The Mandarin Class

The foundational promise of American governance is impartial decision-making, yet the officials entrusted with crucial economic and legal decisions are simultaneously trading their personal accounts in ways directly enabled by their positions. This isn't hidden illegality. It's normalized behavior that violates foundational principles while everyone shrugs.

• Federal Reserve officials actively day-traded while shaping the policies that would directly profit those trades. One Fed president made over a dozen trades in mortgage REITs while determining the Fed's mortgage purchase programs.

• The enforcement gap is stunning. A junior analyst anywhere in finance would be fired for this. These officials resigned quietly without legal consequences.

• Federal judges ruled on cases involving companies they owned stock in, then traded those positions. One judge claimed he didn't realize Exxon Mobil Oil Corporation was related to Exxon Mobil Corporation because of the extra word.

• This isn't criminal activity. It's banal institutional practice that has become invisible. These officials are simply doing what the mandarin class has always done: using access to power to accumulate wealth.

• The proposed fix actively avoids the one mechanism that would actually prevent this: mandatory blind trusts. Instead, new rules allow these officials to still trade their accounts for personal gain, just with advance notice and holding periods.