RUTHFULLY YOURS

The opportunities for corruption – insider trading of the worst kind – were obvious and deeply disturbing when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state and her son-in-law went into a very specific kind of investing.  And the fact that ne’er-do-well husband of Chelsea and father of two grandkids Mark Mezvinsky ended up botching his hedge fund and losing his investors’ money does not prove innocence.

In a long article at Foxnews.com, Peter Byrne lays out the tangled web of influence behind the big financial stakes swirling around Hillary’s actions as secretary of state in 2012.

Mezvinsky, who in earlier years had abandoned work and his wife to go be a ski bum for a number of months, returned to Wall Street and set up a hedge fund that was a kind of satellite operation for Goldman Sachs, the key player on Wall Street; supplier of many top executives to the Treasury Department; and, of course, mega-donor and speech honorarium payer to the Clintons.

In 2012, Mezvinski, the husband of Chelsea Clinton, created a $325 million basket of offshore funds under the Eaglevale Partners banner through a special arrangement with investment bank Goldman Sachs. The funds have lost tens of millions of dollars predicting that bailouts of the Greek banking system would pump up the value of the country’s distressed bonds. One fund, exclusively dedicated to Greek debt, suffered near-total losses.

Clinton stepped down as secretary of state in 2013 to run for president. But newly released emails from 2012 show that she and Clinton Foundation consultant, Sidney Blumenthal, shared classified information about how German leadership viewed the prospects for a Greek bailout. Clinton also shared “protected” State Department information about Greek bonds with her husband at the same time that her son-in-law aimed his hedge fund at Greece.

That America’s top diplomat kept a sharp eye on intelligence assessing the chances of a bailout of the Greek central bank is not a problem. However, sharing such sensitive information with friends and family would have been highly improper. Federal regulations prohibit the use of nonpublic information to further private interests or the interests of others. The mere perception of a conflict of interest is unacceptable.

Germany was the country that would pay the greatest amount to bail out Greece, so insight into Germany’s plans could pay off big for holders of government bonds bought at fire sale prices.  This inevitably leads to a “perception of a conflict of interest” for Hillary Clinton, even if she never breathed a word to her son-in-law.  But she might even have had to:

The same month that Eaglevale incorporated its offshore arm, Gary Gensler, the head of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which polices hedge funds, emailed Clinton that a bailout by the European Central Bank could “turn market sentiment” in favor of Greek bonds.

Gensler had previously worked as co-head of finance at Goldman Sachs; he is now the financial director of Clinton’s election campaign. Goldman Sachs has donated up to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation and $860,000 to Hillary Clinton’s political campaigns. Shortly after Clinton resigned, Goldman Sachs paid her $675,000 in speaking fees.

So the guy currently in charge of raising big bucks for Hillary also has his fingerprints all over this hedge fund and seeking information relevant to the bailout.

Can you say “culture of corruption”?  Can you say “rigged system”?

The fact that Mezvinsky chose a field of investing directly affected by the diplomacy of the United States while his mother-in-law was in charge of that is damning.  In a way, it is too bad that Mezvinsky lost his investors’ money, because at least that way there is no smoking gun for Hillary’s corrupt influence.