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Recent Posts
- Wall Street’s Megabanks Have Trillions of Dollars Off-Balance Sheet, in a Replay of Accounting Hubris that Led to the 2008 Wall Street Collapse
- JPMorgan Remains the Second Largest Money Market Fund Manager, Despite Needing Billions in Money Market Bailouts from the Fed in 2020
- The First Bank Failure of 2024 Leaves a 1-Cent Stock for Investors and $667 Million in Losses for the FDIC
- Catch and Kill Protection Rackets: Trump, Weinstein, Epstein and Wall Street
- Wall Street’s Judge Shopping Continues: It’s Trying to Stop the FTC’s Ban on Worker Handcuffs Known as Non-Compete Agreements
- The Fed Tallies Up a Big Threat to Financial Stability in the U.S.: “Runnables” at $21.3 Trillion
- Billionaire-Owned Media Has Gone Full Throttle to Save Fellow Billionaire, Jamie Dimon
- The Professor Who Wrote the Seminal Book on Wall Street Megabanks Calls Today’s Financial System “Dangerously Unstable”
- Gold Has Set Historic Highs this Year as the Federal Reserve Has Reported Historic Losses
- Stanford Finance Professor Anat Admati Is Making Jamie Dimon Very Nervous – Again Calling His Bank “Dangerous”
- Jamie Dimon Dumped $150 Million of His JPMorgan Stock in February; Now He Says His Regulators Want 25 Percent More Capital at his Bank
- The Black Swan Rears Its Head: The Fed Has Negative Capital Using GAAP Accounting
- New York Fed Will Not Confirm or Deny that 5-Count Felon JPMorgan Chase Is Custodian of $2.4 Trillion of Its Securities
- For the First Time in History, the Fed Is Reporting Billions in Losses Weekly; It’s Still Paying High Interest Income to the Mega Banks on Wall Street
- There’s a Revival of the Dotcom-esque Froth in Today’s Markets; Cathie Wood Is Standing in for Henry Blodget and Jack Grubman; Nasdaq Is Playing Nasdaq
- Study Finds Wall Street Mega Banks Have Overstated Income for Years on Commercial Real Estate Loans They Sell to Investors
- Jamie Dimon Huddles in Private with Biden Bigwigs as His Bank Faces More Crime Charges
- Report: Five Banks Have a Combined Half Trillion Dollars in Commercial Real Estate Loans; Number 1 is JPMorgan Chase
- Billionaire Larry Fink of BlackRock, Which Grabbed Fed Bailouts in 2020-2021, Lectures Struggling Seniors on Making More Sacrifices
- Almost 10,000 U.S. Banks Have Disappeared Since 1985, Leaving 4 Mega Banks Controlling 39 Percent of Bank Assets
- Wall Street’s Go-To Law Firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, Got in Bed with Crypto; Now Its Reputation Is Being Hammered
- More Failed Banks and Office Building Demolitions Likely Before Real Estate Problems End, Warn Two Federal Agencies
- During Spring Bank Panic of 2023, Liquidity Advances from FHLBs Topped Those of Q4 2008, when Wall Street Was in Collapse
- JPMorgan’s Federally-Insured Bank Is Fined $348 Million for Losing Track of “Billions” of Trades
- Hedge Fund Titan John Paulson Made $1 Billion in an Illegal Goldman Sachs Deal; Trump Is Now Floating Him for Treasury Secretary
- Wall Street Mega Banks Have Drawn a Law-Free Zone Around Themselves – The Media Is Complicit
- A Financial Writer at New York Times Admits He’s Been Misrepresenting Bank Capital for 14 Years
- FDIC Data Contradicts Fed Chair Powell: Shows Real Estate Problems Have Skyrocketed at Largest U.S. Banks, Not the Smaller Regionals
- Senator Elizabeth Warren Calls Fed Chair Powell “Weak-Kneed”; Says He Is “Driving Efforts Inside the Fed” to Gut Higher Capital Requirements
- Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury Secretary/Foreclosure Kingpin, Joins with Hedge Fund Guys to Grab a Teetering, Federally-Insured Bank for $2 a Share
- Wall Street Mega Banks Have Created a Circular Firing Squad with Credit Derivatives and Capital Relief Trades – with the Fed’s Blessing
- New York Community Bancorp Was JPMorgan’s Top Regional Bank Pick for 2024; It’s Lost 73 Percent Y-T-D and Had Its Deposit Rating Downgraded to Junk
- Watchdog, Better Markets, Investigates the Bank that Has Lost 65 Percent of Its Market Value in Two Months and Was Downgraded to Junk by Moody’s
- The Fed Pretends to Send a Warning to Wall Street’s Mega Banks on Derivatives and Counterparty Risk
- $87 Million Buys This for Jamie Dimon: David Boies Can’t Utter the Words “JPMorgan Chase” in a Jeffrey Epstein Sex Trafficking Case
- Jamie Dimon and Nine of His Top Executives at JPMorgan Chase Have Dumped Over $150 Million of their JPMorgan Stock in Last Two Months
- These Charts Reveal Why the Fed Is Frightened about Capital Levels at the Wall Street Mega Banks
- Wall Street Law Firm Sullivan & Cromwell Gets Sued Over Allegations It Aided and Abetted the FTX Crypto Fraud
- JPMorgan Says Its “Trading Venues” Are Under Investigation While It’s Still on Probation for Prior Trading Crimes
- Jamie Dimon Is Desperate to Pin the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal on Jes Staley; Bloomberg News Is Carrying His Water — Again
- Citigroup Is Having a Very Bad Week; Regulators Are Breathing Down Its Neck
- Five Wall Street Banks Hold $223 Trillion in Derivatives — 83 Percent of All Derivatives at 4,600 Banks
- Jamie Dimon’s Statement Last Month that Trump “Was Kind of Right About NATO,” Sounds Even More Unhinged Today
- S&P 500 Sets a Record on Wednesday as Banks Continue Tanking
- NYCB Downgraded to Junk; Shocking Charts for Citigroup, Barclays and Deutsche Bank
- Reporters Who Ask Tough Questions at Fed Press Conferences Have a Habit of Being Disappeared from the Room
- Jamie Dimon Has Spent $117 Billion Propping Up JPMorgan’s Share Price with Buybacks in 10 Years; He’s Counting on Trump’s MAGA Crowd to Rescue Him
- Bank Fraud Enters a New Era: Bank-to-Bank Wire Transfers Loot Customers
- Senator Sherrod Brown Takes on the Fed’s Support of Wealth Stripping the Middle Class
- JPMorgan Chase Has Used the Same Auditor for 58 Years, Despite Giant Frauds at the Bank in the Last Nine Years
Search Results for: Blackrock
Billionaire Larry Fink of BlackRock, Which Grabbed Fed Bailouts in 2020-2021, Lectures Struggling Seniors on Making More Sacrifices
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 27, 2024 ~ Yesterday, billionaire Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of the giant investment manager BlackRock, released his annual letter to shareholders. In it, Fink revives the same ole trope that billionaires Kenneth Langone and Stanley Druckenmiller were taking on a road show in 2013. Back then the billionaire propaganda was called: “Generational Theft: How Entitlement Spending is Stealing Opportunity from America’s Youth.” Every time there is talk of raising taxes on the super-rich, some of whom pay less in taxes than plumbers and teachers through a tricked-up tax dodge known as “carried interest,” the billionaires launch a concerted effort to scapegoat struggling seniors living on an average monthly Social Security retirement benefit of $1772.51. The inability of younger Americans to save enough for retirement couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Wall Street gobbling up two-thirds of lifetime retirement savings in fees, as Frontline … Continue reading
BlackRock Stands at the Nexus Between Derivatives Blowing Up in U.K. Pensions and the Shortest Tenure of a Prime Minister in U.K. History
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 21, 2022 ~ Goodbye Liz Truss. We hardly knew ye. Yesterday, Liz Truss announced she would resign as Prime Minister of the U.K. after just 44 days in office. That’s a new one for the record books in the U.K. In her brief span in office, Truss had managed to create a financial crisis in the sovereign debt market, force a bailout by the Bank of England, trigger alarm bells about the safety of pension plans in the U.K., and fire her Finance Minister. All of these events are interconnected. Here’s the short version: On September 23 Truss’ Finance Minister (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) Kwasi Kwarteng announced big tax cuts which had to be funded through higher government borrowing because the Truss government had no clear plan for how to pay for them. This was interpreted by debt markets to mean bigger deficits, … Continue reading
The Fed Is Subsidizing the Money Market Funds Operated by Larry Fink’s BlackRock as BlackRock Manages a Big Part of Jerome Powell’s Wealth
Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 21, 2021 ~ Last year, during the financial crisis, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell held five confidential phone calls with BlackRock’s Chairman and CEO Larry Fink. The first call on March 19 lasted 30 minutes; there were two calls in April, one on April 3 and one on April 9, both lasting 15 minutes. A phone call between Powell and Fink on May 13 lasted 30 minutes; and one on November 20 lasted 10 minutes. That’s a total of 100 minutes that the Chairman of the central bank of the United States spent on the phone with the man who heads the company that is also managing a large portion of Powell’s wealth through its iShares Exchange Traded Funds. The dates and times of the phone calls come from Powell’s publicly-released daily calendars. Powell’s phone calls with Fink continued this year. On February 5, Powell held … Continue reading
Senator Warren: “BlackRock Manages More Assets than the Entire GDP of Japan.” (How About JPMorgan Chase Having Custody of Assets That Are 5.8 Times the GDP of Japan.)
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 25, 2021 ~ Yesterday, during a Senate Banking hearing with witnesses Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Senator Elizabeth Warren grilled Yellen on why BlackRock wasn’t being investigated for posing a systemic risk to the U.S. financial system. Warren stated: “BlackRock is the world’s largest asset management firm, overseeing nearly $9 trillion in assets. That’s more than double where it was 10 years ago. It also holds a stake in just about every company listed on the S&P 500. To put that in perspective, Blackrock manages more assets than the entire GDP of Japan, or Germany, or Great Britain or any other nation in the world, except the United States and China.” BlackRock may, indeed, pose a systemic risk to the U.S. financial system but it’s not because it holds a stake in just about every company listed on the S&P … Continue reading
Fed Chair Powell Had 4 Private Phone Calls with BlackRock’s CEO Since March as BlackRock Manages Upwards of $25 Million of Powell’s Personal Money and Lands 3 No-Bid Deals with the Fed
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 7, 2020 ~ Earlier this year, Wall Street On Parade reported that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, had an upward range of $11.6 million invested with the investment management firm, BlackRock, and its iShares Exchange Traded Funds, according to Powell’s 2019 financial disclosure form. Powell’s 2020 financial disclosure form is now available. It was signed by Powell on May 15, 2020 and it shows that Powell’s holdings in BlackRock investments have reached an upward range of $24.95 million – an increase of $13.35 million over the prior year’s upward range. (See Editor’s note below.) The date that Powell signed his latest financial disclosure, May 15, is noteworthy. It means that more than 45 days after the New York Fed had hired BlackRock to manage its commercial mortgage-backed securities program and its $750 billion primary and secondary purchases of corporate bonds … Continue reading
BlackRock Authored the Bailout Plan Before There Was a Crisis – Now It’s Been Hired by three Central Banks to Implement the Plan
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 5, 2020 ~ It’s called “Going Direct.” That’s the financial bailout plan designed and authored by former central bankers now on the payroll at BlackRock, an investment manager of $7 trillion in stock and bond funds. The plan was rolled out in August 2019 at the G7 summit of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming – months before the public was aware of any financial crisis. One month later, on September 17, 2019, the U.S. Federal Reserve would begin an emergency repo loan bailout program, making hundreds of billions of dollars a week in loans by “going direct” to the trading houses on Wall Street. The BlackRock plan calls for blurring the lines between government fiscal policy and central bank monetary policy – exactly what the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve are doing today in the United States. BlackRock has now been … Continue reading
BlackRock Is Bailing Out Its ETFs with Fed Money and Taxpayers Eating Losses; It’s Also the Sole Manager for $335 Billion of Federal Employees’ Retirement Funds
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 4, 2020 ~ BlackRock, the international investment management firm run by billionaire Larry Fink, has played an outsized role in Federal Reserve bailouts of Wall Street. As it turns out, it’s also been quietly managing hundreds of billions of dollars for more than five million federal government employees in their retirement plan, known as the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). During the last financial crisis of 2007 to 2010, the Federal Reserve gave BlackRock no-bid contracts to manage the toxic assets held in three programs known as Maiden Lane, Maiden Lane II and Maiden Lane III. These were Special Purpose Vehicles set up by the New York Fed. Maiden Lane purchased $30 billion of toxic assets from Bear Stearns as an inducement by the New York Fed to get JPMorgan to purchase the good parts of Bear Stearns. Maiden Lane II purchased mortgage-backed securities … Continue reading
BlackRock Begins Buying Junk Bond ETFs for the Fed Today: It’s Already at Work for the Central Bank of Israel
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 12, 2020 ~ It’s off to the races today for BlackRock. The New York Fed, with authority from the Federal Reserve Board and backstopped with taxpayers’ money, will begin the first phase of the Fed’s unprecedented leap into shoring up the sagging prices of investment grade corporate debt and junk bonds. BlackRock has been selected by the New York Fed to be the investment manager for these bailout facilities and will begin Phase I today by buying up Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) containing investment grade corporate bonds as well as junk bonds. Making the situation particularly dicey is that BlackRock just happens to be one of the largest purveyors of said ETFs. The screaming conflict-of-interest that this raises in the minds of many is not ruffling any feathers at the New York Fed (which is itself a bundle of conflicts wrapped in a … Continue reading
Fed Chair Powell Has Upwards of $11.6 Million Invested with BlackRock, the Firm that Will Manage a $750 Billion Corporate Bond Bailout Program for the Fed
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 5, 2020 ~ Most Americans likely assume that Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is an economist, like the prior chairs of the Fed over the past 40 years. He’s not. Powell is a former investment banker at the Wall Street firm, Dillon Read; a former partner at the controversial private equity and leveraged buyout firm, the Carlyle Group, which has spent over $1 billion over the past decade lobbying the federal government; and a former lawyer at Davis Polk, a Big Law firm that played a key role advising the government and Treasury in the 2008 Wall Street bailout. Powell’s background would be strange enough but now consider this. The Vice Chairman for Supervision at the Fed, Randal Quarles, who is in charge of supervising the largest and most dangerous Wall Street bank holding companies in the U.S., has an … Continue reading
Icahn Called BlackRock “An Extremely Dangerous Company”; the Fed Has Chosen It to Manage Its Corporate Bond Bailout Programs
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 30, 2020 ~ In 2015, the legendary Wall Street investor, Carl Icahn, called BlackRock “an extremely dangerous company.” (See video clip below.) Icahn was specifically talking about BlackRock’s packaging of junk bonds into Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and calling them “High Yield,” which the average American doesn’t understand is a junk-rated bond. The ETFs trade during market hours on the New York Stock Exchange, giving them the aura of liquidity when one needs it. Icahn said: “I used to laugh with some of these guys…I used to say, you know, the mafia has a better code of ethics than you guys. You know you’re selling this crap.” Icahn warned that “if and when there’s a real problem in the economy, there’s going to be a rush for the exits like in a movie theatre, and people want to sell those bonds, and think … Continue reading