Insider Trading by US Congressmen

US Congressmen have had stock portfolio's that have outperformed even the highest performing category, hedge-funds

A good source: Insider trading by Congressmen earns statiscally significant returns

The essence of the issue is straightfoward - senators in particular but also congressmen have enormous access to private information. Since there are legislative protections that mean Congressmen can't go to jail for insider trading, they obviously use this information and profit from it wildly - even more than hedge-funds, it seems (Senators beat the market by 85 basis points). If any ordinary person did this, they'd go straight to jail (look at Rajaratnam, hardly himself a member of the common people, who now faces 11 years in jail for insider trading)