Why is congress exempt from insider trading laws?

Are they exempt from insider trading laws that pertain to the company as well? If the CEO of XYZ company was to call a congressman right before major news, would a congressman also be exempt from that?

Or does it only pertain to insider laws based on the rules and regulations they are creating within congress?
 
Quote from Max E. Pad:

I never realised that, I mean i understood the Insider trading laws that pertain to trading based on non public company information but i never realised that trading on congressional information was illegal, for most of us.

Has anyone ever seen someone (outside of congress) prosecuted on insider trading laws based on an upcoming rule change?
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I'm not real clear about trading on non-public info that isn't company specific. We all know you can't trade on government reports if you somehow knew what would be released but how far away from non-pubic info from a company or government report to be OK is not clear. At least not to me.
 
Quote from pspr:

I'm not real clear about trading on non-public info that isn't company specific. We all know you can't trade on government reports if you somehow knew what would be released but how far away from non-pubic info from a company or government report to be OK is not clear. At least not to me.
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In Hank Paulsons book, he mentioned the whole friggin staff (not his) was typing away on blackberry's during some sensitve Fed meetings. At one point everyone was sent out of the room but this was only one meeting and only later when it became distracting.
 
In 1984, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the case of Dirks v. SEC that tippees (receivers of second-hand information) are liable if they had reason to believe that the tipper had breached a fiduciary duty in disclosing confidential information and the tipper received any personal benefit from the disclosure. (Since Dirks disclosed the information in order to expose a fraud, rather than for personal gain, nobody was liable for insider trading violations in his case.)
The Dirks case also defined the concept of "constructive insiders," who are lawyers, investment bankers and others who receive confidential information from a corporation while providing services to the corporation. Constructive insiders are also liable for insider trading violations if the corporation expects the information to remain confidential, since they acquire the fiduciary duties of the true insider.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading

Give me real insider trading info, when I am not fiduciary and you are not profiting and I will be be happy to trade on it.
 
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