Many, many people have taken an unexpected drubbing during the financial collapse. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill), the second highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, is not one of those people. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the Illinois Democrat used insider information gained from closed meetings to manage his stocks:

As U.S. stock markets plummeted last September, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, sold more than $115,000 worth of stocks and mutual-fund shares and used much of the money to invest in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

The Illinois senator’s 2008 financial disclosure statement shows he sold mutual-fund shares worth $42,696 on Sept. 19, the day after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged congressional leaders in a closed meeting to craft legislation to help financially troubled banks. The same day, he bought $43,562 worth of Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B stock, the disclosure shows.

Altogether, Durbin sold investments worth $116,000 in September. By Oct. 2, he had invested $98,046 in Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway, the form shows.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index plunged 4.7 percent last Sept. 15 after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bank of America Corp.’s government-engineered takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co. By the end of October, the index had fallen 22.6 percent.

Durbin’s spokesman claims that he didn’t receive insider information or use it to manage his portfolio. Uh huh. Do you think that excuse would fly if a regular investor met with Bernanke and Paulson, learned information behind closed doors, and traded their investments the next day? The SEC would be on his ass and Democrats would be calling for his head on a spike. But it’s Dick Durbin, so noticeable silence ensues.

Via Hot Air.