Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 1, 2017 On April 20 of this year, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke about the Trump administration’s tax plan at the Institute of International Finance. (Watch the video here.) Mnuchin described how the plan would pay for itself without adding to the national debt. He stated: “The deal will pay for itself. Now, having said that, we fundamentally believe in dynamic scoring. So, as you know, static scoring – you change the tax code, you plug it in, you see what the cost is. So, you are correct, fundamentally you’re lowering taxes under a static score, it’s gonna cost money. Now, having said that, some of the lowering in rates is going to be offset by less deductions, in simpler taxes. So, some of it will be made up on that but the majority of it will be made up on in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 30, 2017 Bitcoin has soared this year by more than ten-fold, defying all of the Wall Street veterans who have compared it to the Tulip Bubble and/or a Ponzi scheme. That doesn’t mean that Bitcoin is a legitimate investment; it just means that bubbles have no set expiration date. The Nobel laureate economist, Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University, appeared on Bloomberg television yesterday and had this to say about Bitcoin: “One of the main functions of government is to create currency. And Bitcoin is successful only because of its potential for circumvention, lack of oversight. So it seems to me it ought to be outlawed. It doesn’t serve any socially useful function.” Consider the remarks Stiglitz made yesterday to our more detailed assessment along the same lines back in 2014. We wrote: “The business writers at Reuters are also dead wrong on Bitcoin … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 29, 2017 “Populist” candidate for President, Donald Trump, railed against the “political establishment” and Wall Street elites who were “getting away with murder.” On October 26, 2016, just days before the Presidential election, Trump spoke at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina and promised to uphold the plank in the Republican Party platform to break up the big banks by restoring the Glass-Steagall Act. He stated: “The policies of the Clintons brought us the financial recession — through lifting Glass-Steagall, pushing subprime lending, and blocking reforms to Fannie and Freddie. Two friendly names but they’re not so friendly. It’s time for a 21st century Glass-Steagall and, as part of that, a priority on helping African-American businesses get the credit they need.” Now, as the sitting President, the former populist candidate has become the embodiment of the political establishment he railed against. He has stacked his … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 28, 2017 Vanguard is one of the largest mutual fund companies in the world with 20 million investors and approximately $4.5 trillion in global assets under management as of September 30, 2017, according to its website. When it expounds on the outlook for the stock market, people tend to listen closely. Yesterday, Vanguard issued its economic and stock market outlook for the medium term, writing: “For 2018 and beyond, our investment outlook is modest, at best. Elevated valuations, low volatility, and secularly low interest rates are unlikely to be allies for robust financial market returns over the next five years.” Exactly how “modest” does it expect stock market returns to be over the medium term? The report goes on to define “modest” as follows: “Based on our ‘fair-value’ stock valuation metrics, the medium-run outlook for global equities has deteriorated a bit and is … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 27, 2017 Since its financial meltdown in 2008 and unprecedented bailout by the U.S. taxpayer, Citigroup (parent of Citibank) has been repeatedly charged by its Federal regulators with odious crimes against its pooled mortgage investors, credit card and banking customers, student loan borrowers, and for its foreclosure frauds. It has paid billions of dollars in fines for its past misdeeds while new charges pile up. In 2015, it became an admitted felon for participating in rigging foreign exchange markets. In short, Citigroup is a lawbreaking recidivist. If it were a mere human, it would be serving a long prison term. Instead, its fines for charges of egregious acts are getting smaller, not larger. Last Tuesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which typically has a good track record of holding the big Wall Street banks accountable for their misdeeds, imposed an unusually feeble … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 20, 2017 Last Wednesday, Richard Cordray, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), announced he would be stepping down from his post at the end of this month. Cordray is the former Attorney General of Ohio and there are rumors he may make a run for Governor there. The CFPB, a Federal agency, was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010. The legislation resulted from the greatest fraudulent wealth transfer from the middle class to the 1 percent since the Wall Street frauds of the late 1920s. Both periods ended in an epic financial crash that left the U.S. economy on life support. Since the financial crash of 2008, the U.S. economy has grown at an anemic 2 percent or less per year despite massive fiscal stimulus and unprecedented bond purchases (quantitative easing) by the Federal Reserve. Despite the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 17, 2017 U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appears to have inaugurated a perpetual bring your wife to work day. It’s become so farcical that it frequently feels like the United States Treasury Department has morphed into a low-budget, badly scripted reality TV show where the female star is so out-of-touch that she must continually scurry about in her haute couture erasing the haughty things she has written about the little people on multiple continents. We’ll get to that shortly, but first some background: It all started back on January 19 when actress and then fiancée Louise Linton sat by her man during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing to become U.S. Treasury Secretary. At the hearing, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon had this to say about his repugnance to see Mnuchin fill the post as U.S. Treasury Secretary: “Mr. Mnuchin’s career began … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 13, 2017  A man holding one of the most important and powerful jobs for keeping the U.S. banking system safe from another epic crash like that of 1929 and 2008 has tongues wagging over the bizarre speech he delivered at the Clearing House Annual Conference last Wednesday in New York. Keith Noreika is the acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal agency responsible for supervising national banks and inspecting them for safety and soundness. What Noreika recommended last Wednesday, however, would make the U.S. banking system significantly more dangerous than it already is. Noreika thinks there is no good reason to prevent giant corporate conglomerates from owning insured depository banks that are backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer. He had this to say in his speech last week: “The narrative persists to keep commercial interests from owning or … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 10, 2017 If you feel lost in the cacophony of contrasting claims that Wall Street was adequately reformed under the Dodd-Frank legislation of 2010 or that it remains an insidious wealth transfer system for the 1 percent, then you need to invest one-hour of your time to listen carefully to some of the smartest experts in America address the topic. A free one-hour video is now available (see below) which should settle the debate once and for all that the Dodd-Frank legislation of 2010 has failed to deliver the needed reforms to Wall Street’s corrupt culture and fraudulent business models and that nothing short of restoring the Glass-Steagall Act is going to make the U.S. financial system safe again. Don’t let the grainy quality of the video turn you off (it was made from a live webinar): the integrity of the voices will … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 9, 2017 In November of 2016, there was more than 100 basis points (one percent) difference between the yield on the 2-year and the 10-year U.S. Treasury Note. As of this morning, that difference stood at 68 basis points, a dramatic flattening in the yield curve and harkening to the levels seen during the onset of the financial crisis in 2007. As of 7:48 a.m. this morning, the spread between the 10-year Treasury Note (yielding 2.33 percent) and 30-year Treasury Bond (yielding 2.81 percent) is even smaller, at a meager 48 basis points or less than half of one percent. It is a serious commentary on the bizarre financial times in which we live that a fixed income investor would be rewarded with less than half a percent of additional income to add 20 years of risk to the maturity date on his … Continue reading →