BACK TO THE FUTURES

...Others in this cattle caper found themselves in legal trouble: In late 1979, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange disciplined REFCO for “serious and repeated violations of record-keeping functions, order-entry procedures, margin requirements, and hedge procedures,” according to Merc records obtained by the Wall Street Journal...

...It was Clinton’s biggest single trade with REFCO, and the most profitable,” Kevin Johnson and Bill Montague reported in the April 7, 1994 USA Today...

...This practice came alive on June 27, 1979...

...A live cattle-futures contract is a commitment to purchase or deliver 20 tons of beef, at a date and price stated in each contract...

...By day’s end she had made $5,300, a nifty, 530 percent profit...

...Asked in one legal case It was Clinton’s biggest single trade with REFCO, and the most Seemingly carrying both long and short positions, she bet cattle prices would go both up and down...

...Clinton’s final trades were “a confusing flourish,” James Ring Adams wrote...

...She cleared $43,760 that day...

...If Hillary Clinton, then Arkansas’ First Lady, received special handling, was anything expected in return...

...it of $60,000...

...Tyson Foods also had a special place at the table during the Clinton presidency...

...BACK TO THE FUTURES Hillary Clinton’s cattle trades reveal cut corners, stuffed pockets, and cash for favors...

...However, trading records indicate that Clinton had just $25,011 in her account...

...REFCO...

...That June 27, these two brokers sold “short” 1,443 feeder-cattle contracts...

...The view isn’t pretty...

...The Merc fined REFCO $250,000 (back then, its largest penalty ever), suspended Red Bone for three years, and disciplined several of his associates...

...Even if she had been clever enough to buy at the very bottom and sell at the very top, it would have taken more than one contract for her to make that kind of money,” the Futures Industries Association’s John M. Damgard told Evanoff...

...They said they were directed to lock themselves in their offices after the market closed, turn back the clocks used to time-stamp trading slips, and then create bogus, individual customerf e b R U a R Y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 2 7 b a c k T o T H e f U T U R e s trading orders that could be substituted for that day’s actual, massive block orders...

...Experts consider this an unusually large turnover for such a trading position in just one session...

...Still hazy after all these years is whether this haystack of excessive and backdated trading slips let REFCO pitchfork losses into Tyson’s accounts and gains into Clinton’s So what if hillary clinton and her husband portfolio...

...And into this cattle casino Hillary Clinton hoofed...

...As the Clintons loaded up their moving van with White House antiques in December 2000, President Clinton pardoned virtually everyone whom Smaltz prosecuted...

...He later received a second, more serious suspension for violating the first one...

...And analysts wonder whether she or someone else was directing her trading activity...

...The Clintons’ bonanza parallels the payout in public favors that Tyson Foods, Inc.—Arkansas’ largest employer and America’s premier poultry 2 6 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R f e b R U a R Y 2 0 0 8 d e R o Y M U R d o c k company—enjoyed once Hillary cashed in her cattle contracts...

...illegal gratuities...

...In 1978 and 1979, Tyson Foods was also a major client at REFCO’s Springdale office, where it maintained three corporate accounts...

...Or maybe she learned plenty from reading the Wall Street Journal, to which she attributed much of her trading prowess...

...Not bad...

...f e b R U a R Y 2 0 0 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R 2 9...

...It triggers colorful images of rugged cowboys rustling steers and branding bulls...

...In a lawsuit filed against Red Bone, REFCO client Randall Barnes said he covered his trading losses in 1978 by handing Bone the mortgage to his farm...

...As USA Today reported on April 25, 1994, Bill McCurdy and Steven Johns, two REFCO brokers in Springdale, testified in an investor’s fraud lawsuit against REFCO...

...Not bad at all...

...I trusted Jim Blair and it worked for me,” she once said...

...In spring 1994, the U.S...

...Tyson Foods “would continue during the Clinton years in Little Rock to be one of the most powerful forces in Arkansas,” Roger Morris wrote in Partners in Power: The Clintons and Their America (Henry Holt, 1995...

...This article appears as an appendix in the new book compendium for Hillary: The Movie, which is available now from Citizens United Productions at CitizensUnited.org or at hillarythemovie.com...

...While this smacked of favoritism, then-White House aide John Podesta disagreed: “We don’t believe Mrs...

...Every warm human being got relief,” during Clinton’s pardon-orama, Jeffress said...

...As hillary clinton continues her long march toward the Democratic nomination, old expressions like “Whitewater,” “Rose Law Firm,” and “missing billing records” surely will re-surface...

...benefited from irregular trades 28 years ago...

...In exchange, summit notes revealed, Yeltsin lifted a Russian ban on American chicken, a very convenient trade concession for Tyson...

...Blair served as Clinton’s adviser and tour guide through the cattlefutures labyrinth...

...Department of Agriculture blocked a bid to extend to poultry a “zero tolerance” standard for fecal matter that applied to other meats...

...While this is no small sum today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Inflation Calculator indicates that $100,000 in 1979 would equal $287,790.63 in 2007...

...Normally, traders are allowed 300 contracts each, daily...

...deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University...

...The Clintons reportedly used these astronomical earnings for a down payment on a home, plus some tax-free municipal bonds...

...That happened to be the day when Hillary Clinton invested in 50 cattle-futures contracts...

...Martin Elgison, an Atlanta attorney who represented a lawyer who lost money trading at REFCO, said this about Hillary Clinton’s cattle trades: “One can speculate it was just luck, or it was something more sinister...

...The article is reprinted with permission from Citizens United...

...June 27, 1979 also is one of just three days whose trading records the Clinton White House said were lost...

...by Deroy Murdock Hillary Clinton’s ten-month foray in this field generated sky-high profits that remain as pungent as a mountain of manure...

...Even 28 years hence, these odd deals serve as windows onto the Clintonian ethical landscape...

...In what was nicknamed the “Chechens for Chickens Affair,” President Clinton backed Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s re-election bid in 1995, despite Moscow’s belligerent response to the Chechen independence movement...

...As Charles Babcock observed in the May 27, 1994 Washington Post, “Although Hillary Rodham Clinton’s account was under-margined for nearly all of July 1979, no margin calls were made, no additional cash was put up, and she eventually reaped a Such enormous volume required a margin depos$60,000 profit...

...In fact, he apparently took a rather hands-on approach to Clinton’s portfolio...

...Researchers at Auburn University and the University of North Florida in 1995 compared Hillary Clinton’s futures records with market data from the Wall Street Journal at the time she traded...

...Stanley Greenwood might beg to differ...

...Alternatively, some clients could absorb losing trades in order to enrich other account holders by having REFCO give them winning hands that they really hadn’t earned...

...2 8 T H e a M e R I c a n s P e c T a T o R f e b R U a R Y 2 0 0 8 d e R o Y M U R d o c k Associated Press: “The message was very, very loud and clear that we were to stop the process...

...Even the people who pleaded guilty got a pardon,” said William Jeffress, attorney for Tyson executive Archie Schaffer III...

...According to Chicago Mercantile Exchange records obtained by the Wall Street Journal, Red Bone and a colleague exceeded their trading limits that day...

...That didn’t happen...

...Hillary Clinton entered this business beside James Blair...

...Clinton’s dealer was a World Series of Poker semifinalist and 13-year Tyson Foods alumnus fittingly named Robert L. “Red” Bone...

...Perhaps she was blessed with good fortune...

...On December 2, 1998, Espy was I h charges that Tyson tried to influence him w m i i y s e M n i a k ug E ust p 1997 was , former ndicted Agriculture for corrupt Secre on a tary it id acquitted on all 30 counts in his federal indictment...

...As they reported in the Journal of Economics and Statistics, their computer model calculated that the probability that her profits were legitimate was less than one in 250 million...

...In the end, Hillary Clinton’s $1,000 bet yielded $99,540, a return on investment of roughly 10,000 percent, far beyond the 1,700 percent gain The American Spectator’s James Ring Adams believes an investor legitimately could have garnered during this period...

...a purchase of ten contracts worth $12,000, even though she had just $1,000 in her Clinton’s maiden trade on October 11, 1978, was account...

...In a plea agreement with special prosecutor Donald Smaltz, Tyson Foods admitted to attempting to influence Espy with $12,000 in sports tickets, airplane travel, meals, and other gifts...

...She reported not $2,840 in profits on her first deal, but $5,300...

...And just when was this flurry of impropriety...

...I think it’s become clear he placed most of the trades,” thenWhite House spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers admitted in April 1994...

...She reported not $2,840 in profits on her first deal, but $5,300...

...This is a bit like handing out a tavern’s bar tabs to patrons after last call—not according to actual booze intake, but by giving the low-cost checks to favored guests, and the big tickets to poorly regarded suckers...

...As Wilson Horne, USDA’s former chief meat inspector, told the profitable...

...if he considered such block trading proper, McCurdy answered: “I don’t think that it is...

...A more accurate picture, however, involves slick securities traders cutting corners and peddling influence...

...Meanwhile, environmental regulators in Little Rock also trod lightly on Tyson, allowing it to pour chicken waste into local rivers...

...If their business were kosher, certainly so...

...Perhaps with her head spinning, Hillary Clinton dismounted this bucking bronco on July 23, 1979...

...As the Associated Press reported, Schaffer was convicted in 1998 of trying to sway Espy illegally by inviting him to a party for Tyson chief Don “Big Daddy” Tyson...

...A $2,840 profit seems to be the maximum one normally could have made under those circumstances...

...It seems significant that Clinton prospered under the guidance of Tyson’s lawyer, James Blair...

...She never saddled up again...

...Federal juries in Arkansas convicted REFCO of e e w . a e l n ma defrauding ipulate the cus catt tomers e-futur and s m brok rket ers Ho by ev trying r, thes to verdicts eventually were overturned on appeal...

...Another such phrase is “cattle futures...

...Tyson even gave Espy’s girlfriend, Patricia Dempsey, a $1,200 college scholarship...

...She finally closed her REFCO account in October 1979, just before cattle prices plunged, impoverishing many of her fellow cattle speculators...

...Hillary Clinton’s trades coincided with REFCO’s habit of buying cattle contracts en masse, then later allocating wins and losses among clients, often independently of how they actually invested...

...As court records reveal, McCurdy and Johns swore that they covered up block trading one summer afternoon...

...These agreements help ranchers and butchers predict prices and plan accordingly...

...The directing of a huge bundle of money into the Clinton pocket,” syndicated columnist William Safire wrote in 1994, “could be classified under a word that has only been whispered in connection with this deal: bribery, in its most modern form...

...What has made analysts wonder about her venture is the initial transaction,” Evanoff wrote...

...REFCO rules called for Clinton to deposit $92,364 in her account to underwrite such exposure...

...Shortly before working with Clinton, James Ring Adams reported in the August 1994 American Spectator, Red Bone “had completed a one-year partial suspension on charges of plotting to manipulate the egg-futures market on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange...

...That July 12, Hillary Clinton avoided a margin call that abruptly would have made her cows come home...

...But that’s not all...

...He was external counsel, and later general counsel, to Tyson Foods...

...On April 3, 1994, as this story erupted among the countless controversies that characterized the Clinton years, the Memphis Commercial Appeal’s Ted Evanoff explained how this system works...

...So, after just one day in her new career as a cattlefutures trader, questions already began to swirl like flies around Hillary Clinton...

...Her adventures in the arcane, volatile world of cattle futures trading include fishy transactions, scheming corporate lawyers, morally challenged commodities brokers, and a hefty jackpot for her and her husband, Arkansas’ then-attorney general and subsequent governor, William Jefferson Clinton...

...That July 12, Clinton carried a $41,740 loss in one trade, $22,155 in a second, and a $2,625 profit in a third...

...As Bill Clinton’s governorship unfolded, Tyson received at least $9 million in Arkansas state loans...

...Before throwing in her lasso, she traded separate blocks of 50 contracts...

...It paid $4 million in fines and $2 million in investigative costs for trying to make friends in high places...

...Woulda, shoulda, coulda...

...A typical trader aims to sell such a contract to a slaughterhouse before its delivery date...

...Hillary Clinton invested where Blair and Tyson did their bidding—with the Springdale, Arkansas office of Chicago-based Ray E. Friedman & Co...

...During the period she was trading commodities, she and her husband owned no substantial assets and were living on a combined income of about $50,000 a year,” Sara Fritz and John Broder reported in the April 5, 1994 Los Angeles Times...

...Tyson benefited from “tens of millions in state-promoted business and literally billions in ongoing income derived under a regime of regulatory, tax, and other political advantages...

...So what did the clintons get for this cyclone of sleaze that spun around them...

...But these trades reek of favoritism at best and fraud at worst...

...According to the Commercial Appeal’s Evanoff, investors in the late 1970s could purchase single contracts for about $700 in margin money...

...Greenwood, who also traded with REFCO’s Springdale office, saw his investments liquidated when he did not deposit $48,000 against his losses...

...Clinton got different treatment than other REFCO clients...

...Shouldn’t this be brisket under the bridge...

...The Chicago Mercantile Exchange said there were “serious and repeated violations of recordkeeping functions, order-entry procedures, margin requirements, and hedge procedures...

...June 27, 1979...

...Otherwise, a tractor trailer will drive up to his office lobby, while about 38 bovines wait to be sent up to, say, the 35th-floor conference room to await further instructions...