Sam Dorman
Fox News Sat, 30 Jan 2021 09:15 UTC
© REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/Illustration
Newly-confirmed Treasury Secretary
Janet Yellen received around $810,000 in speaking fees from the hedge fund that bailed out one of the primary losers in the recent
Gamestop frenzy.
Yellen's financial disclosure shows her making $337,500 for multiple days in Oct. of 2020 from Citadel. She similarly banked $292,500 in October of 2019 and $180,000 in December of that year.The Senate confirmed Yellen on Monday, making her the first female secretary of the department. She previously chaired the Federal Reserve after an appointment by former President Obama.
Both Citadel and Point72
infused almost $3 billion into Melvin Capital, which saw massive losses after betting against the video game retailer Gamestop. The White House
said on Wednesday that Yellen was monitoring the situation.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked Thursday during the daily briefing whether Yellen would recuse herself from advising the president on Gamestop. Psaki did not commit one way or another.
The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Citadel does business with Robinhood, the trading app that helped fuel the massive stock activity that hit Melvin Capital. Robinhood said Thursday investors would only be able to sell their positions and not open new ones in some cases, and Robinhood will try to slow the amount of trading using borrowed money.GameStop stock has rocketed from below $20 earlier to close around $350 Wednesday. The action was even wilder Thursday: The stock swung between $112 and $483. At midday it was down 27% at $255.
Comment: In Texas, the attorney general and the SEC have
announced they will be investigating the Gamestop trading restrictions. From the AG himself:
"Wall Street corporations cannot limit public access to the free market, nor should they censor discussion surrounding it, particularly for their own benefit," said Paxton. "This apparent coordination between hedge funds, trading platforms, and web servers to shut down threats to their market dominance is shockingly unprecedented and wrong. It stinks of corruption."
Steve Cohen, the billionaire and owner of the New York Mets,
deleted his Twitter after his hedge fund company bailed out a number of fellow financiers hit hard by the Reddit investors. One of those hedge funds, Melvin Capital, lost more than $8 billion in January. All due to grassroots work by real people. Karma comes back in a big way!
As the battle rages on between Wall Street and Gamestop investors, the WallStreetBets coin has been
placed at the top of the rankings on the CoinMarketCap price-tracking website, above bitcoin.
Media outlets digging into the Robinhood founders' political contributions
revealed that Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev and co-founder Baiju Bhatt contributed $2,800 each to the campaigns of Maxine Waters (D-CA), the chairwoman of the House Committee on Financial Services, and the top Republican on the committee, Patrick McHenry (R-NC), last October.
Comment: In Texas, the attorney general and the SEC have announced they will be investigating the Gamestop trading restrictions. From the AG himself: Steve Cohen, the billionaire and owner of the New York Mets, deleted his Twitter after his hedge fund company bailed out a number of fellow financiers hit hard by the Reddit investors. One of those hedge funds, Melvin Capital, lost more than $8 billion in January. All due to grassroots work by real people. Karma comes back in a big way!
As the battle rages on between Wall Street and Gamestop investors, the WallStreetBets coin has been placed at the top of the rankings on the CoinMarketCap price-tracking website, above bitcoin.
Media outlets digging into the Robinhood founders' political contributions revealed that Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev and co-founder Baiju Bhatt contributed $2,800 each to the campaigns of Maxine Waters (D-CA), the chairwoman of the House Committee on Financial Services, and the top Republican on the committee, Patrick McHenry (R-NC), last October.