Search Results for: is the new york fed too conflicted

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 11, 2020 ~ Few Americans are aware that the central bank of the United States, the Federal Reserve, has its own trading desk in New York that interacts every business day with the trading desks of the giant Wall Street banks. When Americans think of massive trading operations, names like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Citigroup come to mind. But if we measure trading desks by the value of their portfolio holdings, these global banks are pikers compared to the Fed’s trading desk, operated by one of its 12 private regional banks, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed). Using the New York Fed’s own annual reports to obtain the data, we can report that the New York Fed’s Trading Desk has grown from $576 billion in holdings of domestic securities as of December 31, 2008 (at the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 22, 2020 ~ President Donald Trump has been sacking federal watchdogs at the speed of a bullet train. In just a six-week period in April and May, the President fired five Inspectors General of federal agencies. In last Friday night’s coup d’état, Attorney General William Barr, acting as consigliere for the President, ousted the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the federal prosecutor that oversees prosecutions of Wall Street banks in that district. The privately owned Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is in charge of the bulk of the Fed’s bailout programs, also resides in that district. Barr and the President want to put a man with zero experience as a prosecutor in charge of that office, Jay Clayton, who currently heads the Securities and Exchange Commission which has only civil enforcement powers. Clayton represented 8 of the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 11, 2020 ~ Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s press conferences are typically snooze sessions. Yesterday’s virtual press conference got off to a similar start with mainstream media reporters asking about inflation and monetary policy instead of the more critical questions they should have been asking in the midst of the worst labor market and business closures since the Great Depression and food pantry lines that stretch for blocks. Fortunately, two reporters shook things up at the very end of the press conference. Nancy Marshall-Genzer of Marketplace, which airs on public media stations, bluntly asked Powell this: “Is there more the Fed could do to deal with inequality, for example, use the Black unemployment rate as a benchmark.” Powell’s answer was an abomination. First Powell stated that inequality is not related to monetary policy. Next, he decided to target a more specific villain – … Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 27, 2020 ~ The New York Fed supervises four of the most dangerous banks in America: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. That opinion is not just ours but is documented by data from federal agencies. All four of these banks own federally-insured commercial banks that are backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer while also gambling in the stock market through their own Dark Pools and in trillions of dollars of derivatives. All four of these banks received tens of billions of dollars in bailout money during the 2007-2010 financial crash, which was brought on by their greed and corrupt activities in the derivatives and subprime market. Citigroup’s losses were of such magnitude that it became insolvent, turned into a 99 cent stock, and yet secretly received the largest bailout in global banking history from the same regulator who had allowed it … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 25, 2020 ~ Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and New York State Senator and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer trotted out to the Senate floor after midnight last night to announce that they had reached a deal on the government stimulus package – the text of which the American public has not seen and only snippets of which have been seen by the members of Congress. Neither the Senate nor the House of Representatives have yet to vote on the bill. Americans got their first whiff that this was going to be another massive giveaway to Wall Street banks, just as happened from 2007 to 2010, when White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow appeared at the White House briefing yesterday evening. Kudlow revealed that the stimulus plan is actually a $6 trillion package — $2 trillion to struggling Americans and $4 trillion to dispense … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 13, 2020 ~  Last Friday, the usually reliable and fact-intensive financial website, Wolf Street, threw a hissy fit over how the Wall Street Journal (and by extension, Wall Street On Parade) is reporting the tallies for the repo loans that the New York Fed has been pumping out every business day since September 17, 2019 to the trading houses on Wall Street. The inflammatory headline blared: “The Wall Street Journal (and Other Media) Should Stop Lying About Repos.” The author of the piece, Wolf Richter, explained his criticism as follows: “Here is the ‘in’ of a repurchase agreement [repo loan]: The Fed buys securities (mostly Treasury securities and some agency mortgage-backed securities) in exchange for cash. This adds liquidity to the market. “Here is the ‘out’ of a repurchase agreement: Every repo matures on a set date when the counterparties are obligated to buy the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 10, 2020 ~  The design of the Boeing 737 Max and the Wall Street banking system are both dangerously flawed. The 737 Max has been grounded for almost 10 months following two airline crashes that killed 346 people. The Wall Street banking system, which crashed in 2008 and spread its wreckage into the lives of millions of Americans with job losses, home foreclosures, and trillions of dollars in lost savings is still being allowed to operate on a wing and a prayer. In the case of the Boeing 737 Max, Congress did not know beforehand that dangerous problems existed. In the case of the Wall Street banking system, Congress has had repeated warnings since 2012 of systemic dangers that it has simply chosen to ignore under heavy Wall Street lobbying pressure and the allure of tens of millions of dollars in political campaign … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 18, 2019 ~ The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed) seems intent on stonewalling Wall Street On Parade from receiving some very basic information on JPMorgan Chase’s rapid drawdown this year on its liquid reserves at the New York Fed – a matter which some on Wall Street have fingered as a contributing cause of the ongoing repo loan crisis. More on that in a moment, but first some background. For the past decade Wall Street On Parade has been keeping close tabs on the crony operations of the New York Fed. (See related articles below.) The New York Fed has effectively morphed into a key cog in Wall Street’s wealth transfer system – where the little guy’s pocket is picked daily in the service of minting billionaires on Wall Street – who now increasingly want to rule the rest … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 17, 2019 ~ The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed) made the astonishing announcement last Thursday that it will be pumping a cumulative $2.93 trillion into Wall Street trading houses (primary dealers) between December 16 and January 14. That’s on top of the $360 billion of liquidity it is pumping into the markets by buying back $60 billion a month in Treasury bills from its primary dealers. The Fed’s excuse for opening its self-created money spigots to the tune of trillions of dollars to Wall Street’s trading houses – a replay of what it did secretly during the financial crisis of 2007 to 2010 – is that this is simply a technical fix for allowing bank reserves at the Fed to shrink too far. But that is merely a symptom – not the actual disease afflicting the U.S. financial system. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 4, 2019 ~ The titular head of bank supervision for the Federal Reserve is Randal Quarles. We use the term, titular, because the job was so amorphous that President Obama never bothered to fill the slot, even though it was legally mandated under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010. Everyone on Wall Street knows that it’s the all-powerful New York Fed that “supervises” the behemoth banks on Wall Street. Last week New York Times’ reporter Jeanna Smialek accurately summed up the real job of Randal Quarles, writing this: “In his first 21 months on the job, Randal K. Quarles, the Federal Reserve’s vice chairman for supervision and regulation, met at least 22 times with partners at his former law firm, Davis Polk & Wardwell, which represents many of the nation’s largest banks.” Later in the article, Smialek adds this: “He has talked … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 20, 2019 ~ The New York Fed has now pumped out upwards of $3 trillion in a period of 63 days to unnamed trading houses on Wall Street to ease a liquidity crisis that has yet to be credibly explained. In addition, it has launched a new asset purchase program, buying up $60 billion each month in U.S. Treasury bills. Based on the continuing escalation of its plans, it appears to be testing the limits of what the public will tolerate. We thought it was time to answer the question: who exactly owns the New York Fed and its magical money spigot that can pump trillions of dollars into Wall Street at the press of a button. The largest shareowners of the New York Fed are the following five Wall Street banks: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of New … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 14, 2019 ~ Yesterday Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testified before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. Only one Congressman, Kenny Marchant (R-TX), had the courage to ask Powell about the Fed’s intervention in the repo loan market beginning on September 17. Since that time the Fed has been pumping hundreds of billions of dollars each week (that the New York Fed creates electronically out of thin air) into its 24 primary dealers on Wall Street. These primary dealers are not commercial banks that might be inclined to use the funds to make loans to local businesses or to consumers to buy a house and help their local economies. No, 23 of the 24 primary dealers are stock brokerage firms and investment banks that engage in leveraged bets in the stock, bond, commodities, and derivatives markets. The 24th is a foreign bank. (See … Continue reading →