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