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Comment by syops | Hacker News Reader

Speaking fees is how one legally bribes politicians. Such is how my cynical self sees it. The Clintons earned over $150 in speaking fees since leaving the presidency. Does anyone think their speeches are worth $10 million a year? At the end of the Clinton presidency he signed into law a repeal of Glass-Steagall. Reagan famously was paid around $10 million after his presidency to give some speeches in Japan. He got rid of car import quotas.

Perhaps I'm being too conspiratorial or cynical but it seems to me that this is the polite understanding between business and those with political power. We'll pay you a lot of money for very little work if you pass legislation that we like.

https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/hillary-clinton-bill...

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You seem to have fallen for being bashful to suggest people in power may be corrupt. Not harping on you directly, but I'm getting tired of the word conspiracy being thrown at everything.

Politician/authority figure gets paid exorbitant amounts of money for inane services by entities who directly profited from contested policy enactments. That's not a conspiracy. That's just bribery with extra steps to make it "legal". Just because some people dont like it or embarrasses some authority figures, doesn't make it "some crackpot conspiracy". Just like throwing the word nazi around was a craze just recently for anyone that doesn't agree with your general life views.

The people's responsibility is to point out conflicts of interest and potential corruption. No politician or authority figure should be safe from that, no matter their party or demographic.

> Perhaps I'm being too conspiratorial or cynical

No need to doubt yourself on this one :D

In a sense I feel like this kind of corruption is a bit like short selling. You perform a corrupt act in the present with a tacit understanding that, at some point in the future, the beneficiaries of that act will pay you back.

The fact that this is a temporal play makes it seem like its not corrupt, but in fact all it does is put white gloves on the same kind of dirty deeds that happen in poorer countries all the time.

> all it does is put white gloves on the same kind of dirty deeds that happen in poorer countries all the time.

Really its not different, you just choose to respect this process and choose to dismiss another country’s process as “corrupt bribery”.

What’s happening in poorer countries is often just as roundabout.

Are you saying all short selling is corrupt?

Nope. My opinion on short-selling is, let's say, nuanced, but in this case I was making strictly a technical analogy.

It feels to me like this type of corruption is a temporal play in which you "lend" your influence in the present to somebody. Using your influence they pass legislation/regulation etc. that yields them lots of money in the future. Once you leave office, the people that you lent your influence to will pay you back with the proceeds they obtained while they were making use of your influence.

The more "standard" type of corruption (the kind people in nice suits usually think of when they say "corruption") doesn't involve a temporal play. You get money in the present for using your influence directly in order to benefit the people who paid you, also in the present/near future.

Perhaps my analogy to short selling is not fully accurate, but this is kind of how it feels to me.

On several forums I participate in I'm getting hints of this idea that short selling is getting a bad reputation when in fact it can serve good purposes in a functioning market. It seems like it's becoming politically incorrect to short a stock.

It is fishy in the first place for a long stock holder to lend their shares to speculators that will do whatever it takes to bring the price of the share down. Naked shorting should not be legal.

Naked shorting isn’t legal. That’s why you have to borrow the shares..

Gme was literally shorted over 100% last week.

That doesn’t require naked short selling.

A borrows a share from B, sells it to C D borrows the share sold to C, sells it to E.

The same share was borrowed twice and sold twice. That has nothing to do with naked shorting.

One of the two shorts is now naked. There is an obligation of 2 shares and availability of one. If both of the guys demand their share back at the same time, one will not get it. As I was writing it I realized that this is the definition of a Ponzi scheme.

Player C thinks that they own a real share, but they own thin air.

That isn’t naked short selling. Naked short selling means A skips the borrowing part, and just says “I have a share to sell”, but doesn’t actually have it (nor have they arranged to borrow it). They sell it, planning on buying it before they actually have to deliver it. This is illegal.

My example was not naked short selling. At the end of the transactions, only E has a real share. B and C both have an IOU for a share.... they can’t loan it out again or sell it unless they recall the loan (which they can do at any time).

If you think this is a Ponzi scheme, just wait until you hear about fractional reserve banking! Every single bank loans out money it doesn’t ‘have’.... it loans out money account holders put in. That means there is more money in circulation than actually exists, because the person whose money was loaned out still has their full balance in their bank account.

You can read about stock lending here: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-shake-loose-change-...

To your question of “if both people demand their share back they will not get it”.... this is exactly what a short squeeze is. You are right, if the lenders demand their shares back, the short sellers have to scramble to get them back... they have to buy a share on the open market to sell.

Now, in normal times a short seller would just borrow a share from someone else to return to the person demanding it back, because normally there is always someone willing to lend their shares (for more and more interest as demand goes up)... of course, if all the shareholders refuse to loan out their share, shorts are screwed... and will have to pay crazy amounts of money to buy back shares that are really expensive.

This is what wallstreetbets is trying to do... get all the shares owned by their users who all refuse to loan them out, driving the price ridiculously high.

In what way is that like short selling?

They’re referring to the temporal nature of the action in which profit is generated, not the populist misunderstanding and demonization of borrowing shares.

I'll take a shot at arguing this.

There's a limited supply of living former presidents. Far fewer than the number of institutions looking to up their prestige by getting a former president to give a speech. How much do you think it should cost to get a former president to give a talk?

Here's another argument. Non-political celebrities also have very high speaking fees (or the equivalent). Yet obviously these celebrities aren't being tacitly bribed. What is your explanation for that?

> How much do you think it should cost to get a former president to give a talk?

That's not the right question. The question is whether ex-Presidents ought to accept these bribes. Compare the post-Presidencies of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, starkly different.

> Yet obviously these celebrities aren't being tacitly bribed. What is your explanation for that?

Celebrities aren't in positions of public service, so the whole concept of a "bribe" doesn't apply.

Presidents are different than Treasury Secretaries because historically they became impotent and sought no further office. A bribery scheme is hard to enforce when the president becomes impotent during the period they'd like to get payment.

Celebrities are different because they make tons of money and are business propositions in and of themselves, meaning their star power could bring immense attraction to the event, which is part of what commencement speakers are for.

Even if an official seeks no further office and is "impotent" at the time of payment, the prospect of speaking fees can still be a perverse incentive. There's no evidence this is happening here, but theoretically an official could install policies favorable to a company, then be rewarded after leaving office with outsize speaking fees, and this would be a stable system of corruption because the company would have the reputation of following through on a practice of rewarding officials who produce favorable policies.

One could take this further and apply it to the entire concept of a revolving door; if an official can make a career out of lobbying and consulting after leaving public office, they'll be incentivized to prioritize future employers over the public interest.

Realistically, it's difficult to fully remove perverse incentives and still be able to attract talent (this applies to technical recruiting as well!). But there still need to be systems of accountability. Unfortunately, with two-party non-proportional representation, and a limited opportunity for voters to provide referendums on the corruption of party members separate from their policy viewpoints, there are many layers of insulation that prevent people from being held to account.

You realize that it's legal to form a political action committee and give literally unlimited amounts of money to any politician while they hold office, right?

But you aren't bribing the former president. You're bribing the current president by showing him what awaits after he leaves office.

The current president often has a deep dislike of the former president and entities perceived as close to him, and can quite happily make decisions unfavourable to your company safe in the knowledge that the speaking circuit won't be short of other people willing to pay him.

> The current president often has a deep dislike of the former president and entities perceived as close to him

This is not necessarily true. The Clintons, Bushes, and Obamas are like one big happy family. Trump is the exception because he pissed off everyone, but even he used to be friendly with the Clintons.

Anyway this misses the point: in general, the system of buying political favors only works when political favors are repaid, and everyone operating in that system knows it.

> Celebrities aren't in positions of public service, so the whole concept of a "bribe" doesn't apply.

To add to this, we should also be holding Presidents to a higher ethics standard than, say, Kim Kardashian.

yeah, and that idea is so obvious it's a little difficult for me to understand why the original comparison was even made.

Carter has taken speaking fees and Clinton runs one of the most successful charitable orgs in the world.

> Carter has taken speaking fees

https://www.thoughtco.com/former-presidents-speaking-fees-33... Former President Jimmy Carter "seldom accepts speaking fees," The Associated Press wrote in 2002, "and when he does he typically donates the proceeds to his charitable foundation."

> Clinton runs one of the most successful charitable orgs in the world.

So does Bill Gates. So what? Clinton also made more than $100 million for himself in speaking fees.

I don't know, seems to me that speaking fees are inherently corrupt. You shouldn't have to pay someone for the privilege of giving them a platform.

Public figures don't get paid for TV or newspaper interviews, journalistic ethics explicitly forbids it, because paying people for being the source of information is seen as inherently corrupting.

Presidents have a 200k/yr lifetime pension that's pegged to inflation, plus a $1 million/yr travel budget and a fully funded and staffed personal office. Bill Clinton has been paid over $20 million by the US government since he left office through these programs. While in office presidents earn 400k, with all their living expenses paid for separately, meaning they get about 1.6 million dollars per four-year term straight into their savings accounts. Many of them make millions from sales of their memoirs alone. There is no reason for them to be demanding additional millions in exchange for giving a ten minute pep talk to a hedge fund except as a backdoor for corruption.

> There is no reason for them to be demanding additional millions in exchange for giving a ten minute pep talk to a hedge fund except as a backdoor for corruption.

I don't see how this follows from your argument. As you acknowledge Clinton has a massive platform whenever he wants his views aired, and plenty of normal people are willing to pay his publisher money to read his book. Why would he fly to some hedge fund's dinner party to talk to a handful of half cut money-movers for free? I'd say that would be more suspicious, frankly.

To avoid the appearance of a quid-pro-quo, at least?

Like, the guy clearly doesn't need money, he can do whatever he wants. There is no opportunity cost for him, he doesn't need to make appearances to put food on the table, the financial difference between a $300,000 appearance at Goldman and a free appearance at a kid's birthday party is essentially nothing to him.

If he thinks it's fun to hang out with hedge fund managers, he can do that, good for him, who cares. But them giving him tens of millions of dollars, on top of the tens of millions of dollars that the US government is already giving him, (which by the way is supposed to exist to disincentivize Presidents from seeking gifts or employment after leaving office), is extremely suspicious especially in light of the fact that his crowning achievement in office was deregulating their entire industry.

The "he doesn't need money" argument cuts against there being any tangible upside to quid pro quo too...

Nobody who charges six figure fees for speaking engagements needs the money to put food on the table. Getting paid silly money for a night of patronising some organization you wouldn't otherwise care less about is an ego thing, and plenty of stupidly rich people enjoy their egos being stroked by speaking fees without having any other favours to offer. I mean, some stupidly rich people still enjoy making obviously corrupt manoeuvres too, but that's not necessary to explain why ex-POTUSes and Hollywood stars start being interested in being private party entertainment when the sixth zero is added to the bill.

And literally nobody would say "that's fine, he probably just thinks its fun to hang out with hedge fund managers" if the guy who repealed Glass Steagall insisted he was donating his time and reputation to helping hedge funds impress their LPs. Especially not if foreign telephone manufacturers wanting him to do a keynote speech were still willing to offer massive sums of money.

Don't they funnel a lot of that money into their charitable org?

I think the idea is for them to not fly to some hedge fund's dinner party.

This sort of monetization of the Presidency would have shocked 18th-Century sensibilities. An example:

George Washington was a big supporter of canal-building. To honor Washington, the Virginia legislature decided in 1795 to gift him shares in two canal companies it had established. Washington agonized over what to do, because accepting the shares would give the impression that he was using the Presidency for his own personal gain, while rejecting them would be insulting. He also wanted to publicly show his support for the canal projects. He ended up requesting that the shares to be used to fund a university and a seminary.

Washington's status at this point was already secure enough that nobody would have seriously accused him of corruption, but he was extremely wary of doing anything that could in any way be perceived as self-interested. The fact that former politicians are taking massive speaking fees from businesses that their policies affected looks corrupt, and that in itself is already bad enough.

Presidents give hundreds of speeches for the low, low price of $400k per year.

After their last term, their official political career is basically over and almost anything they know worth telling is classified.

It seems hard to justify increasing prices after the fact outside graft.

The problem isn't bribes to former politicians, but rather bribes to future ones.

Also, Yellen isn't a former president, she is a former fed chair. It's not even remotely the same line of work.

Non political celebrities are actually entertaining or deliver actual information.

> How much do you think it should cost to get a former president to give a talk?

Nothing. Or, on second thought, maybe a large donation to a children's hospital. I would expect a public servant from the highest office to be committed to public service. The presidency shouldn't be monetized, but if a former president really needs money they could always sell a book. That doesn't create any perverse incentives like speaking fees.

Maybe your plan would work if we had a generous a pension plan that required a certain number of community service hours. One problem would be that most of these speeches are anything but public or open to the community.

Presidents do receive a pension, along with other benefits for life

The expenses.

It's nothing to do with "prestige", it's about return on investment. It's usually a payment for friendly behavior in the past, or to increase the likelihood of friendly behavior in the future (or to essentially tap into their personal network at some point in the future).

Celebrities are bribed, they're called endorsements. Former presidents are worth less and less as they lose their connections. Their price tag depends on how much power they still wield....which is why Clinton and Obama still command high prices.

Logistically, this is the stupidest way to bribe someone. There is a clear paper trail and everyone knows about it. The wealthy have dozens of highly discrete ways to legally transfer money to each other. Also given the number of speaking engagements every year, how likely is it that all or most of them are "bribes"?

Corporate speaking fees are Cameo for very rich people. They pay a less-than-rounding-error amount of money to have someone famous show up and interact with them. Similar to me paying Perez Hilton $50 on Cameo to record a message for my buddies. It doesn't make a lot of financial sense to pay someone famous to talk to you. but people do it anyway, because people pay for rare experiences.

Brief association with fame has a direct financial value, it always has. You don't need a conspiracy to explain that.

> Logistically, this is the stupidest way to bribe someone. There is a clear paper trail and everyone knows about it.

In other words, it's perfectly legal bribery, and thus the smartest way to bribe someone. Just like political campaign contributions.

Why risk illegal bribery when you can go the safe route, where everyone knows, but nobody goes to jail?

There’s a paper trail regardless.

It’s not similar if the person in power enacts laws that directly benefit the person who paid for the speech.

Association with fame has relatively small value.

Have you never watched a drug smuggler movie? Half the headaches are trying to launder the money.

Speeches are the best way to bribe someone. Once they give the speech, it's "services rendered". There's no shady money transfers to explain, since it's all out in the open. There's no risk of fraud. There's no way to be caught in a lie, because the entire payment is pegged to physically speaking in front of a group, which they actually did do. The only questionable thing is the amount paid, which is subjective.

Discretion is part of a bribe's value proposition. The existence of this post is why public speaking fees are a horrible vehicle for corruption. You have people complaining and asking for recusal. It's negative publicity and a hindrance to corrupt acts.

At Yellen's level, access to information is what has the most value. That's how I would bribe someone like that. No paper trail

>You have people complaining and asking for recusal. It's negative publicity and a hindrance to corrupt acts.

It's hard to look at the past decade or two and think there was a hinderance to corrupt acts. Sure, people complain but rich people got their tax breaks, Wall St. gets friendly policy, and mega corps get bailed out. The system is clearly working for those involved.

> You have people complaining and asking for recusal. It's negative publicity and a hindrance to corrupt acts.

A lot better than prison though.

People like e.g. Bjarne Stroustroup or Linus Torvalds are also paid 6-figure speaking fees depending on the venue, and they're far less-known names than Yellen or Clinton. And not because tech conferences are trying to bribe or corrupt their speakers (i hope), but because having a big name really drives attendance.

It probably sometimes happens that speaking fees are paid as a bribe, but that's illegal and also not specific to speaking fees (similar popular schemes are to hire the person as consultant, or to buy something from him for a much higher price than the real value). It also raises the same red flags, when it turns out that the speaking fees were far above market value.

Unless that was the case here (I don't know how much other speakers are paid at Citadel), it seems premature to assume nefarious behavior.

Linus is also not making $10 million a year in speaking fees from industries that he vastly enriched while operating as an elected public servant.

I understand and agree with your point, but I think the word enriched is too ambiguous here. He definitely enriched the software industry, just not monetarily.

> Bjarne Stroustroup or Linus Torvalds are also paid 6-figure speaking fees

Can you give some examples?

I don't know anything about Stroustroup or Torvalds, but Wozniak wanted $80k to talk to my computing group at CMU back in the day. That's definitely 6 figures now.

Yep, but then they are not supporting (say) Microsoft when asked about it, if Microsoft is who pays.

I've been in the speaking industry ever since I started working full time "illegally" when I was still a teenager for a politically focused speakers bureau.

No doubt it my mind, WSB and other agencies are "laundering" political kickbacks through speaking fees. It's long been an open secret/assumption in the industry.

I co-founded a startup that published speaking fees, the IASB tried to find an angle to come after us but failed. Eventually proxies came after us to try and intimidate us from publishing fee and speaking calendars for politicians and pundits.

This is amazing, it deserves its own post describing the effort.

Bright lights tend to disinfect.

If something like this could be coordinated globally, it would be a great way to put pressure on power.

> Eventually proxies came after us to try and intimidate us from publishing fee and speaking calendars for politicians and pundits.

Wow. Can you tell more?

> WSB and other agencies are "laundering" political kickbacks through speaking fees

Wow what happened today, WallStreetBets is now an official agency paying kickbacks?

Not the same WSB.

https://www.wsb.com/about/

I can’t believe you’re even questioning yourself on this. OF COURSE it’s legal bribing.

even in situations when you feel you may know all the facts, it's still healthy to doubt your conclusions!

I don't claim to know all the facts, but at some point you have to stop being naive.

It's obvious these companies expect some sort of political benefit for paying these outrageous speaking fees, the part we don't know is to what extent there is an "agreement".

I will concede the agreements may not be communicated in any way, and just based on expectations. However, these fees would not continue to be paid if expectations did not continue to be mostly met.

> over $150 in speaking fees

I suppose that's technically true

Yeah a bit of a low estimate there. I'd say it's as least twice as much as that.

lol

> "I continue to be befuddled by the apparently common habit of using agricultural euphemisms to refer to illicit financial transactions. “Don’t call bribes chickens,” I suggested a while ago, after U.S. prosecutors charged someone with doing that. If your business has nothing to do with chickens, then when prosecutors see winking references to chickens in your email, they are going to know that you mean bribes, and a jury is going to agree. Much better to say “success fees,” so you have some argument that you were doing somehow legitimate transactions."

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-01/insura...

Don't call your bribes 'success fees', call them 'speaking fees'.

If you want to see something just as dirty, dive into the world of book deals for politicians.

Perfect example - Newt Gingrich got a 4.5 million dollar book deal from Murdoch right before Congress was to hear about allowing Murdoch to purchase the Fox network.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/12/23/g...

Yep. Like insider trading, it's a bipartisan scam.

I think your cynicism is warranted here, and this crap is a major reason I never wanted HRC for president. If you wondered why stories about trump's foreign emoluments, the Goya ads, etc. never went past some ragefests in left-leaning media... look no further than the politicians on both sides of the aisle drooling over their own future income. Not all on either side, but an overwhelming majority.

Public servants often do not make enough money in public service to make these kinds of ethically gray payments easy to turn down.

I don't know about Yellen's personal finances, but the chairman/woman of the Fed makes $203k/yr. I bet 50%+ of the people reading my comment make more money than that, and unless my comment is graced by a well-known CEO I sincerely doubt any of you have as important a job.

Maybe if we want to hold our public servants (generals, commissioners, congressmen, secretaries of x, etc) to higher ethical standards we should compensate them well enough that a speaking fee like this is "more money" rather than "help pay off my mortgage".

> the chairman/woman of the Fed makes $203k/yr. I bet 50%+ of the people reading my comment make more money than that

Unlikely, according to the BLS the 2019 Median Pay for software engineers in the US is $107,510 per year

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

The richer a public minister is, the more disconnected they are from the people they govern, plain and simple.

I agree with the premise, but there's no way to please populists. If public servants got paid 7-figures, there would be even more outrage.

This is, in fact, cynical. Getting a luminary like an ex-president is a huge draw and extremely valuable to the institutions paying for them. Someone like Bill Clinton, took a lot of speaking fees _after leaving office_. Meaning, if someone was trying to bribe a president, maybe they shouldn't have waited until his terms were expired. What exactly is the quid pro quo that could possibly have transacted? When Hillary signed on as SecState, did she ever did a single favor for any of the place that paid her fees? She spent literal days in front of Congress testifying to political opponents. The Clintons are probably the literal most investigated people in the history of American politics. What actual conflict of interest has ever been uncovered? I can honestly with 99% confidence that these two are not at all corrupt.

As a counterpoint, we have seen far worse corruption in broad daylight and it's not coming from people who took speaking fees.

May I further suggest that the decades-long propaganda campaign against the Clintons has worked wonderfully and you are possibly a victim of it. And not just you, but millions of people.

Rubin and Clinton passed the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Rubin goes on to make many millions of dollars at Citigroup and the Clinton make many millions of dollars in speaking fees for speeches at Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and other places. These speaking engagements were not at venues for the general public and tickets were not sold for these speeches. These companies paid millions to have the Clintons speak at them.

It may not have been corruption but it certainly has that appearance to me. The Obama administration famously never prosecuted the finance industry. He's now making millions a year. Reagan got millions to visit Japan shortly after leaving office. The leaders of our government are getting rich after being in government. I think it's corruption.

Much of the investigations against the Clintons have been political theater. It's hard to prove the sort of corruption I'm pointing out. It's also in no politician's best interest to do so. They make millions after service so their economic interest is to investigate inane accusations rather than real corruption.

Glass-Steagall repeal had broad bipartisan support and was an act of congress that Clinton signed. I think it's kinda preposterous to think that Clinton pushed this bill past both houses or might have vetoed if he didn't expect to get paid speaking fees from Citi years later. More likely, he supported it because he thought it was a good idea at the time and Citi hired him to speak because he was very influential and knowledgable about economic policy. They've also given loads of speeches for public health groups, environmental groups, colleges, etc. More like they are supporting people who are ideologically aligned to their interests rather than anything resembling a quid pro quo.

It's an extremely low bar for what you could consider corruption. Maybe coziness at worst. Like would these policies simply not have happened without speaking fees?

People as smart as Rubin, Clinton, and Greenspan knew this was bad policy. Greenspan famously encouraged ARMs before the crash. After his chairmanship he was amply rewarded.

It could, of course, all be as you say and these are just instances of public servants doing what is in the public good who go on to get enriched by the industries their policies benefited. I don't think so though.

Perhaps. Cynicism is highly valuable -- a smell test. But cynicism is not conclusory. Others have responded noting examples and rationales as to why paid speeches are not necessarily bribes.

I'll also note that you include a citation about the Clinton's speaking fees, you don't cite anything to support or argue that Clinton speeches led to the repeal of Glass-Steagall, despite your implicit connection there. I write this as no Clinton fan BTW, in part for this repeal.

It's easy to get angry over the nebulous concept of creeping corruption in our political systems. This is because getting into the nitty-gritty details and actually determining which particular speech is a bribe and which is not is difficult and boring. In the long term, I suggest that this sort of anger can lead to a political apathy which is damaging to a functioning democracy.

Now, with all that said, Yellen should probably recuse herself given the recency and amount of these talks. Independent of whether or not she was actually corrupt, it's a bad look.

I definitely don't have proof. It's all supposition. Reagan going to Japan for $10 million was the first instance that I remember in my life. I think it was because he got rid of import quotas on Japanese cars. Clintons and Rubin got very rich shortly after the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Obama is rich now and his government famously never prosecuted or investigated the banking industry. Tyson foods was a relative unknown until Clinton became President. Halliburton benefited greatly with Cheney as VP. Ajit Pai will likely make a ton of money now that his chairmanship has ended.

None of this is proof but to me it paints a clear picture of regulatory capture and corruption.

Isn't the fact that these speaking fees come largely after someone is out of politics a huge knock against this type of conspiracy theory? Don't get me wrong, these type of payments are ridiculous. But is there any non-circumstantial evidence that this is a direct quid pro quo?

The fees are just as much a reward for past favours as a signal to future favour-givers.

Yellen is not out of politics and also no, why would that be a problem? We often pay bills after recieving service. Quite normal.

>Yellen is not out of politics and also no, why would that be a problem?

She was when she made those speaking fees. Do you know she planned to reenter politics? Did Reagan or Bill Clinton have plans to reenter politics after their presidencies?

>We often pay bills after recieving service. Quite normal.

Except we agree to those bills beforehand. This would require that these payments be guaranteed years before they are made. Often times the leadership of these companies changes so that expands the list of people who need to be involved in this conspiracy. When the number of people involved in a conspiracy go up, the likelihood of that conspiracy being revealed goes up.

Once again I will ask is there any evidence for this conspiracy beyond these circumstantial connections?

> Except we agree to those bills beforehand.

I'm sure those who paid them did too.

> When the number of people involved in a conspiracy go up, the likelihood of that conspiracy being revealed goes up.

And when they're all involved, nobody is left to care, investigate or prosecute.

> Once again I will ask is there any evidence for this conspiracy beyond these circumstantial connections?

The evidence is everywhere. They do favors for specific people and groups and get paid by those people and groups. It's really not complicated.

> And when they're all involved, nobody is left to care, investigate or prosecute

So everyone in government is in on this conspiracy?

>The evidence is everywhere. They do favors for specific people and groups and get paid by those people and groups. It's really not complicated.

That is circumstantial evidence. Is there any evidence that doesn’t equate to tying yarn on a cork board?

You're asking for something extraordinary. The only direct evidence you could possibly have would be video or testimony of Ken Griffin or Janet Yellen admitting that the high fees are related to a quid-pro-quo that goes beyond speaking. But circumstantial evidence is still evidence, and a preponderance of it should play a role in your judgment.

Some people work at Citadel for years after graduating from top colleges without making $700k in total income, yet Citadel shelled out that amount over the course of two years for a bunch of speeches from an altogether boring economist.

Janet Yellen is a laughably bad speaker. See for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YAEHJvNscs

Now she's the Treasury Secretary and she has power and authority to manage a situation that directly affects Citadel. They make money off Robinhood. They back Melvin. And they benefit from a regulatory environment that is all too forgiving to market-makers.

We aren't just talking about Yellen here. Three other people have been directly named. You can expand that list to a much wider category of politicians. What evidence is there that the post-politics speaking circuit is an avenue for bribery that doesn't amount to the equivalent "well it is obvious"? There would be thousands of people involved in this over the years. Has any former participant spoken out about it? Has anyone been caught in the act?

People like Yellen are not paid for their oratory skill (and oratory skill is not something that is particularly valuable in her current or previous roles). They are paid because they are smart, accomplished, respected, and well known. When an organization has them come speak, people want to come listen and it lends the hosting organization prestige.

We are talking about Yellen here because unlike Bill Clinton or whomever, she's the one in a position of power and she's the one "summoning regulators to discuss" Melvin (a hedge fund backed by Citadel) and Robinhood (whose number one PFOF client is Citadel).

The regulations currently protect market-makers like Citadel from having to adhere to many of the rules that other market participants have to follow. This includes the locate requirement of Reg SHO, as well as the buy-in procedure for failure to deliver. How are we supposed to trust Yellen to regulate one of her own biggest customers (maybe the biggest)?

It's an absolute joke to pay Yellen six figures to give a speech, and that's why people are thinking, "wait a sec, this is bribery right?" Are you suggesting that Yellen should get paid because she is "smart, accomplished, respected, and well known"? The impropriety of these lavish payments comes from the fact that she's a cabinet secretary expected to keep these very firms in line.

FINRA doesn't let vendors give their individual clients gifts of more than a hundred dollars per year. Yet the current TREASURY SECRETARY raked in $7mm in the past two years for giving bad speeches and somehow we're supposed to just be cool with that? Give me a break. She shouldn't be involved with this.

We are talking about the general practice and not specifically Yellen. The comment I replied to did not mention her. My top comment didn't mention her. I only referenced her in response to someone bringing her up directly and it was in the same paragraph as I mentioned Reagan and Bill Clinton. If you think this system is bribery, then Yellen is not the only guilty party.

I also said in my top comment that these speaking fees are ridiculous. I don't think they are good use of money. However it is quite a leap to go from these being a poor use of money to them being obvious bribery. Plenty of people and organizations spend money on stupid things. This includes speaking fees for non-politicians. All sorts of famous people from actors to philanthropists to technologists get paid to speak in front of crowds. Are they all forms of bribery?

If you are going to accuse people of corruption, you need to have evidence that is stronger than the existence of a motive, which is basically all you have currently.

  > We are talking about the general practice and not specifically Yellen.

  > Are they all forms of bribery?

Reagan and Clinton didn't become cabinet officials after cashing in on speeches, and both the article and this thread center on Yellen. Don't attempt to move the goal posts.

  > If you are going to accuse people of corruption, you need to have
  > evidence that is stronger than the existence of a motive, which is
  > basically all you have currently.

This is not how it works.

Read (b)(1) here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/208

Then, read (d) here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/5/2635.502

Yellen disclosed the sources of her honoraria and acknowledged a financial interest (here: https://extapps2.oge.gov/201/Presiden.nsf/PAS+Index/18A4D129...). She received written permission based on the determination "that the interest is not so substantial as to be deemed likely to affect the integrity" of her work. The question isn't whether she has committed a crime (she has not), nor whether she has motive to unfairly benefit Citadel (she does). Rather, the question is whether that financial interest is substantial enough to likely affect her work (a discretionary call already made by a government official), and whether the process itself is fair to other market participants (I contend that it is not).

Those speeches can be also quite valuable, if you are for example running a conference. Few big name speakers can do a lot to attract paying visitors.

Just a local example. Nordic Business Forum[1] has had for example Barrack Obama as speaker. They have maybe 7k visitors, ticket prices are around 1k-3k€/person. They tend to be sold out well in advance.

Few years old list of per speech prices for high profile speakers [2]. For example Obama $400k, Tony Blair $200k.

[1] https://www.nbforum.com/ [2] https://www.thestreet.com/investing/highest-paid-public-spea...

> Reagan famously was paid around $10 million after his presidency to give some speeches in Japan. He got rid of car import quotas.

...and if Reagan had instead imposed tariffs on imported cars, he probably would have later been paid to give speeches by groups that liked the tariffs.

That's how it will be for nearly every consequential Presidential decision other than those few that have broad bipartisan support and little controversy.

Not disagreeing with the larger point, but, I think you would be surprised how many shops (think hedge funds, think tanks, etc), would easily pay a few hundred thousand dollars to have a big-wig visit for a few minutes and boost employee morale and do some handshaking. It’s major signaling that can easily amount to 10m a year.

> over $150

going to guess you are missing the `m` from `$150m`

150 millidollar is a strange way to say 15 cents.

I think the European equivalent is politicians "landing" a consulting job at Gazprom.

This is only a viable career for leading German politicians.

In NL it is the other way around : our PM worked for Unilever and his only initiative has been a failed attempt at giving them a tax break.

I have thought for a while now that Lobbying[1] is legitimized corruption

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying

We'd see a lot of this getting fixed with campaign finance reform and ending the ridiculous super PAC loophole

Even more taking into account that the true value of their information is not the one they are going to share publicly...

> The Clintons earned over $150 in speaking fees

Man, a whole 150 dollars, those Clintons must be making bank! :P

> The Clintons earned over $150 in speaking fees since leaving the presidency

So have I, just in free beer!

the diff here is they were former presidents giving paid speeches whereas Yellen gave paid speeches than entered into a Government position. VERY different!

Speaking fees are bribes? Someone tell Tony Robbins! It's a job that pays well, because the demand is there.

I don't feel it's any different than writing a book.

Bernie Sanders made good money off books: https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/13/politics/bernie-sanders-milli...

Bush's speeches, for reference: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/president-lady-bush-profit-s...

Its called grift. You and I are not in the club.

https://www.npr.org/2016/08/17/490102648/the-clintons-wrote-...

A normal person's investments get around 4-6% increase per year. A politician's investments get 25-35% increase per year. It's hard to rationalize that happening across the board without insider trading.

Obama very publicly "held politicians accountable" with the STOCK act and then very privately pulled it's teeth a couple months later (keeping it technically illegal while making it all but impossible to investigate).

Politicians should not be permitted to pass legislation concerning their conduct. Perhaps it should be put to state and national ballots as appropriate with a direct vote from the people.

Got a real kick out of this quote:

> "The Clintons have always been very careful to walk about two inches inside the line,"

If most politicians are willing to walk inside the line (which is a good thing), maybe we need to change where the line is, if it's not benefitting society.

Yes, I'm sure our politicians will get right on that...

One benefit of all this is people coming together on a non-partisan basis. I hope this makes people realize that political ideologies (left or right) don't make a significant impact in our day-to-day lives, but that the tension is weaponized against us via divide & conquer...all so things like this get pushed under the rug.

I'm aware the term "swamp" may stir up some Trump era animosity, but this is the definition of a member of "the swamp". They're literally everywhere in positions of power.

This is a bunch of nonsense.

The events that speakers are tied to would have zero attendees without big names attached to them.

I don’t see hackernews decry tech speakers who get paid to speak?

Without the ethics waiver there would be no hearing on Robinhood at all.

Does a tech speaker have the ability to influence legislation or rule in a hearing about the company that is paying them to speak?

If so, and if they don't recuse themselves, there would indeed be a problem. Fortunately, tech speakers don't have anywhere near that kind of direct power.

If company y pays the manager in charge of purchasing at company x $600,000 to speak, then they bid on contracts with company x, there would also be a problem.

Tax the Rich. Problem solved.

This wouldn't even be an argument if Citadel wasn't operating in the the market as if it were a casino. Yellen is extremely talented and an expert in her field. She should be paid for those skills and knowledge.

This idea that public officials shouldn't be participating in the society that we have created and that they should be held up to the Standards of Mother Teresa or Ghandi is idiotic, IMO.

The mere fact that we are even discussing this is ridiculous, and instead should be discussing what do we expect from our markets. Should they be a free market that should resemble the "fundamental" price of an asset or is it just a casino where everyone is in search of a greater fool and acting accordingly? It seems more and more likely that if we allow for it to behave like B, we're not going to get A.

Yellen could have recused herself. All of this is kind of moot in the face of that.

Would that improve faith in the markets and government?

I don't think so. I think this is a way to hold quote unquote liberals to a higher standard than everyone else.

If Yellen wanted to sell out, she would have worked in industry. Janet Yellen had the job of leading the most important bank in the world, yet her salary was that of an third-year at Citdadel. At the end of the day, a couple hundred thousands of dollars for a talk is nothing for Citadel. Companies will often spend more than that for private concerts.

I'm failing to understand how this excuses the bribe.

It's also possible that she's more valuable to Citadel in her current role. They might not want to remove her from it.

My point is that you don't dedicate their life to public service, just to purposefully get your former classmates in the private sector, who had always been magnitudes richer than you, even richer. If you did decide to change your mind, your speaking fees would be much more than a couple hundred thousand dollars.

I agree with that premise but not the conclusion.

No one gets into public service in order to enrich others, but one day people wake up and find themselves open to a little bit of corruption.

Exactly this. Bill Clinton's life goal wasn't to use the Presidency as a stepping stone to wealth. He just wanted to be President, and would probably still be running if there weren't term limits. But once you enter the government, you suddenly realize that people are willing to throw large sums of money at you to become "friends". Even if politicians don't start out corrupt, corruption is hard to avoid while in office.

Do you have any evidence or is this pure speculation? There are fewer treasury securities and fed chairs than there are CEOs of major financial institution. If they were really bribed, I'd expect the bribes to be much bigger.

> If Yellen wanted to sell out, she would have worked in industry

What do you think Yellen is going to do 4-8 years from now?

Janet Yellen is 74. I would expect that she would retire or do what she has done, teach or research. She was at the Brookings Institution after being Chairman of the Fed. I suppose she could have been a senior VP at Goldman Sachs if she had wanted to be, but apparently she didn't.

She left a top position at the Fed several years ago. If she didn't go into the private sector after that, it's unlikely that she has any desire to do so, ever.

She did go into the private sector. How are these paid speaking engagements not private sector?

She didn't take a job as a managing director where she actually has decision making power. That's what people mean by going into the private sector.

What she did was give glorified TED Talks to a group. It's a performance.

> What she did was give glorified TED Talks to a group. It's a performance.

Even more reason to think that it's "selling out" and not "real" work.

Retire, possibly get a boardship or hot the speaking circuit again. She'll be eighty, she's not going to get an industry position.

Would sitting on one or more boards not be an option for Hellen and would those not be industry positions?

I don't really consider a boardship an industry position.

Like, you have executives at some companies serving on boardships in unrelated industries. They aren't working two jobs.

I would consider the speaking circuit to be an industry position. A very lucrative one.

The comment you replied to presented an industry position as the alternative to what she was doing, speaking. So if you're going to reframe those as equivalent, you should have stated that originally.

For now she accepts a low salary. Other federal Bank employees have left for generous jobs at Citadel like Ben Bernanke

She's already served as the chair of the Federal Reserve, so she could be working a cushy job right now. And, being 74 years old, she likely won't have many more working years left to offset taking a low salary now.

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