Search Results for: is the new york fed too conflicted

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 8, 2024 ~ As of April 3 of this year, the Federal Reserve (Fed) has racked up $161 billion in accumulated losses. We’re not talking about unrealized losses on the underwater debt securities the Fed holds on its balance sheet, which it does not mark to market. We’re talking about real cash losses it is experiencing from earning approximately 2 percent interest on the $6.97 trillion of debt securities it holds on its balance sheet from its Quantitative Easing (QE) operations while it continues to pay out 5.4 percent interest to the mega banks on Wall Street (and other Fed member banks) for the reserves they hold with the Fed; 5.3 percent interest it pays on reverse repo operations with the Fed; and a whopping 6 percent dividend to member shareholder banks with assets of $10 billion or less and the lesser of 6 percent … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 4, 2024 ~ William (Bill) Dudley served as President of the New York Fed from 2009 to 2018. (He was previously an executive at Goldman Sachs.) During Dudley’s tenure at the New York Fed, it secretly oversaw the largest and darkest bailout of Wall Street mega banks in global banking history. A Bloomberg News reporter, the late Mark Pittman, battled in court for years to get the details of those bailouts released to the public. Today, the former kingpin of darkness at the New York Fed, Bill Dudley, had the audacity to pen an opinion column for Bloomberg News, urging – wait for it – more transparency at the Fed. The ironic title of Dudley’s column is (paywall): “If Only We Knew the Problems Facing America’s Banks.” (We do. See Federal Agency Study Contradicts Fed Chair: Finds Banking System Is Ripe for Another Crisis and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 12, 2023 ~ There is a battle raging between the Wall Street mega banks and their federal banking regulators. The regulators want the mega banks to hold more capital against their high risk trading positions to prevent a replay of the bailouts in 2008 and repo bailouts in the fall of 2019. The mega banks have launched a deceptive ad campaign and public relations battle to thwart that from happening. The federal regulators’ efforts to raise capital are being undermined by Fed Chairman Jay Powell’s perpetual testimony to Congress that the U.S. banking system is safe and sound and adequately capitalized. Thus far, no member of Congress has thought to question Fed Chair Powell during public hearings as to why the Fed needs a new permanent bailout facility of $500 billion, on top of its century-old Discount Window, if the banking system is adequately … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 24, 2023 ~ Prior to Ben Bernanke being sworn in as Fed Chair on February 6, 2006, the United States had been through World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Vietnam War and the stagflation of the 1970s, without an explosion in the Fed’s balance sheet. But since Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell have, in turn, sat at the helm of the Federal Reserve, there has been unprecedented growth in the Fed’s Balance Sheet. For example, from June 1960 to August 1990, the Fed’s balance sheet increased from $53 billion to $309 billion – an increase of 483 percent in 30 years. But during the tenures of Bernanke, Yellen and Powell, the Fed’s balance sheet has exploded from $805 billion in February 2006, when Bernanke took his seat as Fed Chair, to the current reading last Wednesday, July 19, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 16, 2023 ~ The pileup of conflicts of interests, ethical lapses, and overall moral turpitude at the Federal Reserve have resulted in a recent Gallup poll showing that confidence in the Federal Reserve Chair (currently Jerome Powell) has reached the lowest point in two decades of Gallup polling on this topic. Americans who have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of confidence in the Fed Chair stands at just 36 percent according to the poll. Tomorrow, the Senate Banking’s Subcommittee on Economic Policy plans to confront the ethically-challenged structure of the Fed head on. It is a given that there will be some fireworks during this hearing because the Chair of this Subcommittee is Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has labeled Fed Chair Powell “a dangerous man” and called out a “culture of corruption” at the Fed last August. (Warren, a former Harvard Law … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 20, 2023 The official that oversaw the secret funneling of trillions of dollars of bailout money from the New York Fed to the grossly mismanaged mega banks on Wall Street during the financial crisis of 2008 to 2010, had the temerity yesterday to pen an opinion piece at Bloomberg News pointing his finger at current Fed officials for today’s banking crisis – without once mentioning his role in getting us here. The article was written by William (Bill) Dudley, who served as President of the New York Fed from January 27, 2009 to June 18, 2018. Prior to that Dudley was Executive Vice President of the Markets Group at the New York Fed, the group that runs its own trading floors in New York and Chicago and trades with the Wall Street mega banks it is also supposed to be supervising. The New York Fed … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 5, 2023 Millions of Americans are beginning to ask themselves this question: Is the Federal Reserve (the “Fed”) a competent central bank or a terminally compromised regulator that simply does the bidding of Wall Street’s mega banks to the peril of average Americans and the U.S. economy? Millions of other Americans have already made up their minds on this point. These persistent doubts about an institution with an $8.8 trillion balance sheet – that is backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer – is very bad for confidence in the U.S. banking system, especially when the Fed pivots from one banking bailout to the next. (What was the size of the Fed’s balance sheet prior to its serial bailouts? On December 26, 2007, the Fed’s balance sheet stood at $929 billion. It has soared by 847 percent in just over 15 years of serial bailouts.) Let’s … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 22, 2023 ~ On March 13 we published the chart below, showing the ten financial institutions that had taken the largest loan advances from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco as of year-end 2022. It’s a very ominous sign that the bank at the top of the list, Silicon Valley Bank, collapsed and is now under the control of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Silicon Valley Bank had $212 billion in assets as of year-end 2022, making it the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. The largest failure was Washington Mutual in 2008, with approximately $300 billion in assets. The second bank on the list, First Republic Bank (ticker FRC), has seen its share price collapse, had its debt downgraded deeper into junk by S&P Global on Sunday, and is experiencing an exit stampede by depositors. The sixth bank on … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 6, 2023 ~ Just four days before Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, FTX, collapsed into bankruptcy, Sullivan & Cromwell law partner Andrew (Andy) Dietderich sent an email to an attorney representing Voyager Digital’s Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors in its bankruptcy proceedings, stating that FTX was “rock solid.” At the time, Sullivan & Cromwell was representing FTX in a very aggressive move to purchase $1 billion of Voyager’s crypto assets. The law partner representing the Voyager creditors was Darren Azman of law firm McDermott Will & Emery. The email exchange on November 7, 2022 went as follows, according to exhibits McDermott Will & Emery submitted to the Voyager bankruptcy court in the Southern District of New York last week: Azman: “We are getting a lot of inbounds regarding liquidity issues at FTX/Alameda. We also had a lot of leftover questions from the last town hall. … Continue reading →