Is Spencer Bachus Really the Face of Greed?

Thanks to Peter Schwizer's book, Throw Them All Out, Rep. Spencer Bachus is in the process of being thrown out of his chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. Having read the book I have to say I wasn't especially outraged by Congressman Bachus' trading behavior. I will admit to lacking a scintilla of moral rectitude which I attribute to a hereditary defect from my mother's side of the family but even setting aside that encumbrance that chapter of the book left my blood pressure normal. There was only one incident in the book that Schwizer cited that I found questionably unethical and that was the Congressman's trading in General Electric stock. The rest of the trades were in SPDR's, exchange traded index funds. Without getting into the mechanics of exchange traded sector funds let me just say the individual is as detached from actual ownership of the stock as he would be in any mutual fund, the now prescribed remedy to congressional insider trading. Yes, Bachus could have known better than the public that the banks were going to take a hit but it didn't take a genius on the outside to arrive at the same conclusion. There are far more egregious examples of corrupt behavior. Bachus began to stake out a short position in July of 2008 and continued to go short until well after the TARP bailout. Yes, he made huge profits on a percentage basis but his net worth according to Schwizer is still less than a million dollars. When I was single I dabbled in options and I can personally say that I, without benefit of insider knowledge, did on a few occasions reap a 100% return virtually over night. There are far worse examples in the book such as Senator John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, and Dennis Haster where public money was spent to improve property values of the legislators by building a highway or a light rail spur, or in Kerry's case when he invested in drug companies effected by Obamacare while he was writing the legislation. A small player like Bachus, who seemed to be ahead of the rest of Congress and the county does not deserve to be the poster child for congressional corruption.