> Could we just not prohibit lawmakers from investing in particular stocks

You're talking about HR 5106 [0] (aka the "Restore Trust in Congress Act"), currently being blocked by Republican House leadership, and actively facing a discharge position by the House rank and file (Republican included) to force a vote [1].

[0] https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr5106/BILLS-119hr5106ih....

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-stock-trading-ban-disc...

Alternatively, instead of disclosing on a huge delay, have them disclose instantly. We have the mechanisms to do this nowadays.

Even "ETFs" are a big enough hole to drive a truck through in terms of performance, e.g., it's not hard to guess how an oil ETF will perform in response to certain geopolitical events.

We could also apply Presidential rules to all of them. The President has to essentially forgo all ability to manage his or her wealth during the time they are in office. Such shenanigans as they play must either be to benefit someone else, or a very long term play for when they are out of office. This is still what you might call "suboptimal" but it's an improvement, even just the "longterm" part. (We should be so lucky as for our politicians to be thinking about how to goose the longterm performance of our economy rather than how to make a couple million next week no matter what it does to everyone else.)

Restricting public servants to only government bond investments would be a great way to discourage anyone with financial sense from running for congress.

I think the simplest way forward would be to require immediate, not delayed, disclosure of trades. If they’re doing something, let everyone see it immediately and it specific detail.

We could also implement some planned trading requirements for large purchases of individual stocks: If someone wants to trade more than $100K of something, make them announce it 7 or even 1 day in advance. They still get to buy it, but the market can front-run the investment if they believe there’s inside info at play.

Yes but politicians would need to agree. Why would they?

I'd rather force them to completely divest and give them a decent pension (which I believe we already do).