May 21, 2024
Real estate entrepreneur Grant Cardone has added fuel to the fiery debate around insider trading by lawmakers in Washington.
Speaking on VladTV, a source of celebrity interviews and urban news, Cardone said if he were President of the United States, he’d ban congressional stock trading immediately.
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“If you’re in Congress or the Senate, you don’t get paid more than the median wage… and you cannot insider trade,” he said, imagining the rules he’d lay down as Head of the Oval Office.
“In fact, you cannot f—ing trade at all, because you’re too close to the action.”
He made these comments when quizzed about Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) enormous wealth accumulation on a congressional salary. Here’s what he had to say.
‘Can’t do the math’ on Pelosi’s wealth
Cardone, 66, singled out former house speaker Pelosi for amassing a reported $120 million fortune while earning a salary of $179,000, plus about $70,000 more when she was speaker of the house.
“You can’t do the math on it,” he said on VladTV, joking “she would have to be 33,000-years-old or something.”
While his math there is exaggerated on purpose, the point Cardone is hammering home remains valid: Pelosi has turned a not-too-crazy salary into a huge fortune.
The real estate investor pulled out his phone and did the calculations on the spot.
Cardone noted Pelosi is likely in a high income tax bracket. Assuming she files together with her venture capitalist husband Paul, he placed her in the highest federal tax bracket of 37% and suggested she pays at least 10% on top of that in California state income tax.
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Rounding Pelosi’s potential income taxes up to 50%, Cardone said the congresswoman would be left with around $89,000 a year, after tax.
He then joked — by his math — she would need to be almost 1,500 years old to reach her current reported net worth of $120 million, based purely on her annual salary. And that’s only if she never spent a single penny (and worked every single day of her life for exactly the same salary).
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Insider trading on the Hill
Pelosi, aged 84, has built her vast wealth by investing alongside her husband Paul. Together, they have netted millions of dollars in profit from well-timed trades in blue-chip stocks like Nvidia (NVDA), Google (GOOGL), Salesforce (CRM), Roblox (RBLX) and Disney (DIS).
While their mega-dollar trades may have followed the letter of the law, some have accused the high-profile lawmaker of using her connections and insider information to time the market and score winning deals. As a result, Pelosi has found herself the face of the insider trading debate in Congress.
Several bills have been introduced to try and ban members of Congress from trading stocks, including one that specifically alluded to the former house speaker — the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments (PELOSI) Act.
When introducing the PELOSI Act in January 2023, Sen. Josh Hawley said: “While Wall Street and Big Tech work hand-in-hand with elected officials to enrich each other, hard-working Americans pay the price. The solution is clear: we must immediately and permanently ban all members of Congress from trading stocks.”
That bill and others have failed to move the needle in Congress — but there does seem to be growing recognition in Washington that any potential corruption must be stifled.
“I’m just picking on Nancy,” Cardone reiterated on VladTV, noting that to amass such wealth, she would have had to invest every single dollar she earned. “There’s a whole bunch of them (Republicans and Democrats)” who are winning big by trading, he added.
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Bethan Moorcraft is a reporter for Moneywise with experience in news editing and business reporting across international markets.
