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Recent Posts
- A Wall Street Regulator Is Understating Margin Debt by More than $4 Trillion – Because It’s Not Counting Giant Banks Making Margin Loans to Hedge Funds
- After JPMorgan Threatens to Sue, the Fed Cuts Its Capital Requirement on the 5-Count Felon from a Planned 25 Percent Hike to Less than 8 Percent
- 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
Category Archives: Uncategorized
SEC Nominee Has Represented 8 of the 10 Largest Wall Street Banks in Past Three Years
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 22, 2017 President Trump’s nominee to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, Walter J. (Jay) Clayton, a law partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, has represented 8 of the 10 largest Wall Street banks as recently as within the last three years. Clayton’s current resume at his law firm is somewhat misleading. It lists under “Representative Engagements” in “Capital Markets/Leveraged Finance” the following: Initial public offering of $25 billion by Alibaba Group Holding Limited; Initial public offering of $190 million by Moelis & Company; Initial public offering of $2.375 billion by Ally Financial. All three of the above IPOs occurred in 2014 – less than three years ago. A quick check of the prospectuses for the IPOs that were filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that Clayton, as a law partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, was representing the underwriters in the offering, which include the largest … Continue reading
Who Would Sell This Money Guzzling Product to Retail Clients? The Biggest Names on Wall Street.
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 21, 2017 There’s a very old joke on Wall Street that goes like this: “How do you make a small fortune on Wall Street? Answer: Start with a large one.” Unfortunately, millions of Americans have discovered since 2008 that this is no laughing matter. There are now more than 1,000 articles on this website that address the failure of our Congress and regulators to rein in the serial and frequently, conspiratorial, abuses of Wall Street against the investing public. There are brilliantly written books on the fleecing and insatiable greed of Wall Street; there are movies and documentaries on how Wall Street’s reign of financial terror brought the U.S. to the brink of financial collapse in 2008. And yet, the public continues to play the role of sucker at the big trading houses on Wall Street. Just last week the Securities and Exchange … Continue reading
Why Did SEC Acting Chair Take an Ax to Enforcement Unit’s Subpoena Power?
By James A. Kidney: February 20, 2017 The Trump administration assault on investor protections put in place following the 2007-08 financial crisis continues apace. The war on investors takes place in arenas both large and small. The large issues get the attention, of course. These include repeal of much of the Dodd-Frank law and regulations of the biggest Wall Street banks, limiting or eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which actually helps individual customers abused by giant financial institutions, and preventing adoption of fiduciary standards for financial professionals recommending securities that line their pockets but are risky to customers. But Washington is not merely a swamp of self-interest with large, highly visible alligators munching on small fish to satisfy their insatiable greed. Another apt metaphor is a field of giant weeds — weeds of rules, processes and procedures that can be manipulated for the interests of the Fat Cats. These … Continue reading
Republicans Need to Have That Nixon Conversation With Trump — Now
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 17, 2017 It was Tuesday, August 6, 1974. New evidence had surfaced showing that the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, had lied to the nation about his knowledge of the Watergate burglary and attempted coverup. Senator Barry Goldwater blurted out in frustration at a Republican luncheon: “There are only so many lies you can take, and now there has been one too many. Nixon should get his ass out of the White House — today!” The next day, Goldwater led a delegation of Republican leaders to the White House. They told Nixon he had lost the confidence of his party; he did not have the votes in the House to ward off impeachment or the votes in the Senate to avoid conviction. The very next day, Thursday, August 8, 1974, Nixon addressed the nation and announced his resignation as President. One … Continue reading
Mary Jo White Seriously Misled the U.S. Senate to Become SEC Chair
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 16, 2017 Less than two weeks after Mary Jo White was nominated to become Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission by President Barack Obama on January 24, 2013, White filed an ethics disclosure letter advising that she would “retire” from her position representing Wall Street banks at the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton. White wrote on this subject in great detail, stating: “Upon confirmation, I will retire from the partnership of Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP. Following my retirement, the law firm will not owe me an outstanding partnership share for either 2012 or any part of 2013. As a retired partner, I will be entitled to the use of secretarial services, office space and a blackberry at the firm’s expense. For the duration of my appointment, I will forgo these three benefits, though I may pay for some secretarial services at my … Continue reading
Wall Street Banks Are Trading in Their Own Company’s Stock: How Is This Legal?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 15, 2017 Increasingly, under the mantra of liquidity, trading activity on Wall Street that would have resulted in criminal charges in another era is yawned at by regulators. The week that Donald Trump shocked markets around the globe by getting himself elected President of the United States, Wall Street banks like Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and others traded millions of shares of each other’s stocks – as well as trading millions of shares of their own publicly traded stock. The trades were not directed to a regulated stock exchange like the New York Stock Exchange. Instead, the trades were conducted internally by the Wall Street bank’s own Dark Pool – an entity appropriately named for its darkness and hands-off regulation. In an effort to create the illusion that there is some element of transparency about what is going on in these … Continue reading
As the U.S. Stumbles, the World Is Watching — Nervously
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 14, 2017 Today’s news headlines are not the stuff of confidence-building. It seems like a 241-year old democracy should have gotten its act together a lot better by now. Bloomberg News is reporting that 17 of the most prestigious colleges and universities in the country (including Harvard, Yale and Stanford) have filed court papers seeking to join a lawsuit in a Brooklyn Federal court against President Donald Trump’s hastily constructed Executive Order. The Order called for an immigration ban which has drawn a flurry of lawsuits, nationwide protests and a rebuke by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The schools told the court that during the last academic year, more than one million international students studied at U.S. universities and now, as a result of the immigrant ban, 42,000 scholars, including Nobel Laureates, are calling for a boycott of educational conferences in the … Continue reading
Wall Street Journal Goes With “Alternative Facts” in Hank Greenberg Saga
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 13, 2017 In 2005 and 2006, Wall Street Journal reporters distinguished themselves in covering the charges of fraud being hurled at the giant insurer AIG and its CEO, Maurice (Hank) Greenberg. At that point, the Bancroft family had owned the Wall Street Journal for more than a century. But in 2007, Rupert Murdoch and his corporate entity, News Corp, bought the newspaper. The paper’s editorial page has subsequently taken bizarre positions on Wall Street’s crimes, refusing to allow the facts to get in their way. Last evening, hitting a new low in the arena of “alternative facts,” the Wall Street Journal opined that Maurice (Hank) Greenberg, the former Chairman and CEO of the giant bailed-out insurer, AIG, had received a “vindication” by last Friday’s settlement with New York State Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman. The editorial characterized the case against Greenberg as a “revenge … Continue reading
Facing Down Trump in Court: A 37-Year Old Hero Emerges
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 10, 2017 Students and teachers at Franklin High School in Seattle are walking a little taller and prouder this morning. One of their own, 37-year old Noah Purcell, the Solicitor General of the State of Washington, has in the span of less than a week, beat the most powerful man in the world – not once but twice. Purcell convinced District Court Judge James Robart in oral arguments on February 3 and all three judges sitting at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in oral arguments on February 7 that President Donald Trump had illegally imposed an Executive Order banning immigrant entry into the United States from seven majority-Muslim countries. The 29-page wide-ranging decision from the Ninth Circuit says as much about the power of Purcell to hone sweeping constitutional concepts into a finely-tuned legal argument as it does about the ability of … Continue reading
Trump Loses His Appeal to the Ninth Circuit on Immigration Ban
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 9, 2017 At 3:08 p.m. Pacific time, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 29-page decision on President Donald Trump’s Executive Order regarding banning immigration to the United States for 120 days and banning people from seven majority Muslim countries from entering the United States for 90 days. The Court found that the States of Washington and Minnesota, which had taken their case to a lower Federal District Court and won a Temporary Restraining Order, did indeed suffer harms from the Executive Order. The Court wrote: “We therefore conclude that the States have alleged harms to their proprietary interests traceable to the Executive Order. The necessary connection can be drawn in at most two logical steps: (1) the Executive Order prevents nationals of seven countries from entering Washington and Minnesota; (2) as a result, some of these people will not enter state … Continue reading