I read with some amusement that the federal Justice Department is launching an antitrust investigation into Nvidia, the chip maker that’s raking it in by selling the big semiconductors for artificial intelligence. Regular readers here know of whom I think whenever that company is mentioned: Saint Ron Wyden, the senior Oregon senator whose wife, Nancy Bass Wyden, owns many thousands of shares of Nvidia stock.
Ain’t that America. Here we have credible suspicion of ongoing violations of federal law, but the spouse of the chair of the Senate Finance Committee has seven figures riding on the suspected wrongdoer’s success. Can you say “conflict of interest”?
Back when I started looking into the Wyden-Nvidia connection, I calculated, from the somewhat vague financial disclosure forms that the senators file, that the Mrs. had plunked down between $375,000 and $950,000 for Nvidia stock back in the spring and summer of 2020. During that period, the stock was on a sharp rise, but let’s just guess that she paid an average of $400 a share at the time. She got some of the stock for less, and some of it for more, but that’s about where it was on the first Covid Fourth of July.
Since then, the stock has split twice. In 2021, it was split four for one, and so Bass Wyden’s cost per share dropped, let’s say from $400 to $100 per share. And just this week the stock was split again, 10 for one, so that her cost per share dropped to $10.
The stock, after both splits, is trading at about $120. That would mean that in four years, Mrs. Dub has made an 1100 percent return on her investment. If she bet, say, $500,000, she’s $5.5 million ahead. None of which has been taxed, of course.
If her spouse had to make a hard policy choice that would diminish the value of a particular corporation’s stock owned by his wife (and a little by his kids), would he do it? That’s the question I always ask myself.
Maybe the answer is forthcoming in a new book. The Wydens’ 2023 financial disclosure reveals tthat the senator picked up a $35,416.10 advance from Hachette Books last year. Their website reveals:
Hachette Books is a division of Perseus Books, a part of the Hachette Book Group, Inc., whose objective is to publish meaningful and provocative nonfiction. Hachette Books presents the leading writers in narrative nonfiction, business, science, history, health and wellness, pop culture, sports, and humor under two imprints: Hachette Books and Hachette Go. Hachette Book Group is a leading trade publisher based in New York and a division of Hachette Livre, the third largest trade and educational publisher in the world.
A Wyden memoir might not be such a hot page-turner. We’ve already had several versions of “I Married a Millionaire.” And “On the Town Hall Trail in Hermiston” may not have a lot of appeal. But even if it’s a flop, he got some dough up front, which is smart, and sheesh, there’ll always be the Nvidia jackpot.