-
Recent Posts
- Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Is a Grotesque Giveaway to Fossil Fuel Billionaires While Adding $3.3 Trillion to Nation’s Debt
- Senator Chris Murphy Charges that Trump “Has Opened a Channel for Bribery”
- Congressman Casten: Trump’s Assault on the Rule of Law Is Causing Capital Flight Out of U.S. by Foreign Investors
- Trump’s Approval Rating Drops to 80-Year Low; IMF Says U.S. Tariffs Now Exceed the Highs During the Great Depression
- Nasdaq Has Lost More than 3,000 Points Since Trump’s First Full Day in Office in 2025; the Pain Has Barely Begun
- The Bond Crisis Last Week Was a Global No-Confidence Vote in U. S. President Donald Trump
- Trump’s Tariff Plan Guts $5 Trillion in Stock Value in Two Days; Senator Warren Calls for Emergency Action Before Markets Open on Monday
- Trump’s Attacks on Big Law, Universities, and the Media Have a Common Goal: Silence Dissent Against Authoritarian Rule
- Trump Administration Gives All Clear to Laundering Money through Shell Companies and Bribing Foreign Officials
- Four Megabanks on Wall Street Hold $3.2 Trillion in Uninsured Deposits – Which May Explain Senator Schumer’s Pivot to the GOP to Stop a Government Shutdown
- Here’s What Came Crashing Down Yesterday for Trump’s “Genius” Guy, Elon Musk: Tesla Stock, Access to Twitter (X), His Years of Secret Calls with Putin
- After Banning the Associated Press, Trump Is Now Targeting Specific Journalists That He Wants to See Fired
- Closely Watched Atlanta Fed Model Predicts Negative U.S. Growth in First Quarter
- Trump’s Gangster Diplomacy Makes Front Page Headlines Around the Globe
- Who Benefits Alongside Elon Musk If He Succeeds in Killing the CFPB: the Megabanks on Wall Street that Underwrite His Tesla Stock Offerings
- In Trump 1.0, the State Department Used Taxpayer Money to Publish a Book Elevating Elon Musk to a Superhero; It Was Funded by USAID, the Agency Musk Wants to Quickly Shut Down
- News Host Joy Reid Raises Threat of Trump Selling U.S. to Putin; Ten Days Later Her Show Is Cancelled
- Elon Musk’s DOGE Appears to Be Violating a Court Order; It Has Taken Down Hundreds of YouTube Videos that Educate Americans on How to Avoid Being Swindled
- Barron’s Releases Audio of Jamie Dimon Cursing Out His Workers at a Town Hall, as Dimon Plans to Dump Another One Million JPM Shares
- There’s One Federal Investigative Agency that Neither Trump nor Elon Musk Can Touch: It Just Opened an Investigation into DOGE
- Elon Musk’s Companies Were Under Investigation by Five Inspectors General When the Trump Administration Fired Them and Made Musk the Investigator
- Donald Trump Gives the Greenlight to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to Return to Bribing Foreign Officials
- After Tech Geeks Built a Back Door to Loot Billions from FTX, Republicans Refuse to Investigate What Elon Musk’s Tech-Squad Did Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System
- Former Prosecutor, Now U.S. Senator, Informs Tesla That CEO Musk May Be Violating Federal Law and to “Preserve All Records”
- Trump’s Hedge Fund Guy Is Now Overseeing the U.S. Treasury, IRS, OCC, U.S. Mint, FinCEN, F-SOC, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- As Elon Musk Begins Shutting Down Payments to Federal Contractors, a Strange Money Trail Emerges to His Operatives Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System
- JPMorgan Chase Charged by Yet Another Internal Whistleblower with Cooking the Books
- We Asked Google’s AI Search Model, Gemini, Questions About the Fed and Wall Street Megabanks: It Got the Answers Dead Wrong
- With Trump and Melania’s Crypto Coins Likely to Raise Legal Challenges, Why Didn’t Trump Fire the SEC’s Inspector General in His Purge of IGs?
- Fossil Fuel Industry Could End Up Paying Tens of Billions for LA Wildfires and Deceiving the Public on Climate Change for Decades
- It’s Being Called the Biggest Grift by a President in U.S. History: Trump and First Lady Launch their Own Crypto Coins
- Trump Plans to Install a Fracking CEO to Head the Energy Department and Declare a National Emergency on Energy to Gain Vast Powers
- Fossil Fuel Money Played a Role in the Los Angeles Fires and the Push to Install Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense
- When It Comes to Wealth Retention in Retirement, Concrete May Be the New Gold
- Wall Street Watchdog Warns “Clock Is Ticking on a Coming Catastrophic Financial Crash”
- Wall Street Is Sending the Same Message to Americans on Fossil Fuel Financing that It Sent on Cigarettes: Drop Dead
- In a Six-Week Span, this Dark Pool with a Curious Past Traded 3.7 Billion Shares
- Wall Street’s Lobby Firm Hired Eugene Scalia of Gibson Dunn to Sue the Fed for Jamie Dimon
- Postmaster General Louis DeJoy Made $561,051 in Compensation in 2024, as Mail Costs Spiked and Delivery Deteriorated
- Fed Chair Jay Powell Sends a Bold Message to Trump and Tanks the Dow by 1123 Points
- The Head of Fixed Income at T. Rowe Price Makes the Scary Case for the 10-Year Treasury to Spike to 6 Percent
- $663 Billion in Cash Assets Have Gone Poof at the Largest U.S. Banks
- Donald Trump to Ring Bell at New York Stock Exchange Today as Hit List Posters Appear in Manhattan Targeting Wall Street CEOs
- Trump Has a Slush Fund to Prop Up the Dollar – Will He Use It to Prop Up Bitcoin Instead?
- A CEO Assassination; a Billionaire Heiress/NYPD Commissioner; a Secret Wall Street Spy Center – Here’s How They’re Connected
- Despite More than 1600 Tech Scientists Signing a Letter Calling Crypto a Sham, Trump Names a Crypto Cheerleader for SEC Chair
- The Fed Rings a Warning Bell: Hedge Funds and Life Insurers Are Reporting Historic Leverage
- Trump’s Nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel, Has Businesses Financially Intertwined with Trump
- Donald Trump Is at Risk of Getting Named in a Fossil Fuels Conspiracy Lawsuit
- Trump Is Having Difficulty Getting a Lawyer to Accept the Nomination for SEC Chair: Here’s Why
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Supreme Court Crowns a King, Immunizing Future Criminal Acts Under Project 2025 – a Right Wing Manifesto

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 2, 2024 ~ In the span of two business days, six of the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have radically altered American democracy. On Friday, those six right-wing justices gutted the ability of federal government agencies to protect the waters Americans drink, the air they breathe, their ability to impose food and drug safety rules and worker protections. On Monday, the same six effectively crowned the President of the United States a king by immunizing the President from criminal prosecution for any conduct that can be construed as official acts. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a scathing dissent. (Scroll down to her dissent at this link.) To drive home the hubris of the majority’s decision, she read her dissent aloud in the courtroom, boldly enunciating her weightiest words. In her dissent, which was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji … Continue reading
The Debate Disaster and the Supreme Court’s “Chevron” Repeal Have a Money Trail Leading to Charles Koch

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 1, 2024 ~ It took the New York Times Editorial Board less than 24 hours to assess the political landscape after the disastrous presidential debate last Thursday evening and call for President Joe Biden “to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election.” The Times called President Biden’s view that he is the only candidate that can beat Donald Trump “a reckless gamble.” But the New York Times is itself engaging in a reckless gamble with its unmoored bet that the Democratic Party would be able to amicably transition to a different presidential candidate who could win over the American people in the short span of four months left before the election. The Times is also gambling that this major disruption within the Democratic Party would not negatively impact down-ballot races and end up costing Democrats both the White House and control … Continue reading
Congressman Andy Barr Stacks a Hearing on the Fed’s Stress Tests with Lobbyists for Megabanks

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 27, 2024 ~ Yesterday the House Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy Subcommittee held a hearing titled “Stress Testing: What’s Inside the Black Box?” The hearing was convened to examine the manner in which the Federal Reserve conducts its stress tests of the megabanks. The witnesses called to testify included the following: an employee of the Financial Services Forum, a registered lobbyist for banks; an employee of the Bank Policy Institute, a registered lobbyist for banks; Jonathan Gould, a lawyer from Jones Day, whose clients are banks; and one lonely soul, Greg Feldberg, Research Director of the Yale Program on Financial Stability, who was the only credible voice on the witness panel. The Chair of this Subcommittee is Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky whose largest four campaign donors are the following: employees of the Wall Street private equity firms Apollo Global Management and Blackstone … Continue reading
The Fed Posts Historic Operating Losses As It Pays Out 5.40 Percent Interest to Banks

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 26, 2024 ~ According to Federal Reserve data, for the first time in its history, the Fed has been losing money on a consistent monthly basis since September 28, 2022. As of the last reporting date of June 19, 2024, those losses add up to a cumulative $176 billion. As the chart above using Fed data shows, the losses thus far in 2024 have ranged from a monthly high of $11.076 billion in February to a low of $5.674 billion in May. These losses are separate and distinct from the unrealized losses the Fed is experiencing on the debt securities it holds on its balance sheet. It does not mark those losses to market since it intends to hold the securities to maturity and their principal is guaranteed at maturity by the U.S. government. The losses shown in the above chart are actual cash … Continue reading
Goldman Sachs’ Bank Derivatives Have Grown from $40 Trillion to $54 Trillion in Five Years; So How Did Its Credit Exposure Improve by 200 Percent?

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 25, 2024 ~ Last Friday, Goldman Sachs Bank USA, the federally-insured, U.S. taxpayer-backstopped commercial bank that the international trading behemoth, Goldman Sachs Group, is allowed to operate, got a smackdown from two of its regulators, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve Board (the Fed). The two regulators released a letter they had sent to David Solomon, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs Group, which revealed that the commercial bank had flunked its wind-down test known as its “living will.” Derivatives were specifically cited for the “shortcomings.” Of particular note, the regulators wrote that Goldman Sachs Bank USA “…did not demonstrate the ability to model its derivatives portfolio unwind by counterparty for segmenting the portfolio in resolution. In the [upcoming] 2025 Plan, the Covered Company should demonstrate the ability to view derivatives positions at a counterparty level within both the portfolio … Continue reading
The Fed and FDIC Wake Up Suddenly to the Threat of Derivatives, Flunking the Four Largest Derivative Banks on their Wind-Down Plans

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 24, 2024 ~ Since the financial crash of 2008 and the Fed’s multi-trillion dollar bank bailouts that followed, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has been waving a giant red flag every quarter in its “Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities” reports. For sixteen years the OCC has been reporting that just four megabanks are responsible for more than 80 percent of the trillions of dollars in bank derivatives. As the chart above shows, as of December 31, 2023, Goldman Sachs Bank USA, JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., Citigroup’s Citibank and Bank of America held a staggering total of $168.26 trillion in derivatives out of a total of $192.46 trillion at all U.S. banks, savings associations and trust companies. That’s four banks holding 87 percent of all derivatives at all 4,587 federally-insured institutions in the U.S. that existed as of December 31, 2023. … Continue reading
Is the Stock Market Setting Investors Up for a Tech Bust Similar to the Dot.com Bust?

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 20, 2024 ~ On Tuesday, a stock most Americans had never heard of four years ago – Nvidia – closed with a market cap of $3.34 trillion. That makes it the most valuable company in the world, overtaking Microsoft’s heady $3.32 trillion market cap. Nvidia’s share price (ticker NVDA) has soared 174 percent year-to-date while the S&P 500 is up just 15 percent. The much broader index, the Russell 2000, has flat-lined this year. (See chart above.) Without the gains from Nvidia, the S&P 500 would be reporting one-third less percentage increase year-to-date. Nvidia trades on the Nasdaq stock market. Its share price has been riding the artificial intelligence (AI) hype in a manner reminiscent of how the Nasdaq skyrocketed in value on the tech and dot.com mania of the late 1990s. That era did not end well, to put it mildly. The Nasdaq … Continue reading
Chase Bank Customers Are Reporting a Wave of Wire Fraud in their Accounts; the Bank Won’t Make Good on the Looted Funds

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 19 2024 ~ On January 29, Anne Marie Murphy and two of her colleagues at law firm Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP in Santa Monica, California filed a lawsuit in Superior Court on behalf of a 76-year old widow, Diane Artemis Yaffe. Scammers had tricked Ms. Yaffe into making seven wire transfers out of her Chase Bank account, which tallied up to the astonishing sum of $1.8 million, or the bulk of her funds at the time. There are three things which jump out of the factual details in the case that would appear to be legally problematic for Chase Bank – the federally-insured, retail banking unit of JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. First, the six figure wires were completely out-of-character for this elderly client. Second, the huge sums were being wired out of the country. Third, the funds that Chase Bank wired were originally … Continue reading
The Senate Race in Ohio Is the Sickest in U.S. History in Terms of Billionaire Money from Outside the State

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 18, 2024 ~ Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat and life-long Ohioan, is running for his fourth term in the U.S. Senate, after more than 17 years of proving consistently with his voice and actions that it’s the working class of Ohio that he stands up for in Congress. It would seem that Brown’s reelection should be an easy win. Instead, it will be one of the most expensive Senate races in U.S. history with the outcome dependent on just how vile and vicious the attack ads funded by out-of-state billionaires are against Brown. According to AdImpact.com, outside groups have reserved $92.8 million in ads they plan to run supporting Brown’s Republican challenger, Bernie Moreno, a man who has bragged about his early “lower-middle-class status,” but whom the New York Times describes as being “born into a rich and politically connected family” in Bogotá, Columbia. … Continue reading
Sullivan & Cromwell’s Legal Work for Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto House of Fraud Is Getting a Closer Look in Two Federal Court Cases

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 17, 2024 ~ Last Monday, Robert J. Cleary of law firm Patterson Belknap filed a motion in the bankruptcy proceeding of Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed fraud, the FTX crypto exchange, seeking to launch three new investigations into legal work done by Sullivan & Cromwell for Bankman-Fried and FTX prior to the collapse of the fraud. Cleary is the independent examiner appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s U.S. Trustee, which acts as a watchdog in federal bankruptcy cases. Adding to the embarrassment for Sullivan & Cromwell with the announcement of the new investigations is the fact that Sullivan & Cromwell fought against allowing the U.S. Trustee to appoint an independent examiner after it had maneuvered itself into the position of lead counsel to the FTX bankruptcy proceeding, despite its multitude of conflicts with FTX. The presiding judge in the bankruptcy case, John Dorsey, had sided … Continue reading