Academic Paper Finds U.S. Banking System Is Less Safe Today than Before the 2010 Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Legislation Was Passed

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 22, 2024 ~ Four researchers at the University of Westminster School of Finance and Accounting in London have taken a hard look at the much-touted Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in the U.S. that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010. The voluminous 848-page bill followed the greatest financial crash in the U.S. since the Great Depression. Unfortunately, it was big on word count and short on iron-clad reforms, leaving the implementation of final rules to be negotiated by revolving-door regulators and an army of Wall Street lobbyists and lawyers. (For how that has played out over the ensuing 14 years, see here, here, here and here.) The authors of the study are Dr. Julie Ayton; Professor Abdelhafid Benamraoui; Dr. Huyen (Trang) Ngo; and Dr. Stefan van Dellen. They define the purpose of the study as follows: “The research paper tests two critical … Continue reading

Jerome Powell’s Fed Notches an Historic Record of $204 Billion in Cumulative Operating Losses – Losing Over $1 Billion a Week for More than Two Years

Jerome Powell (Thumbnail)

Commentary Next to Arrows Has Been Added by Wall Street On Parade. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 21, 2024 ~ According to its own FRED data, the last time the central bank of the United States – the Federal Reserve – operated in the green was September 14, 2022, more than two years ago. Since then, it has been consistently losing over $1 billion a week with its cumulative operating losses now topping $204 billion as of the last reporting by the Fed on October 16, 2024. Operating losses of this magnitude are unprecedented at the of Fed, which was created in 1913. If a publicly-traded company had been bleeding operating losses of more than $1 billion a week for more than two years, there would very likely be a change of leadership at the top. But Fed Chair Jerome Powell is no ordinary mortal. He survived the worst trading … Continue reading

Could Big Tech Own Federally-Insured Banks? Here Are the Dangers

Piggy Bank Thumbnail

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 17, 2024 ~ The risk of Big Tech firms like Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft getting an entrée into the federally-insured banking system by being allowed to buy or create a federally-insured industrial bank has raised alarm bells among three nonprofit watchdogs and the law professor who, literally, wrote the book on the mushrooming systemic risks in the U.S. banking system. Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr., Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University Law School, joined with the Consumer Federation of America, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, and the Center for Responsible Lending, to file an 18-page letter last Friday with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). (For background on Wilmarth’s seminal book, see our report: Everything this Book Predicted on Wall Street Megabanks Ruling their Regulators Is Now Unfolding.) Friday’s letter was in response to the FDIC’s proposal to … Continue reading

FEMA Was First Targeted by Project 2025; Now FEMA Workers Are Being Threatened While Providing Disaster Relief in North Carolina

Donald Trump

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 15, 2024 ~ On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that it had obtained an email penned by a Forest Service official who was assisting in Hurricane Helene recovery response operations in Western North Carolina indicating that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “had advised agencies on the ground to relocate workers, noting that U.S. military personnel ‘had come across…trucks of armed militia saying they were out hunting FEMA.’ ” While the report of trucks of armed militia has yet to be confirmed, a North Carolina man armed with a handgun and AR-style rifle was arrested on Saturday after allegedly stating that he was going to “go mess up some FEMA personnel,” according to Captain Jamie Keever of the Rutherford County, North Carolina Sheriff’s Office. The arrested man, 44-year old William Jacob Parsons, has been released on bail. That decision will, no doubt, raise anxiety … Continue reading

Bloomberg News Writes Puff Pieces on Jamie Dimon While Its Parent Does Business Deals with the Bank He Heads, JPMorgan Chase

Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 14, 2024 ~ For years now, we have observed the digital front page of Bloomberg News treating JPMorgan Chase’s Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, as the wise, venerable statesman of Wall Street. (See here, here, and here for a quick background.) That reverential treatment has continued as the bank Dimon is charged with overseeing has admitted to the following: laundering money for the largest Ponzi scheme mastermind in history, Bernie Madoff; rigging foreign exchange markets; rigging trading in U.S. Treasury securities and the precious metals markets; using depositors’ money from its federally-insured bank to trade derivatives in London and lose at least $6.2 billion of its depositors’ money; bribing Chinese officials with jobs for their relatives in order to get business deals in China. Even worse, throughout much of last year, the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands built a comprehensive case in federal court … Continue reading

Hurricanes Helene and Milton Send Climate Change Wakeup Call as Gulf of Mexico Water Breaks Heat Records

Ocean Heat in Gulf of Mexico (Thumbnail)

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 11, 2024 ~ The size, wind speed intensity, and devastating water impacts of hurricanes originating from the record hot waters of the Gulf of Mexico have sent a wake up call to local and state officials up and down the East Coast of the United States as well as to federal government officials engaged in disaster relief. Hurricane Helene made landfall on Thursday night, September 26, as a Category 4 hurricane near Perry, Florida. It then proceeded to unleash its wrath northward, plowing through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Decimated areas in Western North Carolina – cities and towns such as Asheville, Chimney Rock, Lake Lure, Fairview, Black Mountain and Swannanoa – are 485 miles north of where Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida. Unprecedented levels of rainfall from Hurricane Helene turned Western North Carolina rivers into raging torrents of water that … Continue reading

A Bank Regulator Provides a Frightening Look at the Trading Casino Jamie Dimon Has Built Inside His Federally-Insured Bank

Jamie Dimon Sits in Front of Trading Monitor in his Office (Source -- 60 Minutes Interview, November 10, 2019)

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 7, 2024 ~ On September 24, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released its Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities for the second quarter of this year. The OCC is the federal regulator of banks that operate across state lines, which are known as “national banks.” The shorthand for this report should be the “Casino Report.” Increasingly, the report showcases how much dangerous trading activity the brokerage firms on Wall Street have been able to muscle into their federally-insured banking units where the deposits of millions of average Americans reside. Since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 under the Bill Clinton administration, Wall Street trading firms have been allowed to combine with federally-insured banks – creating an endless series of crises and bailouts. No bank has been able to blur the lines between a trading casino and … Continue reading

Report: “Flash Flooding Is the Number One Storm-Related Killer in the U.S.” Few Cities or Towns in America Are Built to Survive Its Wrath

Flooding in Asheville, North Carolina from Hurricane Helene

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 3, 2024 ~ As desperate and traumatized residents of Western North Carolina have learned over the past week, everything Americans thought they knew about storm threats must now be reexamined. Some Western North Carolina counties located 485 miles north of where Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on September 26 in Florida’s Big Bend area have reported more deaths than the entire state of Florida. At yesterday’s press briefing in Buncombe County, North Carolina, Sheriff Quentin Miller reported that the death toll for his county from Hurricane Helene had reached 61; that’s four times the 14 Hurricane Helene-related deaths that the state of Florida is reporting. As of this morning, total deaths reported in all states impacted by Hurricane Helene is 190, making it the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. After wiping out communities on … Continue reading

Hurricane Helene Dumped 20 Trillion Gallons of Rain, Destroying Entire Towns in Western North Carolina, Hundreds of Miles from any Coastline

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 1, 2024 ~ If you think you are safe from climate change, sea level rise, Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, storm surge and the like because you don’t live near an ocean or the Gulf of Mexico, the humanitarian crisis from Hurricane Helene that is playing out in Western North Carolina should quickly reorient your thinking on the matter. (You can be assured that it is doing just that in actuarial offices at insurance companies across the United States right now.) The worst hit areas of Western North Carolina – cities and towns like Asheville, Chimney Rock, Lake Lure, Fairview, Black Mountain, and Swannanoa – are 485 miles north of Perry, Florida, the town closest to where Hurricane Helene made landfall on Thursday night, September 26, as a Category 4 hurricane on the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. These decimated towns in Western … Continue reading

Half of All Deaths from Hurricane Helene Occurred 485 Miles North of Where It Made Landfall

Photo Posted on Twitter (X) of What's Left of Homes in Chimney Rock, North Carolina

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 30, 2024 ~ As an unprecedented humanitarian crisis was happening in real time yesterday morning in Western North Carolina, we turned on the Sunday News programs: CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper and, later in the morning, Face the Nation on CBS. We were stunned that the focus of both programs was the war in the Middle East and the presidential election. As both national news programs were airing, local news reports were coming out of Buncombe County, North Carolina that people there had no electric power, no running water, no cell phone service, impassible roads, and no distribution centers had been established for bottled water or food because the tractor trailers with the supplies had not arrived — two days after the hurricane hit. At the 10 a.m. press briefing by Buncombe County officials, 10 people were reported dead from Hurricane … Continue reading