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Recent Posts
- 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
- The Fed Has a Dirty Little Secret: It’s Been Allowing the Wall Street Mega Banks to Calculate their Own Capital Requirements
- The Battle Over Capital at the Mega Banks Must Expand to Breaking Them Up
- Robert Kaplan Was Heavily Trading on May 1, 2020; One Day After a Fed Blackout Period and the Same Day He Made a Shocking Prediction on TV
- Naming Names: Professor Exposes the Banking Cartel that Has Hijacked U.S. Democracy
- A Fed Whistleblower Reveals Efforts to Silence Him 30 Years Ago
- The DOJ’s Incestuous Relationship with Jamie Dimon Is Captured in a Graphic from an Historic Lawsuit
- Everything that’s Dangerous about U.S. Banks Today in One Highly Readable Book
- Jamie Dimon Hires Dodd-Frank Hatchet Man to Weigh Suing the Fed Over Proposed Capital Rules
- Three Branches of U.S. Government Have Kept the Secrets of Jeffrey Epstein’s Money Man, Leslie Wexner, Locked Up Tight
- New York State Has Turned Over a Vast Amount of Its Financial Affairs to 5-Count Felon JPMorgan Chase
- Out Today: A Deep Dive into the Dark Side of Banking and Its Handmaiden, Central Banks
- JPMorgan and Jeffrey Epstein Explained: Twisted Banking Taps into Sex Fiend’s Network
- Bill Dudley, Former Kingpin of Darkness at the New York Fed, Now Urges Transparency at the Fed
- Mainstream Media Is Avoiding the Big Story on Jeffrey Epstein and Sealed Court Documents
- Federal Agency Study Contradicts Fed Chair: Finds Banking System Is Ripe for Another Crisis and Remains “Fragile and Uncertain”
- A Big Picture Look at Our Major Wall Street Corruption Stories of 2023
- The DOJ Took More than Two Years to Answer a FOIA on Its Criminal Division Head; Three Days Before Christmas 2023 We Got a Troubling Disclosure
Search Results for: size of fed portfolio
More Failed Banks and Office Building Demolitions Likely Before Real Estate Problems End, Warn Two Federal Agencies
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 21, 2024 ~ Federal banking oversight agencies are in agreement: U.S. banks are facing a potential tsunami of problems with commercial real estate loans in the office space sector. Last June 1, the Office of Financial Research (OFR), (the agency created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to warn about financial stability risks), explained why the vacancy rate in office buildings is in dramatic contrast to the actual occupancy rate, and thus bodes poorly for the future demand for renewing office leases. OFR writes as follows: “The health of the CRE [Commercial Real Estate] office sector is not only measured by the amount of space leased and rent paid today, but also by how much space will be required in the future. In addition to space available for sublease, we can estimate the amount of space currently occupied by employees by measuring card … Continue reading
JPMorgan’s Federally-Insured Bank Is Fined $348 Million for Losing Track of “Billions” of Trades
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 18, 2024 ~ On Thursday of last week, two of JPMorgan Chase Bank’s federal regulators fined the riskiest bank in the United States $348 million dollars for engaging in “unsafe and unsound banking practices” for failing to supervise “billions” of trades on at least 30 global trading venues. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) fined JPMorgan Chase Bank $250 million while the Federal Reserve fined the bank $98.2 million. The OCC said the misconduct occurred since at least 2019. The Fed said the bank had engaged in the misconduct over the span of nine years, from 2014 to 2023. The key outrage embedded in these charges – that mainstream media failed to point out in its coverage last week – is that this “trading” activity did not occur at the registered brokerage firm of JPMorgan, which has properly licensed traders and trading … Continue reading
FDIC Data Contradicts Fed Chair Powell: Shows Real Estate Problems Have Skyrocketed at Largest U.S. Banks, Not the Smaller Regionals
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 11, 2024 ~ On Sunday, February 4, the CBS program 60 Minutes aired a taped interview with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. The actual interview had occurred three days earlier and was conducted by 60 Minutes interviewer Scott Pelley. Two noteworthy things happened in connection with that interview: First, CBS did not indicate above the transcript of the interview that Powell’s comments had been materially shortened in the program that aired on TV; secondly, Powell calls the real estate problem at the largest banks “manageable” while shifting the more serious real estate loan problem to “smaller and regional banks.” Below is what Powell had to say about problem real estate loans at U.S. banks in the 60 Minutes’ interview. The bracketed bold text is what is in the transcript but did not air in the broadcasted program on television. (Scroll to 8 minutes and 20 … Continue reading
Wall Street Mega Banks Have Created a Circular Firing Squad with Credit Derivatives and Capital Relief Trades – with the Fed’s Blessing
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 6, 2024 ~ On June 11, 2015, the Office of Financial Research (OFR) released a sobering report on how banks were reducing their requirements to hold adequate capital against potential losses by engaging in non-transparent “capital relief trades” with potentially questionable counterparties. The OFR researchers summarized the problem as follows: “Capital relief transactions may have benefits to banks. But, even if real risk transfer is involved, these transactions can pose financial stability concerns by increasing interconnectedness, transforming credit risk into counterparty risk, and obscuring capital adequacy to investors and counterparties. And while bank supervisors have extensive data about banks, they may have less information about the nonbanks who are selling credit risk to those banks and ultimately bearing the risk of loss.” The Office of Financial Research was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to make sure that Wall Street mega banks … Continue reading
Federal Agency Study Contradicts Fed Chair: Finds Banking System Is Ripe for Another Crisis and Remains “Fragile and Uncertain”
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 2, 2024 ~ Following the second, third and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history in the spring of last year, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gave his semiannual monetary policy report to the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee in June. During both appearances, Powell stated the same thing: “The U.S. banking system is sound and resilient.” But according to a report last week from the federal agency whose mandate is to keep federal regulators apprised of the true condition of the U.S. banking system, it is actually ripe for another crisis and its condition is “fragile and uncertain.” The federal agency whose researchers are taking the latter position is the Office of Financial Research (OFR). The agency was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to prevent another 2008-style financial crisis by providing federal regulators with ongoing analysis and … Continue reading
Watchdog to Fed: JPMorgan Is Controlling Fossil Fuels Empire, Which Just Spilled a Million Gallons of Oil in Gulf of Mexico
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 27, 2023 ~ The formidable Washington watchdog, Public Citizen, has trained its sights on JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon’s house of serial frauds and felony counts that is allowed to also operate as the largest federally-insured bank in the United States. Public Citizen’s pursuit of JPMorgan Chase began in 2019 when its Energy Program Director, Tyson Slocum, began investigating a hodge podge of private equity shell companies using the name Infrastructure Investments Fund (IIF). At the time, IIF was in the process of buying El Paso Electric and Public Citizen smelled something rotten and started digging. Public Citizen concluded that JPMorgan Chase was controlling IIF. Public Citizen then filed a series of complaints in the matter with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). FERC is not a federal agency that JPMorgan Chase should be riling up again. In 2013, FERC fined the bank $410 million … Continue reading
Fed’s Vice Chair for Supervision Says Another Financial Crisis Could Cost U.S. $5 Trillion to $25 Trillion – Potentially as Much as 100 Percent of GDP
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 12, 2023 ~ On Monday, Michael Barr, the Vice Chair for Supervision at the Federal Reserve, addressed a contentious issue in a speech before the American Bankers Association’s annual convention in Nashville. The topic was why federal banking regulators have proposed higher capital levels for the largest U.S. banks, those with assets over $100 billion. As we reported on September 20, there has been aggressive pushback on the proposal from large banks, their lobbyists and their trade associations. (Community banks are not impacted by the proposal.) During his speech, Barr put a staggering dollar figure on the destruction to the U.S. economy that could materialize from another major financial crisis. Barr said this: “Research suggests the costs of a financial crisis are sizable. While estimates vary widely, the cumulative loss in economic activity is consistently estimated to lie above 20 percent of annual GDP—and in … Continue reading
Casino Banking: Wall Street Mega Banks Traded More in their Federally-Insured Bank than the Total for their Bank Holding Company
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 13, 2022 ~ When something happens for the first time in history at federally-insured banks, Congress and federal regulators need to pull their heads out of the sand and pay attention. We’re talking about the fact that in the second quarter of this year, trading revenues at federally-insured commercial banks eclipsed the trading revenues at bank holding companies – which typically include subsidiaries where traders actually have licenses to trade. This latest data on what is happening inside the nation’s largest federally-insured banks comes from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), see pages 2 and 3 here. The federally-insured banks generated a total of $10.3 billion in trading revenue in the second quarter versus $10.2 billion for the bank holding companies, or 101 percent of the bank holding company revenues. That’s never happened before according to the data provided by the … Continue reading
Nowhere to Hide: The Fed-Induced Bubble in Stocks and Bonds Is Blowing Up; Even the Typical Safe Havens of Gold and T-Notes Are Losing Money
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 25, 2022 ~ The corrupt political backdrop for today’s unprecedented market quagmire feels like a hyperbolic trailer for a low-budget sci-fi thriller: The former president of the only remaining superpower in the world has been charged with “staggering” frauds against banks – the ones he just deregulated as president. (This same former president was also caught red-handed with Top Secret documents after he left public office — but the super power’s 18 intelligence agencies have no idea what he did, or was planning to do, with these documents.) On the other side of the globe, the sitting president of a bygone superpower is engaging in nuclear saber-rattling and conscripting 60-year-old men to fight an illegal war while young, able-bodied men flee the country en masse. The world’s financial markets have gone off the rails in an equally disorienting fashion. The central bankers that had … Continue reading
Crypto Victims’ Cries for Help Are Piling Up at a Federal Complaint Center
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 22, 2022 ~ The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is the federal agency that was created under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 in response to Wall Street’s harrowing abuses to average Americans in the leadup to the financial crash of 2008. One of its key benefits is that it has a complaint database where consumers can post their complaints to the agency, and the general public and reporters can read those complaints on a public website. The general public benefits by seeing what types of complaints are being made against a financial institution they might be considering doing business with and reporters can look for dangerous patterns that are emerging. We delved into a specific area of complaints at the CFPB yesterday. We put the word “Bitcoin” into the search box and pulled up 1,031 matches. Next we searched under the word “crypto” and … Continue reading