Search Results for: newest legislator

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 14, 2024 ~ At the exact moment that the stock market closed on Monday, Reuters dropped a bombshell in Warren Buffett’s lap with news that federal banking regulators are breathing down Citigroup’s neck. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns 55,244,797 shares of Citigroup, according to its last 13F filing with the SEC. The bulk of the stake was acquired in the first quarter of 2022. (See our report: Warren Buffett Is Taking a Flyer on $3 Billion of Citigroup’s Stock — After It Loses 40 Percent in a Year.) While a $3 billion stock holding is chump change for Berkshire (as of its last 13F filing, it owned approximately $33 billion in Bank of America stock), Buffett has a stock-picking reputation to defend and neither the history of Citigroup nor its troubles today are boosting that reputation. On Monday, with the strike of the closing bell, Reuters … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 16, 2023 ~ U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen finds herself in a very dubious position. Under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010, the U.S. Treasury Secretary was given increased powers to oversee financial stability in the U.S. banking system. This increase in power came in response to the 2008 financial crisis – the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression. The legislation made the Treasury Secretary the Chair of the newly created Financial Stability Oversight Council (F-SOC), whose meetings include the heads of all of the federal agencies that supervise banks and trading on Wall Street. The legislation also required the Treasury Secretary’s authorization before the Federal Reserve could create any more of those $29 trillion emergency bailout programs for the mega banks – which had tethered themselves to casino trading on Wall Street since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 21, 2020 ~ Turns out the federal government’s plan for dealing with a mega bank failure on Wall Street is no better conceived than the federal government’s plan for dealing with the worst pandemic since 1918. The Federal Reserve issued two press releases yesterday about “large banks.” One read: “Agencies finalize rule to reduce the impact of large bank failures.” The other read: “Agencies issue final rule to strengthen resilience of large banks.” Wait. What? Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has been telling anyone who would listen this year – from Congress to viewers of the Today show – that the large banks have been a “source of strength” during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. If that were true (which we’ve questioned from the first time Powell said it) why is the Fed now worrying about a “large bank failure” and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 2, 2020 ~ The first thing you need to know about Citibank and its parent, Citigroup, is that they have an extensive rap sheet. (See here). The second thing you need to know is that Citigroup is a serial predator that perpetually promises its regulators that it’s going to reform, but never does. The third thing you need to know is that Citigroup has made a sap out of the Federal Reserve – not once, but twice. During the last financial crisis of 2007 to 2010, Citigroup somehow induced the Fed to secretly give it $2.5 trillion cumulatively in below-market rate loans for 2-1/2 years to prop up its sinking carcass. Citi got the cheap loans (often at below one-half of one percent) and then went right on charging its struggling credit card customers high double-digit interest rates. Citi played a major role … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 1, 2024 ~ On Monday, we wrote about the $2.3 trillion in agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that JPMorgan Chase is being paid to hold for the New York Fed as custodian and the multitude of related services for which it is billing the New York Fed on a monthly basis. Wall Street On Parade had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for JPMorgan’s invoices to the New York Fed for calendar year 2023. Instead of the 20 business days that a FOIA is supposed to take, we were stonewalled for three months and then received invoices with dollars amounts redacted. One fascinating bit of information we were able to glean from the invoices was that JPMorgan is billing the New York Fed for a service titled: “Tri-Party Collateral Management.” (Scroll toward the end of the invoices at this link.) We have been researching … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 25, 2024 ~ Last Thursday, 12 Democrats in the U.S. Senate sent a deeply insightful letter on a subject most Americans have never discussed around their kitchen table: adequate capital levels at the Wall Street mega banks that came close to bringing down the U.S. financial system in 2008. Before that financial crisis was over – the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s – millions of hardworking Americans had lost their jobs and millions more had their homes taken in foreclosure. If the U.S. is going to avoid a replay of that crisis, Americans are going to have to start having these critical conversations about the structure of Wall Street mega banks around the kitchen table. Americans are going to have to start engaging in the battle to shape the future of American democracy and more equitable wealth distribution, which requires dramatic reform … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 28, 2023 ~ FRED is a giant online database at the St. Louis Fed that allows anyone to graph the financial and economic data stored in its repositories. We use the data regularly to bring our readers a crystal-clear snapshot of the increasingly dangerous underpinnings of the U.S. financial system. Let’s start with the first chart above. This chart depicts the cash assets held by the 25 largest U.S. commercial banks. The Fed defines the term “cash assets” as “vault cash, cash items in process of collection, balances due from depository institutions, and balances due from Federal Reserve Banks.” Notice that from April 1, 1985 to just before the financial crash of 2008, cash levels at the biggest banks were as steady as a soft breeze on a spring day. But from that point on through today, there have been freakish spikes and plunges … Continue reading →