Hillary Rodham Cattle Futures Controversy - Trades and First Exposure

Trades and First Exposure

Rodham had no experience in such financial instruments. Bill Clinton's salary as Arkansas Attorney General and then Governor of Arkansas was modest and Rodham was interested in building a financial cushion for the future (the ill-fated Whitewater Development Corporation would be another such effort from this time.) Starting in October 1978, when Bill Clinton was Attorney General and on the verge of being elected Governor, she was guided by James Blair, a friend, lawyer, outside counsel to Tyson Foods, Arkansas' largest employer, and, since 1977, a futures trader who was doing so well he encouraged friends and family to enter the commodity markets as well. Blair in turn traded through, and relied upon cattle markets expertise from, broker Robert L. "Red" Bone of Refco, a former Tyson executive and professional poker player who was a World Series of Poker semifinalist.

Rodham later wrote that she educated herself about the market and followed it closely, winning and losing money. By January 1979, she was up $26,000; but later, she would lose $16,000 in a single trade. At one point she owed in excess of $100,000 to Refco as part of covering losses, but no margin calls were made by Refco against her. Near the end of the trading, Blair correctly sold short and gave her a $40,000 gain in one afternoon. In July 1979, once she became pregnant with Chelsea Clinton, "I lost my nerve for gambling walked away from the table $100,000 ahead." She briefly traded sugar futures contracts and other non-cattle commodities in October 1979, but more conservatively, through Stephens Inc.. During this period she made about $6,500 in gains (which she failed to pay taxes on at the time, consequently later paying some $14,600 in federal and state tax penalties in the 1990s). Once her daughter was born in February 1980, she moved all her commodities gains into U.S. Treasury Bonds.

The profits made during the cattle trading first came to public light in a March 18, 1994 report by The New York Times, which had been reviewing the Clintons' financial records for two months. It immediately gained considerable press attention, and coincided with the beginning of congressional hearings over the Whitewater controversy. Media pressure continued to build, and on April 22, 1994, Hillary Clinton gave an unusual press conference under a portrait of Abraham Lincoln in the State Dining Room of the White House, to address questions on both matters; it was broadcast live by CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN. In it she said she had done the trading, but often relying upon the advice of Blair, and having him place orders for her; she said she did not believe she had received preferential treatment in the process. She also downplayed the dangers of such trading: "I didn't think it was that big a risk. and the people he was talking with knew what they were doing." Afterwards she won media praise for the manner in which she conducted herself during this, her first adversarial press conference; Time called her "open, candid, but above all unflappable ... the real message was her attitude and her poise. The confiding tone and relaxed body language ... immediately drew approving reviews."