously purchased stock or bought shares in any company during the last decade.

Paul made his disclosure more than 16 years after the deadline under the STOCK Act for reporting the matter had expired.

The July issue of Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., disclosed stock and stock option trades valued at a total of between $894,000 and $3.5 million from January through May.

Tuberville, like Paul made his disclosure following the expiration date of the STOCK Act.