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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

This is a non-issue. Lost money on one of the trades, may have gained on the other, very short term and quickly identified and reported, didn't involve a lot of money.

There are things worth outrage, this isn't one of them.

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It doesn't matter if he lost money on the trades, what matters is that he had a position in Boeing that was impacting his ability to make an impartial ruling.

It matters in principal that these things should be avoided. And he didn’t handle it right.

But you’d be fooling yourself if the facts of this story suggest it had any meaningful impact on his ruling.

He sold the stocks as soon as he found the conflict of interest and reported it.

> what matters is that he had a position in Boeing

Only if he knew about it and kept the position. Which, according to the disclosure he filed, he didn't.

The article says they sold the stocks a year before the ruling. Assuming he didn't re-buy any, what would he gain from making a ruling while he's not holding any of the stock?

I could be seen the other way around: theoretically he gould have known that the ruling would make the price drop so selling before ruling (which he did) would be better for his wealth than selling after the ruling. I have no idea if that is meaningful if done a year before actual ruling and in the amount he held.

I don’t know if it necessarily impacts the ruling. I have long positions in companies I overall hate. There can be other factors that affect judgement more is my key point. Money isn’t everything.

It was a conflict of interest if the judge knew and was trading those stocks at the time. But it seems like that wasn’t the case.

We prosecute bank robbers even if they don’t get away with much money. The issue of conflicting interests is an issue independently of how much money was lost or gained.

In some parts of some governments you can't even do something that has the appearance of impropriety, this should be the standard for judges in the US.

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