Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 30, 2023 ~ Wall Street mega banks, as well as others, are moving vast amounts of their debt securities from one accounting category to another accounting category in order to stretch out unrealized losses over the life of the instrument. As the FDIC chart above indicates, as of December 31, 2022 unrealized losses on investment securities at U.S. banks stood at more than $600 billion. According to JPMorgan Chase’s 10-K (Annual Report) filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, over the past three years it has moved a total of $347 billion (yes, “billion” with a “b”) of investment securities from the accounting category called “Available-for-Sale” (AFS) to the accounting category called “Held-to-Maturity” (HTM). JPMorgan Chase’s 2022 10-K advises as follows: “During 2022 and 2021, the Firm transferred $78.3 billion and $104.5 billion of investment securities, respectively, from AFS to HTM for capital management purposes.” JPMorgan … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 24, 2023 ~ This Friday and Saturday, JPMorgan Chase’s Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, is scheduled to sit for some very uncomfortable questioning in a deposition concerning what role he played in allowing his bank to serve as a vast cash conduit for Jeffrey Epstein, which enabled Epstein to perpetuate his sex trafficking of underage girls. The Attorney General’s office of the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) has filed a federal lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase that makes devastating charges against the largest bank in the United States. It alleges that JPMorgan Chase sat on a mountain of evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was running a child sex trafficking ring as it continued to keep him as a client; accept his lucrative referrals of wealthy clients; and provided him with large sums of cash and wire transfers to pay off victims – one of whom was a “14-year old … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 15, 2023 ~ If you have been following the banking crisis, you have likely read at least a dozen times that on March 12 federal banking regulators, with the consent of the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, invoked the “systemic risk exception” in order to protect both insured and uninsured depositors at the two banks that failed in March – Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. That’s why there were gasps of shock on Saturday evening at around 5:30 p.m. when the Wall Street Journal (paywall) published the stunning news that depositors in the Cayman Islands’ branch of Silicon Valley Bank had their deposits seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which they are unlikely to ever see again. As Wall Street On Parade has previously reported, under statute, the FDIC cannot insure deposits held on foreign soil by U.S. banks. What it … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 11, 2023 ~ If the dark secrets about the U.S. banking system that federal regulators have been keeping since the financial crash of 2008 are allowed to be aired in public Congressional hearings as a result of the current banking crisis – and mainstream media will grow a backbone and cover those hearings – it could help the U.S. avoid a catastrophic financial reckoning down the road. For years, Wall Street On Parade has been reporting that just four banks in the U.S. control more than 85 percent of all the opaque derivatives in the banking system. We have also regularly reported how federal agencies have singled out these four banks for posing systemic risk to the financial stability of the United States. We’re talking about JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup’s Citibank. On March 30, we crunched the numbers from … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 8, 2023 ~ Since the banking crisis began making headlines at expensive media real estate, the narrative has been that deposits are fleeing the small commercial banks and flooding into the biggest banks that are perceived as too-big-to-fail and thus offer a safer venue for deposits. Because these mega banks are the same ones that the Fed has been bailing out since the financial crisis of 2008, that narrative requires believing that our fellow Americans are dumber than a stump. We decided to check out that narrative for ourselves. Not only is that scenario wrong, but it is so decidedly wrong, and it’s so easy to get the accurate figures, that from where we sit it looks like there might have been an agenda by someone to harm smaller banks. (Since it’s short sellers who have benefited to the tune of more than $7 … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 1, 2023 ~ On Wall Street, the business model is you eat what you kill. Jamie Dimon and the bank he helms, JPMorgan Chase, just devoured First Republic Bank after Dimon had orchestrated the worst “rescue” of First Republic in the history of banking rescues. Given the outcome, one has to wonder if this rescue flop was a bug or a feature. (See Related Articles below.) After 7 weeks of Jamie Dimon’s “rescue,” First Republic and its preferred shares had been downgraded by credit rating agencies to junk; its common stock had lost 98 percent of its market value, closing at $3.51 on Friday and at $1.90 in pre-market trading early this morning; its long-term bonds were trading at 43 cents on the dollar; and depositors continued to flee the bank. And in order to pay out all those deposits that were taking flight, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 17, 2023 On April 11, Wall Street On Parade ran this headline: Fed Report: Largest 25 U.S. Banks Have Shed $700 Billion in Deposits Over Past Year. Using deposit data directly from the Federal Reserve’s weekly H.8 report, we documented that contrary to the misleading reporting in the mainstream business press, it wasn’t the regional banks that were losing the bulk of deposits in the U.S., with the biggest banks the beneficiaries, it was actually the biggest banks that were dramatically shedding deposits. We explained as follows: “The reality is that the 25 largest domestically-chartered commercial banks in the U.S. have been bleeding deposits for most of the past 12 months, shedding more than $700 billion in deposits between April 13, 2022 and March 29, 2023. To put that in even sharper focus, all U.S. domestically-chartered commercial banks have lost a total of $970 billion during … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 13, 2023 Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is desperately attempting to redirect the media’s focus to anything other than two federal lawsuits that name his bank as a knowing facilitator and cash conduit for Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring. One lawsuit has been filed by the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands where Epstein owned an island-compound and air-lifted young girls in and out. The other lawsuit has been filed by an alleged underage victim of Epstein’s, Jane Doe 1. Dimon’s high-powered p.r. machine has been churning out headlines on his role as “rescuer” of the teetering bank, First Republic, (never mind that there are few signs that the bank has actually been rescued). And one would think that Dimon has written a new Magna Carta for all the press attention going to his unremarkable annual letter to shareholders. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 3, 2023 ~ According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), there were 4,706 federally-insured banks and savings associations in the U.S. as of December 31, 2022. Of those, according to the quarterly report released last Friday from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a little less than one-quarter found a reason to engage in derivative trading activities. As of December 31, 2022, just 1,139 FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings associations reported trading of derivatives in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the OCC. Ostensibly, instead of running a derivatives casino, the other three-quarters of taxpayer-subsidized banks were doing what taxpayers want federally-insured banks to do: make business loans; provide affordable mortgage loans to homebuyers; provide checking accounts devoid of hacking, identity theft and predatory overdraft fees; and not blow up the bank by getting in bed with derivatives, crypto … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 21, 2023 ~ Jamie Dimon is the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the U.S., which is also ranked the riskiest global bank by its regulators. But instead of getting his own house in order in the midst of a banking crisis, Dimon has been peculiarly focused elsewhere. Over the past five days, Jamie Dimon’s legions of publicists have been burning up the phone lines with reporters, pushing the narrative that Jamie Dimon is some kind of financial wizard who needs to have a seat at the table to save the regional bank, First Republic Bank. (Scroll down here to see the exhaustive public relations effort that has gone into this narrative.) Last Thursday, news hit the wire services that Dimon had lined up 11 banks willing to place $30 billion in uninsured deposits into First Republic Bank. JPMorgan Chase, … Continue reading →