Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is not only married to one of the best stock-pickers in the world — turns out she and husband Paul are super savvy real-estate investors as well.
Though sometimes they need a soupçon of help.
The Pelosis own part of the Auberge de Soleil, a tony hotel in California’s swanky Napa Valley, whose rooms command prices as high as $2,000 a night and attract an A-list crowd.
For all the cachet such an investment might provide, it underperformed for years for the Frisco power couple (per Pelosi’s own disclosure filings).
That must have been disappointing, as other Pelosi family investments — including in industries Congress actively regulates — have a habit of doing extremely well.
So well that they’ve spawned X feeds and apps meant to mimic their success.
And accusations that the Pelosis benefit from the copious relevant nonpublic info Nancy, as a long-serving legislator, has access to.
Don’t forget that the hospitality industry is a notoriously tricky one to make big scores in, especially when a sector-wide devastator like COVID comes around.
Worry not: This plucky pair of mom-and-pop financiers managed to make good!
COVID relief monies — to the tune of $9 million — got channeled to the Auberge in 2020 and 2021, and Pelosi family income from the hotel investment surged to between $1 million and $5 million in 2021.
We’re sure the fact that Nancy owned a big chunk of a hotel played no role in driving her staunch advocacy of trillion-dollar handouts, just like the piece of a restaurant chain she also owns, which delivered mediocre returns until it was blessed with COVID money.
It’s just the golden Pelosi touch that explains the fact that 2023 saw the Pelosis (per one analysis) earn a 65% return on their disclosed trades.
Or the fact that Nancy’s net worth shot up from a “modest” $18 million in 1991 to almost $250 million last year.
Meanwhile, President Biden, the lamest duck in the pond, has begun quacking about the need for a ban on members of Congress trading stocks.
Yes, Joe of all people posturing on the issue of using your political position for financial gain is . . . questionable.
Still, absolutely: Restrict them to index funds.
Yet it sure looks like America needs some much wider-ranging rules about investments by legislators — and a full-on investigation of all the speaker emerita’s “lucky” investments.
It may be too late to get the Pelosis into handcuffs, but shaming them can sure help design a system to frustrate future political profiteers.
