All told, it’s difficult to imagine something more darkly symbolic of a decadent ruling class than a multimillionaire member of Congress mounting a transparently self-interested defense of political insider trading. Nonetheless, that’s exactly what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did this week when asked about a proposed ban on members and their spouses holding and trading stocks while in office.

“This is a free market, and people — we are a free market economy,” Pelosi said during a weekly press conference. “They should be able to participate in that.”

The “they” in Pelosi’s formulation is certainly doing interesting work. Like many things about the United States’ “free market economy,” stock ownership is a kind of liberty most familiar to people with money: some 89 percent of adults in households earning $100,000 or more reportedly own it compared with less than a quarter of those in households earning less than $40,000. Pelosi was referring more specifically to members of her own profession and their staffs: a group that, when taken together, represents a much narrower sample of the population — not to mention one much closer to key economic decisions and legislative changes.