The New Treasury Secretary Made Millions Making Speeches To The Wall Street Banks That She Will Be Supervising

When are we going to wake up to the fact that it’s not Democrats versus Republicans? It’s the uber-rich, powerful, politically-connected elites against everyone else.

Janet Yellen seems like a nice, kind person. She was a former Federal Reserve chair and has been appointed to U.S. treasury secretary.

Behind the sweet grandma-ish appearance, Yellen is a smart and successful businesswoman. She was paid about $7 million in speaking engagements over the last two years. Yellen disclosed a list of more than 50 paid speaking events for “financial firms that included $67,500 from Goldman Sachs, $54,000 from an event at Barclays and $292,500 from a single speech for hedge fund Citadel.”

Yellen also earned “$112,500 from a single speaking engagement with UBS, $225,000 from a speech for PwC and $270,000 from an event with the London-headquartered bank Standard Chartered” and “ $992,000 from the investment bank Citi for nine appearances.” Yellen earned roughly $200,00 per year as the head of the U.S. Federal Bank between 2014 and 2018.

The treasury secretary’s job is to oversee Wall Street and America’s banking system. The big question is “How can Yellen stay impartial when she earned so much money from the banks, hedge funds and financial institutions that she’s going to oversee?”

Ben Bernanke was the U.S. Federal Reserve chair before Yellen and he “earned about $250,000 for a single speech after leaving the central bank, where he earned $199,700 a year.”

It’s become a common practice of ‘revolving-door’ politicians (both parties do this) to cash-in when they leave office. After their team loses an election, the high-end politically-appointed bureaucrats go to the business sector and earn a lot of money by ‘selling’ their knowledge and connections. Once their party gets back in office, they return to the public sector. This cycle keeps repeating.

The New York Times reported that “Biden’s choice for secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, was paid nearly $1.2 million by a consulting firm he helped found, WestExec Advisors, where he advised a range of corporations including Facebook, Boeing, the private equity giant Blackstone and the asset management company Lazard,” and Biden’s choice of “director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, was paid $180,000 to consult for the data-mining company Palantir, which has raised liberal hackles for providing data and surveillance services to law enforcement, including the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”

I could go on, but don’t want to ruin your New Year any more than I just did.