Is it too much to ask a person who received $300k 3 months ago from PARTY A to recuse themselves for weighing in on an issue involving PARTY A for some amount of time?! More than 3 months, I would recommend.

What's even more pernicious is expectation of future payments. Even if Yellen had never taken any money from Citadel or even if it was 7 years ago, how do we know her decision-making isn't affected by the prospect of making $400k per speech after retiring, as Obama did - from Citadel! - a few months after giving up the presidency.

This applies to anyone in any position of power or influence ever. All we can hope for is that they are as minimally corrupt as possible, and all transactions and communications are transparent. Even then, you’ll get into trouble with privacy norms and being unable to conclusively prove “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” moves.

Oddly one-sided partisan whataboutism aside, this is a sitting official right now. Entirely different level of stink.

It's not too much to ask. But Citadel is not involved in any significant way with the Gamestop fiasco. Any claims to the contrary are crackpot conspiracy theories without any evidence.

Citadel's a market maker that processes a lot of transactions in pretty much every stock in the universe. It'd be like me saying that someone with ties to power company shouldn't investigate the mafia, because the mafia regularly used electricity.

Huh? https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/steve-cohen-...

Melvin had already closed out their short position in GME by the time Citadel invested in them.

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2021-01-27/hed...

That's not a verified fact. It's based on a CNBC reporter repeating what an unnamed source from Melvin told them, and even so, the way they worded it was vague, in that it could have simply been a small part of the short position that was closed.

This is exactly why we need an unbiased source to look into this matter.

> It's based on a CNBC reporter repeating what an unnamed source from Melvin told them

FTA:

> "Melvin Capital has repositioned our portfolio over the past few days. We have closed out our position in GME (GameStop)," the spokesman said in a statement.

Citadel was clearly infusing cash into Melvin to compensate for Melvin's massive losses on GME, though. What's the significance of Melvin's position in the stock in the few days before or after Citadel bailed them out when the reasons remain the same?

>criticism of Yellen on this part is being defended - by the White House press secretary

The White House press secretary whose brother works at Citadel.

Edit: Her cousin* according to Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-31/the-citad...

Your edit drastically undersells the extent to which you were wrong on this one.

> Amateur sleuths found fertile ground to fan conspiracies. They didn’t hesitate in casting Jeff Psaki, a money manager at Citadel, as proof of dark arts at the firm. It started with claims that Psaki, an ex-Goldman trader, was married to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. He’s not: He’s her second cousin and has never spoken to her, a person who knows him said. But on it went, ricocheting from chatboards to Twitter and beyond.

Quick, name all your second cousins!

Resolution of conflicts of interest linked to a multi billion dollar failure should probably be supported by a more authoritative source than “a person who knows him”. I afford everyone the benefit of the doubt in everyday life, when it comes to politicians and this much money is involved I don’t. I respect people who see it differently.

This is not true. If it were, wouldn't this brother be mentioned in her grandfather's obituary?

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/greenwichtime/obituary.asp...

>The more absurd thing is criticism of Yellen on this part is being defended - by the White House press secretary no less as a woman's right to use her skills to make money. Yes, women should absolutely be able to rise to their talent and ambition

Everyone in the other comments is just assuming this as true, I don't see the sexism argument anywhere in what the press secretary said.

Anyone got a source?

There’s also the hazard of if they’re not worth paying for their financial services they just might not be worth paying for those services. And thus shouldn’t be in charge of Finance.

Haha, a catch-22. That is true to an extent I think.

> Yes, sure, but it's a clear conflict of interest for government official.

"Yellen has requested an ethics waiver to hold the meeting, a Treasury spokeswoman said, confirming a Reuters report."

I don't see it as a clear conflict of interest that needs recusal out the gate. How much is that $700,000 to Yellen? The payments are done. What other speaking engagements has she made and how much did they account for? I remember when Tom Wheeler was put in to lead the FCC, and people were very much against him because of his ties to the industry, but by the time he was done, people had turned around on him.

So, here you have a case where someone isn't hiding something, is asking for a waiver, and being up front about this, and you are calling this open corruption.

Really? Open corruption? This means they've actively done something wrong, or corrupt, and I don't see that here.

Should this be looked at and watched? Sure.

Does that mean there is outright "corruption" here? No.

> How much is that $700,000 to Yellen?

What kind of question is this? It's two-thirds of a million dollars. You are treating it like they bought her some chicken nuggets after soccer practice.

If that amount is really such a pittance, she should pay it back to Citadel.

seriously. What next, Jeff Bezos can throw around 100 million without being accused of corruption because it's such a % of his overall worth?

I can't even think of a way that attitude makes sense.

Maybe not clear cut corruption, but a big conflict of interest.

Citadel has a good interest stake in Melvin Capital: https://www.wsj.com/articles/citadel-point72-to-invest-2-75-...

Melvin Capital is the hedge fund that's directly hurting from retail investor actions. That's an easy google you can do yourself.

Citadel stands to lose quite a bit of money from retail investors now and potential in the future. So them giving a regulatory authority 700k to talk about the issue... is it really hard to imagine which way Yellen is going to lean on this one?

Citadel also pays millions and millions of dollars to Robinhood in order to get first look on its customer orders.

It's open because it's out in the open. It's not corruption as in behind-doors bribery or such, but it is getting there. It's certainly a moral corruption - it's absolutely not conducive to her representing the the people in any democratic fashion.

Requesting an 'ethics waiver' is a clear indicator that it's not ethical.

It feels like a carefully calculated PR deflection that has a good chance of working.

It'll "work" on the people who wouldn't question anything coming out of the administration anyway. Anyone else, including those on the blue team who aren't unquestioningly faithful, will not accept this nonsense.

I hope people can see through it, but I've also come to realize that good PR can be insidious. Having a really 'dumb' excuse like the one we see here can work because it actually makes people focus on how stupid the excuse is.

It takes oxygen away from the actual controversy and shifts the discussion to how stupid the cover is. You might even have people start arguing about gender and earnings gaps. Diversion successful.

I think this highlights an important blind spot some people have when they focus on identity politics. A huge gap between elites and the rest of society is somehow more okay if the elites are more diverse in gender or skin color. I don't feel it's much better but am at risk of being told I don't care about diversity or intentionally changing the subject.

I have no problem with elites, personally. Just (alleged) corruption.

I think most social justice advocates would agree that corruption and regulatory capture are bad. If anything, I'd expect a response more like "why are women like Yellen and Hillary Clinton being uniquely targeted with these accusations?" (whether they are or aren't). I'm not sure where the parent poster is sourcing the claimed identity-based defenses of her alleged corruption, though.

I think you'll find that most people who focus on identity politics would rather have that gap closed for everyone, than to see specifically people who look like them in places of power why they themselves continue to languish. The issue is that these people who focus on identity politics aren't actually stupid and, in fact, do understand the rules of this game that they were swept into (without their consent, mind you): power accrues more power and tribalism is rampant. Under the status quo, people who've been marginalized in the past have a better chance when they increase their numbers in seats of power. Further, strides forward in economic and social wellbeing tend to leave them behind unless they speak up.

So the dilemma in the situation you describe is between whether to ignore diversity concerns and in turn be ignored, or to speak up and risk losing class solidarity. It sucks that we have to make that decision; it would be better if less-marginalized people made proactive efforts to ensure we're involved in and will explicitly benefit from initiatives or movements that implicitly aligns with our interests.

Is there any evidence that people criticized Yellen because she is a woman?

Gaslighting combined with a Red Herring of racism, sexism, etc. is the ultimate way to achieve any political goal in today's US politics. I hope people realize this and are exercising critical thinking as appropriate.

It’s a win-win for the current power system.

I also wish progressives realized they were being used as tools in this battle.

Oh, most do. This kind of vacuous PR nonsense is blatantly transparent and isn't really fooling anybody.

Those who are already on the "team" (i.e. - they identify as a member of the party but have no particular ideology of their own) may appear swayed, but usually this is just a bad faith effort on the part of party loyalists to stifle criticism from within.

Really fooled or not, the radical progressives have won the cultural war, no? TV anchors and politicians use racism and sexism to attack pretty much any opposing views. Case in point, WaPo(?) article said WSB folks were white supremacists/Trump supporters, never mind majority of them are actually supporters of Sanders.

Where is the voice of the people who are not really fooled?

we as a society will move on from it at some point. It's not really about winning the cultural war, it's about the elites manipulating the population and thus using the language du jour.

20-30 years ago it would have been about family values, christian values, and down with the gays. In 20-30 years it'll be something else, but what won't change is those in power stay in power.

I believe Lenin called such people "useful idiots".

They've been doing it to black people for decades. Swoop into inner cities and promise all sorts of welfare etc. get their vote and completely ignore them afterwards. Has it helped? It makes no sense to me that they believe an old rich white elite that's been part of the system they're calling racist for half a century is suddenly going to bring them out of poverty.

The hypocrisy of Harris/Biden to get up and declare the system corrupt... THEY ARE THE SYSTEM.

These are incredibly powerful magical spells to stop debate in its tracks. Few organizations in the US are immune. Doesn't matter whether it is a Facebook group, a University, a Trillion dollar corporation or the US Government. Debate can be stopped.

You can interpret anything as gaslighting. This sort of discussion rarely productive without concrete evidence. Maybe the wealthy are trying to burn Yellen's political capital because she's in favor of additional taxes. Maybe it's really corporations who are stirring up populist narratives because it gets less qualified candidates elected, who then need to turn to corporations for expertise.