Bachus Denies Profiting from Inside Information

Reuters
Rebecca Greenfield 672 Views Nov 16, 2011

After being accused of particularly sneaky insider trading practices, Rep. Spencer Bachus, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is denying he did anything wrong. In a letter written to Houghton Mifflin, which published Peter Schweizer's Throw Them All Out, the book detailing this Congressional get-rich scheme, Bachus says that the book is "absolutely false." While this type of insider trading is technically legal, Schweizer alleges Bachus profited off the 2008 financial meltdown. But, Bacchus denies having used knowledge to make money off of GM or the financial sector crash. "The truth is I bought call options on General Electric stock, which is an investment made when one thinks a stock will rise," he writes. "If I somehow had 'inside information' that GE was in dire straights, why on earth would I have purchased call options in the hope that the company's sock price would increase," he reasons. And to sweeten the sting, Bachus also lists a number of other factual errors in the book, pointing out that the author mistates the date of a meeting, uses of a 14-year-old quote as current and misspells Bachus as "Baucus" -- the name of a different U.S. Congressman from Montana. You can read the letter in full below. 

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