Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 17, 2020 ~ Donald Trump is the man that the libertarian billionaire Charles Koch reluctantly accepted to play Hank Rearden in the Oval Office. Rearden was the fictional character in Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged. The libertarian story line of the novel is that a federal government that grows too big with too many regulations is anathema to the corporate geniuses that should be running the country. According to Nicholas Confessore, writing for the New York Times in January 2015, the Koch Brothers (Charles and David) and their billionaire minions that meet secretly twice a year at tony resorts to strategize on running the country, agreed to spend upwards of $900 million “to shape a presidential election that is already on track to be the most expensive in history.” This, writes Confessore, would allow the Koch machine to “operate at the same financial … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 16, 2020 ~ It’s no wonder that American citizens are receiving just a tiny snippet of critical news from mainstream media. Federal regulators have set a new low in withholding documents that the public and the media are entitled to under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). These censored documents could inform us on what’s really driving policy decisions in Washington. Take our latest FOIA brush with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Foreign central banks and sovereign wealth funds are required under law to report their publicly-traded U.S. stock positions no later than 45 days after the end of each calendar quarter. This is done on Form 13F, which is filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, if those stock holdings reach $100 million or more. The central bank of Israel, known simply as the Bank of Israel, has not been doing … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 15, 2020 ~ Yesterday, Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard gave a speech via webcast to the National Association for Business Economics. She warned, effectively, that the rosy spin coming out of the Trump administration needed to be weighed against the reality on the ground. Brainard raised the caution that credit downgrades on bonds and corporate defaults are occurring at “a faster pace than in the initial months of the Global Financial Crisis.” Brainard explained as follows: “In downside scenarios, there could be some persistent damage to the productive capacity of the economy from the loss of valuable employment relationships, depressed investment, and the destruction of intangible business capital. A wave of insolvencies is possible. As the Federal Reserve Board’s May Financial Stability Report highlighted, the nonfinancial business sector started the year with historically elevated levels of debt. Already this year, we have seen about $800 … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 14, 2020 ~ The House Financial Services’ Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship and Capital Markets will convene a hearing at noon today that is titled: “Promoting Economic Recovery: Examining Capital Markets and Worker Protections in the COVID-19 Era.” You can watch the hearing live at this link. One of the topics for the hearing will be corporations buying back their own stock and paying dividends during the pandemic, actions which benefit shareholders rather than the overall economy. The House is considering legislation that would require that until all federal aid under the CARES Act has been repaid by the corporation, it cannot “pay bonuses to executives, may not pay executives in connection with their termination, may not engage in stock buybacks, and may not pay dividends to shareholders.” The Subcommittee has a very sound, and urgent, basis to explore this topic, particularly as … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 13, 2020 ~ Imagine if every bank customer was greeted this week with a big sign just inside their Chase Bank branch that said this: “Dear Customers: We lost $3.2 billion trading stocks and credit derivatives in the first quarter. We did that using your bank deposits. But don’t worry, that pales in comparison to the $6 billion we lost in 2012 in the London Whale mess.” JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States. Each and every week, millions of Americans write out a check on their account at one of the more than 5,000 branches of Chase Bank; or drop into a branch to open a savings account for a grandchild; or to put money into their own retirement account; or to seek financial advice. Everything looks very crisp, clean, consumer friendly and professional inside that individual bank branch. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 10, 2020 ~ Beginning on September 17 of last year, months before the first COVID-19 case had been discovered anywhere in the world, the Federal Reserve – for the first time since the financial crisis of 2008 – jumped into the repo loan market, where financial firms borrow from each other overnight, and began making tens of billions of dollars in loans a week to the trading houses of Wall Street. The Fed calls these 24 trading houses its “primary dealers.” For the vast majority of the Fed’s 107-year existence, it was limited to making loans to only commercial banks, which would assist the general U.S. economy by passing on those loans to businesses and consumers. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the Fed has become a money spigot to the Wall Street casino, based solely on its own interpretation of what it’s … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 9, 2020 ~ Jay Sekulow’s charities have been under a harsh glare for almost two decades for funneling vast sums to Sekulow and his family members. Now, one of those charities, the American Center for Law and Justice, has turned up on the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan database that was released this week by the Small Business Administration. PPP loans were part of the CARES Act passed by Congress to help small businesses with no other source of funding stay alive during the pandemic. According to the PPP database, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) received a loan of between $1 to $2 million. ACLJ is a nonprofit that lists Jay Sekulow as its CEO, Chief Counsel and Board Member, according to its 2018 public tax filing known as a 990.  Sekulow’s brother, Gary, is listed as Vice President of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 8, 2020 ~ As we reported yesterday, the U.S. Justice Department has been sitting on mountains of evidence against Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking operation and his co-conspirators since July of 2006 when the Palm Beach, Florida Police Chief, Michael Reiter, handed a deeply investigated case against Epstein and his co-conspirators over to the FBI. After crafting a cozy 18-month work-release deal with Epstein in 2008 based on only Florida state charges (and then releasing him from jail five months early) the Justice Department allowed Epstein to return to business as usual for another 10 years until his arrest by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in July 2019. That same Justice Department allowed Epstein to die with many of his secrets intact as a result of the negligence of the federal prison system to properly monitor him. That … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 7, 2020 ~  Outside of the Wall Street executives that did business with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, his first lieutenant, Ghislaine Maxwell, knows more about his Wall Street secrets than any other living person. Maxwell was arrested and indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (part of the U.S. Justice Department) on July 2, less than two weeks after the head of that office, Geoffrey Berman, was abruptly fired from his job by Attorney General William Barr. Berman’s former Deputy, Audrey Strauss, conducted the press conference regarding the Maxwell arrest. (See video below.) We immediately noticed a peculiarity about the indictment document provided by Strauss. It covered only a brief 4-year period, running from 1994 through 1997. One of the main accusers of Maxwell, Virginia (Roberts) Giuffre, has credibly indicated in previous court filings that Epstein … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 6, 2020 ~ Three of the top men at the U.S. Department of Justice who have been involved in negotiations as to whether Goldman Sachs, for the first time in its history, will be charged with a criminal felony and hit with a multi-billion dollar fine, received large sums of money from the law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, before joining the Trump administration.  Kirkland & Ellis is the law firm defending Goldman Sachs in the criminal case. The top dog at the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr, worked as “Of Counsel” to Kirkland & Ellis prior to joining the Justice Department. Barr’s financial disclosure form shows that Kirkland & Ellis paid him $1,188,257 and a $50,000 bonus for 2018. In addition to the money from Kirkland & Ellis, Barr made another $2.6 million in fees and from cashing out stock options for … Continue reading →