But what about spouses? A bridge too far for Mrs. Paul Pelosi? Two months ago, Nancy Pelosi balked at a ban on stock trades by members of Congress and Capitol Hill staffers, but a series of disclosures about her high-performance portfolio may have changed her mind. Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reports that Pelosi has taken charge of the direction of the reform effort in the House:

→ What counts as trading? Would a lawmaker be able to hold onto stocks that he or she owned before coming to Congress? Would they just be banned from trading those stocks while in Congress?

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) February 9, 2022

Sherman gets to the core issue with Pelosi, and also with Dianne Feinstein and a few other members:

How about if a member marries while in office., would a spouse have to ditch her portfolio? What if a teenager gets stock as a gift

how abt this: what if a spouse is an equity trader or stock broker. would they have to give up their career?

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) February 9, 2022

My guess is the answer to all of these questions will be a resounding no. Pelosi’s sudden interest in shaping the reform might be an effort to make sure as many loopholes remain as possible while paying lip service to clean governance:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democratic leaders are working on a ban on members of Congress and senior staff trading stocks, according to multiple sources directly involved in the discussions.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), chair of the House Administration Committee, is taking the lead on compiling recommendations for the leadership on how to enact such a ban. The leadership — namely Pelosi — will then have the final decision on how to proceed.

No doubt. Two weeks ago, Reuters pointed out how unwanted and unexpected transparency on Pelosi’s trades forced her to shift her position on rules changes, reluctantly:

A year since a Reddit-driven retail trading frenzy rocked the markets and created the ‘meme stock’ phenomenon, leading U.S. lawmaker Nancy Pelosi’s investments have become a meme in their own right.

Google searches for ‘Pelosi stock trades’ hit a record high earlier this month as users on social media platforms including Twitter, Reddit, Youtube and TikTok scrutinize her investments, believing the U.S. Speaker of the House may have an edge on Wall Street. …

On Monday, 27 House members signed a letter calling for a floor vote on recent proposals to prohibit Congress members from owning stocks “in light of recent misconduct.”

That was the latest push to ban stock trading by lawmakers after Pelosi in December defended their rights to trade. In a reversal, Pelosi last week signaled her willingness to potentially advance legislation that could ban stock trading by lawmakers. read more

Last year, Pelosi filed transaction reports showing her husband, financier Paul Pelosi, made trades valued at as much as $5 million at a time in ‘Big Tech’ companies now facing an antitrust bill in Congress. Those companies are also among the most widely held across Wall Street, making investing in them relatively common.

Maybe people commonly invest in these blue chips, but multi-million-dollar trades are hardly “relatively common.” They’re also not easy to jettison either, even for a couple who probably should have retired a decade or more ago. Despite Barack Obama’s famous observation that “at some point you’ve made enough money,” the Pelosis seem enthusiastic about adding to their wealth right up to the present moment. Does anyone really think that Pelosi suddenly decided to give up $5 million paydays on Wall Street in the last couple of weeks?

Neither do I, and if pressed I doubt that anyone who covers Congress expects this reform effort to be anything but window dressing and an opportunity for obfuscation. It would be nearly impossible for Congress to rope spouses and family members into ethics rules anyway. How would that get enforced? The best that one can do is bar members from trading (which is what the STOCK Act was supposed to limit) and to refer for prosecution any insider trading that does happen (such as Chris Collins) through family members. Even that much will likely be just lip service; Pelosi’s own staffer was violating the STOCK Act without much repercussion, don’t forget.

This is reform as performance art, and nothing more. Pelosi is jumping on the bandwagon to make sure it never gets any further than that.