Gee, You Think?

There was a massive surge in stock trading just before Kodak announced a massive federal loan to make medical reagents for the pandemic.

Elizabeth Warren has noticed this as well:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate potential insider trading surrounding Eastman Kodak’s recent announcement that it would receive a $765 million government loan to start producing the chemical ingredients needed to make pharmaceuticals.

The day before the loan was announced, more than 1 million shares of Kodak’s stock traded hands compared with a daily average of 236,479 over the past year, Warren (D-Mass.) said in a letter to SEC Chair Jay Clayton. The company’s stock price rose about 20 percent that day, July 27, and increased more than 200 percent the next day, July 28, when the loan was announced.

Warren also noted that shortly before the announcement, James Continenza, Kodak’s executive chairman, purchased about 46,700 shares. The purchase “while the company was involved in secret negotiations with the government over a lucrative contract raises questions about whether these executives potentially made investment decisions based on material, non-public information derived from their positions,” Warren said.

………

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the SEC had opened an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the announcement of Kodak’s loan.


The SEC declined to comment on Warren’s letter and the WSJ report of an investigation.

While there are indications that Kodak insiders were involved, but my money is on Trump administration officials being involved in this as well, because corruption about the only thing that Trump and Evil Minions^™ do at all well.