Sen. Durbin Sold $115,000 of Stock After Briefing

Tuesday, June 16, 2009 12:57 PM

By: Jim Meyers

Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic Party's Whip, unloaded more than $115,000 worth of stocks and mutual fund shares as the U.S. stock markets plunged last September.

The Illinois lawmaker's 2008 financial disclosure statement reveals that he sold mutual fund shares worth more than $42,000 on Sept. 19, the day after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged congressional leaders to come up with legislation to aid financially troubled banks.

Also on Sept. 19, Durbin bought $43,562 worth of stock in Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Bloomberg News reported.

By October 2, he had sold investments worth $116,000 and invested nearly $100,000 in Berkshire Hathaway.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index had dropped 4.7 percent on Sept. 15 after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and the government-engineered takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co.

By the end of October, the index had fallen more than 22 percent.

Durbin spokesman Joe Shoemaker told Bloomberg that the senator did not capitalize on anything Paulson and Bernanke told congressional leaders at the Sept. 18 meeting.

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/durb ... 25714.html