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He is the most outspoken critic of legalized online gambling while remaining mostly silent on more serious issues like Wall Street insider trading. Now we might know why he has avoided delving into the later subject.
There is a public outcry for the resignation of Alabama Republican Congressman Spencer Bachus following a 60 Minutes report that aired this past Sunday linking him to the receipt of nonpublic information as a means of gaining an edge in the stock market (a la “insider trading”).
According to the report, Bachus was trading a number of stocks during the 2008 financial crisis, all the while attending closed door meeting with key Congressional members in an effort to curtail the crisis.
“While Congressman Bachus was publicly trying to keep the economy from cratering, [Bachus] was privately betting that it would, buying option funds that would go up in value if the market went down. He would make a variety of trades and profited at a time when most Americans were losing their shirts,” CBS News reported late Sunday.
Current House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) were also mentioned in the segment, though they seemed to be getting a pass from the public and media for the time being.
A Thorn In The Side Of Online Gambling Industry
For years Spencer Bachus has fought to ensure online gambling in the US remain “illegal”.
This year, a number of politicians on both sides of the aisle have worked hard to push for legalization and, as such, they have moved their efforts to another subcommittee -House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade – one where Bachus has little say.
In the past, he has alleged that Web gambling could result in childhood addiction. Some have said he was doing cartwheels down K Street in Washington, D.C. when federal agents seized the domain names of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker on April 15.
This Could Be The End For Bachus
Calls for the Alabama Congressman to resign were coming from his own party and, more specifically from influential conservative commentator, Adrew Breitbart.
“I want to see these people taken down. I want them to suffer Anthony Weiner’s fate. I want them to step down. I am calling for Spencer Bachus to step down, not [just] from being the chairman of the House finance committee. I think he should be in Joe Paterno-ville, he should be in exile,” said Mr. Breitbart .
A number of bloggers have also weighed in.
“Forget Pelosi, Here’s The Most Stunning Detail From The Congressional Insider Trading Report,” reads the title of a post at BusinessInsider, which continues, “the most shocking revelation actually concerns a lesser-known Congressman, Rep. Spencer Bachus, who shorted the market as the economy collapsed in 2008.”
“Hugely damning,” writes Alex Tabarrok about the report at the blog Marginial Revolution, after singling out the part of the CBS transcript about Bachus.
Slate writer Dave Weigel adds that the accusations against Bachus are “one of the ugliest revelations so far” in the book that the 60 Minutes report is based on.
- Alejandro Botticelli, Gambling911.com
