Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 4, 2017  There was likely a collective gasp at OppenheimerFunds Inc. yesterday when President Donald Trump made another of those market-moving pronouncements, telling Fox News that Puerto Rico’s debt would have to be wiped out. The President’s remarks suggested he thought the losers would be Wall Street banks. The President stated: “You know they owe a lot of money to your friends on Wall Street. We’re gonna have to wipe that out. That’s gonna have to be — you know, you can say goodbye to that. I don’t know if it’s Goldman Sachs but whoever it is, you can wave good-bye to that.” The reality is that a large percentage of Puerto Rico’s debt is held in tax-free municipal bonds and municipal bond mutual funds, owned not by Wall Street banks or tycoons, but by mom and pop investors seeking tax-free income. (As … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 3, 2017 The point of having a President is that in times of crisis there is one leader who can speak quickly and directly to anxious citizens and rally their confidence and trust and optimism to push forward to create a better day for themselves and their country. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the embodiment of such a leader.  We have reprinted below his Christmas Eve message to the nation on December 24, 1941 as a much-needed reminder of how a President of these United States should conduct himself in a time of crisis. In the case of President Donald Trump, it took him four days to pull himself away from public bickering with NFL athletes and notice that an unprecedented humanitarian disaster was unfolding in Puerto Rico following the devastation unleashed there by a direct hit from Hurricane Maria. Then, over the next … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 2, 2017 With 3.4 million fellow American citizens undergoing an epic humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico, a United States territory, as critically-needed food and water remain undistributed for lack of manpower and proper logistical coordination by the Trump administration, there is no better time than the present to assess how corporate welfare trumps the rights of individual citizens of the United States. President Trump, the man who ran on a so-called populist agenda, has Tweeted the following regarding the situation in Puerto Rico (italic emphasis added below): September 25: It’s old electrical grid, which was in terrible shape, was devastated. Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with. Food, water and medical are top priorities – and doing well. September 29: The fact is that Puerto Rico has … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 28, 2017 Rana Foroohar, an Associate Editor and Global Business Columnist for the Financial Times, penned an OpEd at the New York Times yesterday that was as audacious in its insults to the Times’ richest hometown industry, Wall Street, as it was brilliantly in touch with the abject dysfunction of the U.S. financial system. Foroohar’s thesis is this: “…there’s a core truth about our financial system that we have yet to comprehend fully: It isn’t serving us, we’re serving it.” Foroohar describes in specific detail what Wall Street On Parade has long described as Wall Street’s institutionalized wealth transfer system. (See our articles describing this system under the menu button above titled “Wealth Transfer Schemes.” You may find two particular articles of interest, here and here.) Just how high up the chain of command this “service” to Wall Street goes was deftly captured … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 27, 2017 Donald Trump’s pick for Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, had good reason to be nervous yesterday morning as he prepared to testify before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. The ranking member of that Committee, Senator Sherrod Brown, had previously made his feelings known about Clayton’s fitness to serve as Wall Street’s top cop prior to Clayton’s Senate confirmation. Brown had stated: “It’s hard to see how an attorney who’s spent his career helping Wall Street beat the rap will keep President-elect Trump’s promise to stop big banks and hedge funds from ‘getting away with murder.’ I look forward to hearing how Mr. Clayton will protect retirees and savers from being exploited, demand real accountability from the financial institutions the SEC oversees, and work to prevent another financial crisis.” Wall Street On Parade did further investigation of Clayton … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 26, 2017 A new study backs up a theory that many Americans have long suspected: the U.S. is no longer the land of opportunity, despite what national statistics would have us believe. Rather, America is now narrowly constrained to zip codes of opportunity. The new research comes from the Economic Innovation Group (EIG), a bipartisan public policy organization funded by successful tech entrepreneurs. The study provides detailed data on the economically distressed communities that have fundamentally changed the economic landscape of America. The authors write: “A remarkably small proportion of places fuel national increases in jobs and businesses in today’s economy. High growth in these local economic powerhouses buoys national numbers while obscuring stagnant or declining economic activity in other parts of the country. EIG’s prior work shows that this trend represents a fundamental shift in the geography of economic growth in the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 25, 2017  When we created the website for Wall Street On Parade, it took us about 30 minutes to add a free plug-in function so that our readers could search the text of every article we have ever written. (See Search box in upper right-hand corner of our menu at the top of this website.) But at Wall Street’s top cop, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), if one wants to search corporate filings, one is limited to a four-year text search. This bizarre restriction inhibits investigative journalists from capably doing their job and connecting dots. This might sound like a small complaint were it not part of a larger pattern of technological failures by the SEC which have allowed Wall Street firms to run amok for decades. The biggest technological failure, of course, is the SEC’s inability to launch a Consolidated Audit … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 21, 2017 Today’s Houston Chronicle carries a photo and report of “thousands of piles of Hurricane Harvey wreckage on Houston curbs” still waiting for removal. The devastating flooding from Hurricane Harvey in late August has impacted low income families the hardest with another article in the paper reporting that residents of a public housing complex in Houston “have been asked to pay rent for flooded units deemed uninhabitable even as the mayor has condemned private landlords for similar practices.” In the Florida Keys, where major devastation occurred when Hurricane Irma hit the area on September 10 as a Category 4 hurricane, the schools remain closed and will begin to reopen on a staggered basis beginning Monday. The Miami Herald’s digital edition today shows a photo of the devastation unleashed on Big Pine Key by Hurricane Irma, which made landfall at Cudjoe Key, approximately … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 20, 2017 According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, there have been 35 retail bankruptcies this year, almost double the 18 retail bankruptcies of last year. The filing by Toys ‘R’ Us this week was the latest. What many of these retailers have in common is that they were taken private in leveraged buyouts (LBOs) by private equity (PE) firms. Toys ‘R’ Us, Payless ShoeSource, The Limited, Wet Seal, Gymboree Corp., rue21, and True Religion Apparel were all LBOs. Gander Mountain can also be included in this list if you reach back to its 1984 LBO. Far too many LBOs are simply asset stripping operations by Wall Street vultures who load the company with enormous debt, then asset strip the cash from the company by paying themselves obscene special dividends and management fees. On June 12 of this year, the official committee of unsecured … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 19, 2017 The year 2017 is likely to be remembered for devastating hurricanes and storm surges, waves of retail bankruptcies amidst record-setting household debt and a stock market that carelessly sailed through these dangerous waters to record highs. Toys ‘R’ Us was the latest in a growing string of retail bankruptcies to hit the mat last evening. Its bonds have been telegraphing trouble for some time, with one bond due next year careening from 97 cents on the dollar to 22 cents in a little more than two weeks. On September 6, Wolf Richter at WolfStreet.com provided the short narrative of how Toys ‘R’ Us found itself driving toward the ditch. Citing its leveraged buyout in 2005 by private equity firms Bain Capital, KKR & Co. and real estate firm Vornado Realty Trust, Richter wrote: “So here’s what the three PE firms did … Continue reading →