Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 18, 2017 America has now been through various iterations of “it’s time to stop bashing Wall Street” by writers who seem to easily get air time or plenty of print space to make their case. An OpEd in the New York Times today is the latest in this endless series. We’ll get to that column shortly, but first some necessary background. Wall Street did not accidentally run a barge aground and leave a small oil slick on the Hudson River. Wall Street did not accidentally release tainted lettuce that sickened a few dozen people. What Wall Street did was intentional and criminal: it financially engineered a toxic subprime house of cards which it knew from its own internal reviews was going to collapse; it then molded the toxic product into inscrutable bundles; it sold the bundles to unsuspecting investors around the globe while … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 17, 2017 In 2013, when a division of CIT served as a joint lead arranger for a $370 million senior secured credit facility to the Weinstein Company, an executive of the lender, Kevin Khanna, issued a statement effusively praising the management of the Weinstein Company, stating: “The Weinstein Co. is one of the premier Hollywood studios in the world and we are pleased to further expand our relationship with them through this recent financing. As a key player in the film financing sector, we pride ourselves in putting our knowledge to work on behalf of our clients to help them achieve their goals.” Today, the Weinstein Company stands as the premier poster boy for mismanagement of its brand, reputation and franchise as sexual assault and sexual harassment charges, stretching over three decades, have been lodged against its co-founder and key executive, Harvey Weinstein. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 16, 2017 Hurricanes, wildfires, the multiple investigations of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election and the calamity-du-jour in the Trump White House are gobbling up an outsized share of digital and print news pages at corporate media. What’s gone missing is intrepid, in-depth investigations of Wall Street’s latest scam against the public – even at corporate media outlets purporting to focus on Wall Street. Consider today’s front page of the Wall Street Journal: there’s an article on health care; central banks and stimulus; Iraqi forces and Kurdish fighters; how Blackstone Group is on the prowl for retail investors; and a curious report on long-haul truckers cooking up jambalaya and Thai peanut pork (you can’t make this stuff up). There is nothing about an investigation of a mega Wall Street bank; the dangers these behemoths continue to pose to taxpayers and the U.S. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 13, 2017 Donald Trump, the President of the United States, who took his companies through bankruptcy six times, picked the three-week anniversary of Hurricane Maria delivering an epic humanitarian crisis to Puerto Rico to shame the U.S. territory for its financial troubles and to traumatize the struggling residents by suggesting he may yank Federal workers from Puerto Rico. The President, whose key job is to rally people in the time of crisis, posted the following, insanely cruel Tweet yesterday to a region where 84 percent of the residents still lack electrical power; one-third lack clean running water; and only 8 percent of the roads are passable according to government statistics: “We cannot keep FEMA, the Military & First Responders, who have been amazing (under the most difficult circumstances) in P.R. forever!” Trump posted to his Twitter page. That post came shortly after Trump retweeted a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 12, 2017 President Donald Trump has developed a kind of Twitter art form for disparaging U.S. media as “Fake News.” But even before Trump was elected President and assumed the mantle of media-basher-in-chief, corporate-owned media had lost the confidence of a vast majority of Americans. A Gallup poll released on September 14 of last year found that “Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media ‘to report the news fully, accurately and fairly’ has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media.” The poll showed a drop of eight percentage points from the same poll conducted in 2015. Now, as the fallout from the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault articles continues to play out, both NBC and the New York Times have come under fire for allegedly … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 11, 2017  In May 2011, a New York grand jury indicted the powerful former head of the International Monetary Fund and the man presumed by many to be on his way to becoming the next President of France, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The indictment stemmed from allegations that he had sexually assaulted a maid, Nafissatou Diallo, in his hotel suite in New York. But then Strauss-Kahn unleashed his powerful legal team and global PR firm and by August the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, had dropped the case. (See our prior coverage here and here.) Strauss-Kahn, known as DSK, had much in common at the time with the Harvey Weinstein matter today. DSK was a powerful man with powerful political friends. He had lawyers and a major PR firm ready to spring into action over allegations of  being a sexual predator when they arose. Now, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 10, 2017 The U.S. House and Senate Intelligence Committees have asked executives from Google, Facebook and Twitter to appear at their respective public hearings on November 1. The hearings will seek testimony on evidence already turned over to the Committees by the companies on how Russia used social media accounts, bots, trolls and advertising to influence the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election. The New York Times reported yesterday that “On Facebook, fake Russia-linked accounts — in which fictional people posed as American activists — promoted inflammatory messages on divisive issues. Those accounts bought advertising to promote those messages and reach a bigger audience within the Facebook universe, while promoting the incendiary posts to different locations or people with established political leanings for maximum impact.” Facebook has turned over information on 3,000 Russia-linked ads that appeared on its network in the leadup to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 9, 2017 Following a detailed investigative report that appeared on the front page of the New York Times last Friday, along with additional disturbing reports over the weekend, the powerful Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein, was fired yesterday by The Weinstein Company, the film studio he founded with his brother, Bob, in 2005. The two were previously the co-founders of Miramax Film Corp. It was sold to Disney in 1993. According to the Times and other reports that followed, Weinstein is a sexual predator who has harassed his own employees in the workplace as well as actresses seeking jobs during hotel interviews. Weinstein, like Fox News founder Roger Ailes, was said to have perpetrated his sexual misdeeds over many years without public disclosure by effectively creating his own private justice system – using private monetary settlements with gag orders for their accusers instead of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 6, 2017 This morning’s September jobs data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does not actually capture the extent of the economic misery in the U.S. mainland last month. The data showed a stunning loss of 33,000 jobs (the first time the U.S. has had a negative figure since 2010) while simultaneously reporting that the unemployment rate dipped to 4.2 percent from 4.4 percent in August. But here’s the quirky thing about how the U.S. government counts people as being employed: according to the official web site of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, an individual can be counted as employed even if they didn’t receive a dime in salary during the week the data is collected. The BLS explains its rationale as follows: (Italic emphasis added.) People are considered employed if they did any work at all for pay … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 5, 2017 According to Federal Reserve statistics, as of the end of the first quarter of this year, the U.S. municipal bond market consisted of $3.8 trillion of debt outstanding with retail investors owning 42 percent of the market. Life insurance companies, property and casualty insurers, banks, mutual funds and foreign buyers are also major holders of municipal bonds. Municipal bonds have performed well as a class over a century of booms and busts. They came through the Great Depression with an extremely low default rate. General obligation municipal bonds (GOs) are backed by the full faith and credit and taxing power of a jurisdiction like a state or county or city and GOs with AAA ratings are typically viewed as second in safety to issues of the U.S. government.  Municipal bonds issued to finance a project are classified as revenue bonds and … Continue reading →