(She is a very rich woman, that's for sure.)
WHITE HOUSE DODGES QUESTION ABOUT YELLEN'S FEES. This will be a newsletter with one quick point. New Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made a lot of money -- $7.2 million, precisely -- over the last two years by making speeches at events held by banks and other financial institutions. That is bound to create a conflict of interest -- or, as official Washington likes to say, the appearance of a conflict of interest -- when Yellen, as Treasury Secretary, deals with all those companies that have written her big checks.
It already has. As it turns out, one of the financial institutions that paid Yellen so handsomely is involved in the GameStop insanity that is roiling the hedge fund world. The reddit-powered runup of GameStop's stock dealt an enormous blow to Melvin Capital Management, the hedge fund that had hoped to make a big profit off the decline of GameStop stock and instead faced enormous losses when the stock rose. Melvin survived with a $2 billion bailout from another fund, Citadel LLC.