Paul Ryan sold his stock BEFORE the 7 pm bailout meeting -- but this doesn't let him off the hook.
The meeting was about the bailout, which the head of Treasury and the Federal Reserve came to urge Congress to carry out. And the stock markets reacted positively to this development -- more people were buying than selling late Thursday afternoon:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/business/19fed.html?pagewanted=all
"Rumors about the Bush administration’s new stance swept through the stock markets Thursday afternoon. By the end of trading, the Dow Jones industrial average shot up 617 points from its low point in midafternoon, the biggest surge in six years, and ended the day with a gain of 410 points or 3.9 percent."
So why did Paul Ryan sell, when more people were buying? Maybe because of what he was hearing in OTHER meetings that day -- meetings with REPUBLICAN leaders who opposed the bailout. Eventually, they lost -- and so did Ryan, on his stock bets that day.
"But whether a legislative consensus could be found remained an open question, and members of Mr. Bush’s own party were among those who were most critical of the increasing federal intervention in private markets.
"At the meeting Thursday night, where officials said the atmosphere was tense, Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the banking committee, was notably skeptical.
SNIP
"Earlier in the day, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, had expressed similar wariness about the risk to taxpayers’ funds. And Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican who heads a coalition of House conservatives, was circulating a letter to the administration demanding that it not engage in any further bailouts."
So he likely sold his stock out of concern that the market would crash because a bailout would NOT occur -- a concern that came out of his meetings with Republican members of Congress that day, rather than from the 7 pm meeting with the Administration officials.
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