Nasdaq Has Lost More than 3,000 Points Since Trump’s First Full Day in Office in 2025; the Pain Has Barely Begun

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 21, 2025 ~ The clown show in Washington should not divert your gaze from the circus at the Nasdaq stock market. On January 20, 2025, the day that Donald Trump was sworn into office for his second term as President, the stock market was closed in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. On January 21, 2025, Trump’s first full day in office, the Nasdaq stock market closed at 19,756.7793. On Thursday, April 17, 2025 – the final day of trading last week because the stock market was closed for Good Friday on April 18 – the Nasdaq closed at 16,286.4476 – bringing its losses during Trump’s new reign in the White House to 3,470.3317 points or 17.57 percent. (The data comes from Dow Jones’ BigCharts.MarketWatch.com.) There are legitimate questions now being raised as to whether we’re in a tech bubble that’s going to … Continue reading

The Bond Crisis Last Week Was a Global No-Confidence Vote in U. S. President Donald Trump

Trump, Pied Piper

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 13, 2025 ~ U.S. President Donald Trump’s reputation for chaos; his longstanding history of thumbing his nose at the rule of law; his unpresidential insults directed at world leaders and willingness to turn his back on longstanding U.S. allies; and his packing of top cabinet posts with preposterously unqualified loyalists – have now delivered the inevitable blow to two of America’s most critical financial assets in domestic and  international markets: the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasury securities. Instead of performing their usual role as safe havens in times of turmoil, they are now indelibly linked to the Trump brand of erratic behavior. Both the U.S. Dollar and U.S. Treasury securities are in a downtrend, with the 10-year Treasury note taking a wild plunge in value last week. Mark Blyth, a political economist at Brown University, was quoted in the New York Times today with this … Continue reading

Trump’s Tariff Plan Guts $5 Trillion in Stock Value in Two Days; Senator Warren Calls for Emergency Action Before Markets Open on Monday

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 6, 2025 ~ On Wednesday, President Donald Trump unveiled his sweeping tariff plan. By Thursday, Wall Street was stampeding to the exit doors, leaving the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 1,679.39 points by the closing bell. Showing just how dangerous the market is assessing Trump’s tariff war to be, contrarian investors couldn’t even stage a short squeeze by Friday to push stocks back up – something they have been able to do regularly since Trump’s chaos courtiers invaded Washington, promising to “Occupy Mars” as they took a blow torch to their current planet. Friday was indicative of full-on selling panic, with the Dow losing another 2,231 points. The two-day rout in the S&P 500 tallied up to a breathtaking $5 trillion in market value losses, setting a two-day historic record. The plunge in the S&P 500 futures market was so steep before the stock market … Continue reading

Trump’s Attacks on Big Law, Universities, and the Media Have a Common Goal: Silence Dissent Against Authoritarian Rule

Brad Karp, Chair of Paul Weiss

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 24, 2025 ~ The New York Times’ Sunday, March 23 newspaper featured a lead story on how the 1,000-lawyer Big Law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a Wall Street favorite, had caved to threats in a Presidential Action from Donald Trump, which would have banned lawyers at the firm from entering federal buildings; from reviewing classified documents for their clients by stripping them of security clearance; and effectively blacklisting the firm as a member of Donald Trump’s enemy list. The Chair of Paul Weiss, Brad Karp, negotiated with Trump and got the order rescinded by agreeing to spend $40 million in pro bono work on projects amenable to Trump — along with other subservient concessions. Trump’s move against Paul Weiss followed his similar actions against Big Law firms Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling. Unlike Paul Weiss, Perkins Coie hired another Big … Continue reading

Trump Administration Gives All Clear to Laundering Money through Shell Companies and Bribing Foreign Officials

Trump, Pied Piper

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 19, 2025 ~ On February 10, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order that suspended the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) for 180 days, giving an all clear to U.S. corporations to bribe officials in foreign countries to get business deals approved. The order bars federal prosecutors from starting any new FCPA investigations, enforcing new actions and orders a review of existing FCPA investigations to “restore proper bounds” on applying the FCPA law. The FCPA, enacted in 1977, has been the law of the United States for almost half a century. In July 2020, the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission issued a comprehensive and updated guide to the FCPA. It explained its purpose as follows: “Foreign bribery is a scourge that must be eradicated. It undermines the rule of law, empowers authoritarian rulers, distorts free and fair markets, disadvantages honest and ethical companies, and threatens … Continue reading

Four Megabanks on Wall Street Hold $3.2 Trillion in Uninsured Deposits – Which May Explain Senator Schumer’s Pivot to the GOP to Stop a Government Shutdown

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 17, 2025 ~ During Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) political career, three of his five largest campaign donors have been Wall Street megabanks – Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. His second largest campaign donor over his political career are the partners and employees of Big Law firm Paul Weiss, where his brother, Robert, is actively engaged in Mergers and Acquisitions by major corporations that are publicly traded on Wall Street. Paul Weiss, as a firm, represents some of the largest banks and trading houses on Wall Street. Last week Schumer, the Minority Leader of the U.S. Senate, did a major pivot between Wednesday and Friday. On Wednesday he vowed that Democrats would stand firm in voting against the Republican version of a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the federal government open, a spending bill deeply opposed by the majority of Congressional Democrats, who viewed it … Continue reading

Here’s What Came Crashing Down Yesterday for Trump’s “Genius” Guy, Elon Musk: Tesla Stock, Access to Twitter (X), His Years of Secret Calls with Putin

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 11, 2024 ~ Billionaires Donald Trump and Elon Musk share a common credo: It’s legal if you can get away with it. (Key evidence to support that claim is the jury conviction of Donald Trump on 34 felony counts and his ability to secure a second term as President and the fact that Musk and his companies were under investigation by five federal Inspectors General – right before Donald Trump fired them and made Musk the investigator. There is also the not insignificant detail reported by the Wall Street Journal that Musk uses illegal drugs.) This credo came crashing down on the heads of both men yesterday. The U.S. stock market, a barometer of presidential leadership, plunged. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 890 points while the tech heavy Nasdaq dived 727.89 points or 4 percent. Tesla, the electric vehicle company where Musk serves as the … Continue reading

After Banning the Associated Press, Trump Is Now Targeting Specific Journalists That He Wants to See Fired

Donald Trump

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 10, 2025 ~ Last Thursday, while taking questions from the press in the Oval Office (where the 59-Pulitzer Prize winning Associated Press is still banned by Donald Trump) the President called out by name two MSNBC news program hosts that he said “should be forced to resign.” The journalists are Nicolle Wallace and Rachel Maddow, both of whom have doggedly connected the dots for their viewers on Trump’s grifting and unsavory alignment with his largest campaign donors and with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s attack on these two specific journalists followed a more general attack on the MSNBC cable network on February 18 during a Sean Hannity interview. Five days later, Joy Reid, another MSNBC program host – and one of Trump’s worst critics – learned that her program had been abruptly cancelled. (See our report: News Host Joy Reid Raises Threat of Trump Selling … Continue reading

Closely Watched Atlanta Fed Model Predicts Negative U.S. Growth in First Quarter

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 4, 2025 ~ On the very day that Donald Trump is set to deliver a major address to a joint session of Congress, with a disapproval rating of 52 percent according to a CNN poll out on Sunday, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s model for predicting U.S. economic growth is flashing red. The model is known as GDPNow and is highly respected for its accuracy. After an update yesterday based on new, incoming economic data, GDP for the first quarter is predicted to be -2.8 percent. The GDPNow staffers wrote this yesterday: “The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -2.8 percent on March 3, down from -1.5 percent on February 28. After this morning’s releases from the US Census Bureau and the Institute for Supply Management, the nowcast of first-quarter real personal consumption expenditures … Continue reading

Trump’s Gangster Diplomacy Makes Front Page Headlines Around the Globe

Irish Daily Mail, Front Page March 1, 2025

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 3, 2025 ~ Donald Trump’s gangster diplomacy and anger management issues went viral on the front page of newspapers around the globe on Saturday, following his verbal assault on Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, in the Oval Office on Friday. Those headlines were then parsed and debated on Sunday’s TV news programs here in the U.S. and by U.S. based newspaper columnists. Margaret Brennan of the CBS News program, Face the Nation, reported on her program on Sunday morning that “Our social media producers tell us that, as of this morning, we have had more than 100 million views on posts related to the meeting across our CBS News social media platforms.” The reason for the unprecedented interest is because no other U.S. President in history has conducted such thug “diplomacy” with a foreign ally by screaming at him in the Oval Office in … Continue reading