One of the great mysteries about Elizabeth Warren is why she made a career as a politician fighting Wall Street then proceeded to endorse it by packing Hillary Clinton for president. We’re all aware that Hillary Clinton bemoans the “tragedy” of income inequality while earning a multiple of the average households annual income in a single speech for Goldman Sachs.
That’s all legal however, but her activities in the financial sector haven’t always been. In the late 1970s, Hillary invested $1,000 into cattle futures - which quickly turned into $100,000. She sold it months before the price of cattle plummeted. Everyone sitting back earning 7 percent a year in their mutual funds knows how unrealistic these sorts of returns are (even for derivatives).
A report published by the Marshall School of Business in 1998 found that 80 percent of her trades were profitable (while most futures traders lose money), and that many of her trades took place at or near the best prices of the day. They concluded that “Only four explanations can account for these remarkable results. [Her broker] Blair may have been an exceptionally good trader. Hillary Clinton may have been exceptionally lucky. Blair may have been front-running other orders. Or Blair may have arranged to have a broker fraudulently assign trades to benefit Clinton’s account.”
These are lottery odds - and yet there were no official investigations nor charges brought against Hillary when this came to light in 1994. And today, she’s bragging about it on the campaign trail. The Washington Free Beacon reports:
Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that she knows “just a little bit” about commodities and trading.
“I know just a little bit about commodities and their trading, their buying, their selling, both futures and the actual commodities themselves,” she said.
The Clinton White House had to answer charges that she’d made the trades in an illicit arrangement to assure profit and initially claimed she made them herself. It turns out they were made by Jim Blair, the husband of close Clinton friend Diane Blair and a lawyer for Tyson Foods.
Sure you know a few things about trading commodities. Just like Bernie Madoff knows a thing or two about trading stocks.
[Note: This post was authored by Matt Palumbo. Follow him on Twitter @MattPalumbo12]