The only other alternative explanation is that politicians are corrupt, and that could never be.

Frist is now the target of a probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission, although he insists that he did nothing wrong, and that he sold the shares to defuse concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Frist’s colleagues in the Senate, meanwhile, have remained noticeably quiet about the affair. Perhaps that’s because he’s far from the only senator to demonstrate uncanny investing smarts. Last year, Alan Ziobrowski, a professor at Georgia State, headed the first-ever systematic study of politicians as investors. Ziobrowski and his colleagues looked at six thousand stock transactions made by senators between 1993 and 1998. Over that time, senators beat the market, on average, by twelve per cent annually. Since a mutual-fund manager who beats the market by two or three per cent a year is considered a genius, the politicians’ ability to foresee the future seems practically divine.

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