The New York Times has an article up, stating that Obama “bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors.”
One of the companies was a biotech concern that was starting to develop a drug to treat avian flu. In March 2005, two weeks after buying about $5,000 of its shares, Mr. Obama took the lead in a legislative push for more federal spending to battle the disease.
The most recent financial disclosure form for Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, also shows that he bought more than $50,000 in stock in a satellite communications business whose principal backers include four friends and donors who had raised more than $150,000 for his political committees.
An Obama spokesman offers the following explanation:
said yesterday that the senator did not know that he had invested in either company until fall 2005, when he learned of it and decided to sell the stocks. He sold them at a net loss of $13,000.
The spokesman, Bill Burton, said Mr. Obama’s broker bought the stocks without consulting the senator, under the terms of a blind trust that was being set up for the senator at that time but was not finalized until several months after the investments were made.
“He went about this process to avoid an actual or apparent conflict of interest, and he had no knowledge of the stocks he owned,� Mr. Burton said. “And when he realized that he didn’t have the level of blindness that he expected, he moved to terminate the trust.�
That sounds reasonable to me. Sometimes there’s fire when there is smoke, sometimes there is just smoke. In the end… he lost money.
Dan Riehl agrees, describing it as “a hit piece with no powder behind it”. Olliver Willis summarizes and wonders:
So apparently his blind trust bought some stock, then sold it when there was a possible conflict of interest… and he lost money. Is nothing else happening in the world why the team of the NY Times/Drudge decided that they should push this story?
That’s not entirely clear to me either.
Frankly, I think that the NYT would do better if it would report about actual issues as to inform readers about things that matter.
That’s why I will post about something else asap.
PAST CONTRIBUTOR.