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Recent Posts
- Three Megabanks Had Loans Outstanding of $1.832 Trillion to Giant Hedge Funds on March 31
- Jamie Dimon’s Washington Post OpEd Gets Pummeled at Yahoo Finance
- In the Span of 72 Hours, Four People Tied to a Hewlett-Packard Criminal Case Died in Two Separate Events
- Crypto Took Down Another Federally-Insured Bank and Just Handed Its CEO a 24-Year Prison Sentence
- All the Devils from 2008 Are Back at the Megabanks: Leverage, Off-Balance-Sheet Debt, Over $192 Trillion in Derivatives, Shaky Capital Levels
- New Study Says the Fed Is Captured by Congress and White House — Not the Megabanks that Own the Fed Banks and Get Trillions in Bailouts
- Data from the Fed’s Emergency Funding Program Shows Spring 2023 Banking Crisis Was Far Deeper than Americans Were Told
- These FDIC-Insured Banks Have Lost 69 to 40 Percent of their Market Value Year-to-Date
- Exposure at Hedge Funds Has Skyrocketed to Over $28 Trillion; Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Are at Risk
- We Charted the Plunge and Rebound in the Nikkei Versus Nomura and Citigroup; the Correlation Is Frightening
- Former U.S. Labor Secretary Says Billionaires Have No Right to Exist Because their Wealth Comes from Five Illegal or Bad Practices
- Citigroup Is Having a Helluva Summer: A Protest on Thursday Will Turn Up the Heat
- Nikkei Has Biggest Drop in History: Here’s What’s Causing the Global Market Selloff
- JPMorgan Is Tapping Illiquid Assets in its Global Collateral Program; the New York Fed Is Paying for Its Services
- Bank Regulators Issue Warnings on Fintech and Banking as Disasters Pile Up
- Donald Trump Gives a Speech on Not Letting China Win the Crypto Race – Not Realizing China Banned Crypto Mining and Transactions Four Years Ago
- The New York Fed Has Contracted Out Key Functions to JPMorgan Chase; We Filed a FOIA and Got These Strange Invoices
- On the Eve of Netanyahu’s Address to Congress, Senator Bernie Sanders Delivers a Breathtaking Assessment of His War Crimes
- Trump’s Sit-Down with Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago Will Cost U.S. Taxpayers Millions While Profiting Trump’s Business
- Protecting Trump and His Jet-Setting Adult Children During His Presidency Cost Taxpayers Over $1 Billion
- A Congressman and a Doctor Reported a Woman Being Shot at Trump Rally: She’s Vanished from Official Reports
- Jamie Dimon Goes Missing from Earnings Call, After Dumping $183 Million of His JPMorgan Chase Stock Earlier this Year
- U.S. Senate Candidate Backed by Hedge Fund Billionaires Was Sitting in Front Row at Trump Rally as the Sniper Fired into the Bleachers
- Project 2025: The Fossil Fuel and Banking Money Behind the Madness
- The Fund Created to Unwind a Failing Megabank Has a Problem: There’s No Money in It
- Joe Biden Versus the New York Times
- Grand Jury Transcript in Jeffrey Epstein Case Is Released, Raising Questions about Epstein’s Darkest Secrets Being Protected in JPMorgan Cases
- The Supreme Court Crowns a King, Immunizing Future Criminal Acts Under Project 2025 – a Right Wing Manifesto
- The Debate Disaster and the Supreme Court’s “Chevron” Repeal Have a Money Trail Leading to Charles Koch
- Congressman Andy Barr Stacks a Hearing on the Fed’s Stress Tests with Lobbyists for Megabanks
- The Fed Posts Historic Operating Losses As It Pays Out 5.40 Percent Interest to Banks
- 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?
- The Fed and FDIC Wake Up Suddenly to the Threat of Derivatives, Flunking the Four Largest Derivative Banks on their Wind-Down Plans
- Is the Stock Market Setting Investors Up for a Tech Bust Similar to the Dot.com Bust?
- Chase Bank Customers Are Reporting a Wave of Wire Fraud in their Accounts; the Bank Won’t Make Good on the Looted Funds
- The Senate Race in Ohio Is the Sickest in U.S. History in Terms of Billionaire Money from Outside the State
- Sullivan & Cromwell’s Legal Work for Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto House of Fraud Is Getting a Closer Look in Two Federal Court Cases
- Crypto Tries to Recreate the Koch Money Machine to Pack Congress with Shills
- French Fears Ignite Selloff in U.S. Megabanks and Foreign Peers
- Crypto Just Got Exponentially More Dangerous: Meet Fairshake
- Nvidia Hit a $3 Trillion Market Cap Last Week; Dark Pools Are Making Over 300,000 Trades in the Stock Weekly
- The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Is Making Enemies in All the Right Places
- A Former Exec at Citibank Raises Alarm Bells in Federal Court Over Failed Risk Controls Inside the Bank
- Charles Koch’s Money Is Being Used in Elections in Ways Only Orwell Could Have Imagined
- Freakonomics and Frankenbanks: JPMorgan Chase Sucked Up 18 Percent of All Profits of 4,568 FDIC-Insured Banks in the First Quarter
- Academic Study Provides Hard Numbers to the Sick, Revolving Door Culture at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Citigroup
- $244 Billion of Treasury Debt to Hit the Market Today and Tomorrow as Interest Rates Spike on Ballooning Supply
- CFTC Fines J.P. Morgan Securities — a Fed Primary Dealer — $100 Million for Failing to Surveil Potential Spoofing and High Frequency Trading for Eight Years
- Another FDIC-Insured Bank Got in Bed with Fintech; It’s Now Got a Dumpster Fire and Desperate Pleas from Customers for their Money
- Citigroup Gets Fined $79 Million Two Years After It Caused a $300 Billion Flash Crash in European Stock Markets
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Why Isn’t the Justice Department Bringing Treasury-Rigging Charges Against Wall Street?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 24, 2018 ~ The U.S. Department of Justice has had an ongoing investigation into the potential rigging of the U.S. Treasury market by big banks on Wall Street for the past three years according to a series of past media reports. And yet, no formal charges have been brought. Lots of Wall Street watchers are wondering why – especially since private law firms have brought very specific charges in the matter into Federal court. There are only so many times the Justice Department can charge the largest Wall Street banks with felony counts for rigging markets before the public catches on that it’s a feature not a bug of their business model. Continuous rigging charges could lead to growing public demands and newspaper editorials to break up these serially-charged behemoths at a time when members of Congress – who depend on the largess … Continue reading
Why Did a Wall Street Plaintiff’s Law Firm File the DNC RICO Lawsuit Against Trump’s Campaign
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 23, 2018 ~ If there’s any plaintiff’s law firm in America that should know racketeering when it sees it, it’s Cohen Milstein. It’s sued the major Wall Street banks repeatedly with a solid win rate for colluding to rig pretty much anything that trades. On Friday, in the same Federal District Court where its Wall Street actions are litigated, the Southern District of New York (SDNY), it filed its bombshell RICO lawsuit on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The lawsuit does not name President Donald Trump as a defendant but it does name prominent members of his presidential campaign, including his son, Donald Jr., and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and advisers, Roger Stone and George Papadopoulos are also named, as are the Russian intelligence service, Russian Federation, several Russian operatives, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. The lawsuit … Continue reading
Eric Holder, After Failing to Prosecute Wall Street, May Run for President
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 20, 2018 ~ Make no mistake about it, the Big Law firms that played a major role in the Wall Street corruption that led to the financial crash of 2008 and have been burying corporate crimes through their crony ties to Washington for decades, are desperate to put their own man in the White House in 2020. On Tuesday, former Attorney General, Eric Holder, who headed the U.S. Department of Justice in the Obama administration, appeared on the MSNBC program, “All In with Chris Hayes.” Holder told Hayes that he was considering a run for the President of the United States in 2020 but had not made a final decision. (See video below.) Obviously, if Holder ran, it would be as a Democrat, something that is certain to enrage the progressive wing of the party. Holder effectively transplanted his pals from his law … Continue reading
Elizabeth Warren Says U.S. and Wall Street Conspired Against Wealth Building by Blacks; Remarks Are Censored by Big Media
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 19, 2018 ~ If you get your business news from the Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg News or the New York Times or Reuters or the Financial Times or CNBC, chances are you did not hear about a critically important symposium that was held on Monday on the dangers that Wall Street’s biggest banks continue to pose to the U.S. economy and, in particular, to communities of color. Adding to the mystery of how every major business news outlet could simultaneously decide to skip the event is that it was headlined by two famous players in the banking debate, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Neel Kashkari, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. The symposium on “Too Big to Fail” was hosted by Howard University’s Department of Economics and held at the campus which is located in Washington, DC – where there is … Continue reading
Elizabeth Warren Gets Wall Street Runaround on #MeToo Probe
By Pam Martens: April 17, 2018 ~ As women in careers as disparate as Hollywood movie stars, television news anchors and members of Congress have fueled the #MeToo movement and spoken out against America’s workplace culture that tolerates sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, the silence from women on Wall Street has been deafening. Some reporters who have written about the silence have speculated that Wall Street has cleaned up its act, owing to the big class action lawsuits that were brought in the 1990s against some of the largest and oldest Wall Street brokerage firms. (See my Editor’s Note below.) Wall Street women’s detailed court complaints in the 90s described lewd acts during the workday (such as the hiring of strippers) or at company-sanctioned holiday parties (like having a camera shoved under a skirt to take a picture). There was also the endless degradation of women on Wall … Continue reading
These Are the Michael Cohen “Business Dealings” Prosecutors Are Investigating
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 17, 2018 ~ It’s clear from the prosecutors’ filings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that they believe President Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, has lied to them and is concealing information from them. Last Friday evening, McClatchy newspapers dropped a bombshell that provided some insight into what some of those black redacted passages in the government’s court filings in the Cohen case might refer to. McClatchy reporters Peter Stone and Greg Gordon write that Special Counsel Robert Mueller “has evidence” that Cohen did, in fact, make a “late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign.” Cohen has publicly denied any such trip and produced his passport to back up his story. The McClatchy article says “Cohen entered the Czech Republic through Germany, apparently during August or early September of 2016… He wouldn’t have needed a passport for … Continue reading
Meet the Wall Street Lawyer that Donald Trump Hired for the Cohen Raid Case
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 16, 2018 Donald Trump has been struggling for weeks to add fire power to his legal team. Then, somehow, last Wednesday, Trump was able to hire a woman considered by Wall Street to be a legal dynamo. The hire came just a few days after Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, saw his home, office, hotel room, safety deposit box and electronic devices raided by the FBI under the direction of the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) – Wall Street’s official stomping ground. The case was referred to the SDNY by Special Counsel Robert Mueller according to court documents filed in the matter. Trump has intervened in the Cohen court case in the SDNY via his new lawyer, Joanna Hendon, herself a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the SDNY. According to her LinkedIn profile, Hendon served there from … Continue reading
Comey Compares Trump to “Mob Boss” as RNC Launches “Lyin’ Comey” Website
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 13, 2018 The Republican National Committee (RNC), the organization that provides leadership and funding for the official Republican Party of the United States, has put its reputation on the line along with every Republican that’s running for public office in November by setting up an official RNC website calling former FBI Director James Comey “Lyin’ Comey.” It has been the longstanding position of President Donald Trump that Comey is a liar. Trump fired Comey in the midst of the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election and has disparaged him ever since. Comey is highly respected by the rank and file of the FBI, the most esteemed law enforcement agency in the United States. The RNC has apparently taken Trump’s personal loyalty pledge – the one Comey says he refused to take when asked by the President. But there’s no … Continue reading
Hearings Show Facebook as a Media Company Using Deceptive Technology to Gain Unfair Advertising Advantage
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 12, 2018 Facebook wants Congress, shareholders and Wall Street analysts to think of it as a sexy, high-growth-potential technology company, not a media company, but after 10 hours of Congressional probing this week, Facebook has been revealed to be a media company that is simply using advanced technology and deceptive practices to gain an unfair advertising advantage over other media companies. (Another reason Facebook does not want to admit to being a media company is that it would then have to take responsibility for the fake news and propaganda it is spreading through Russian bots and trolls of every stripe.) As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg conceded this week in the Congressional hearings, Facebook’s business model revolves around the company’s ability to provide advertisers with granular data on its users so that advertisers can more effectively target them for a specific product or service. … Continue reading
Senate Hearing: Facebook CEO Zuckerberg Is Questioned on Ties to CIA-Funded Company
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 11, 2018 As Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg fingered his cheat sheet of canned answers to a barrage of questions from Senators yesterday on how Facebook had allowed a Trump-backed political operation to harvest personal data from 87 million of its users, Zuckerberg attempted to channel motherhood, apple pie, dorm room entrepreneurism and an altruistic desire to connect people around the world in one harmonious melding of human spirit. Unfortunately, the facts just kept getting in the way. There was the questioning from Senator Richard Blumenthal pointing out that Facebook had been caught red-handed in 2011 by the Federal Trade Commission in egregious abuses of its users’ personal data. Blumenthal said current activities at Facebook showed that Facebook was in “violation of the FTC consent decree.” Another uncomfortable moment came when Senator Patrick Leahy asked if Special Counsel Robert Mueller had issued subpoenas to … Continue reading
