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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
Wall Street Financed Jeb Hensarling for its Propaganda War – Now In Full Swing
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 9, 2017 Jeb Hensarling is the Republican Chair of the Financial Services Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. Despite the seriousness of that job, Hensarling displays amazing ignorance of the inner workings of Wall Street at the hearings over which he presides. Unlike Senator Bernie Sanders who stumped around the country for more than a year during his primary campaign, reinforcing to Americans what they already suspected, that “the business model of Wall Street is fraud,” Hensarling wants to kill the few restraints on this criminal cartel that currently exist. He has been well financed by Wall Street to get the job done. Among Hensarling’s largest donors for his 2016 re-election campaign were every major Wall Street bank, including two admitted criminal felons (JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup’s Citicorp) as well as those charged with market rigging and serial frauds against the investing … Continue reading
Moves in Gold Price Suggest There’s Trouble Ahead
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 8, 2017 The price of gold (see above chart) has been rising and its volume spiking since President Donald Trump signed his infamous Executive Order on immigration on January 27. That action ushered in a new U.S. era of uncertainty in which thousands of agreements, such as Lawful Permanent Resident status known as a green card, can be casually broken by one man in the Oval Office signing an Executive Order and setting off pandemonium in lives and airports around the globe. It raises the fear of what other established laws or rights the President might attempt to sign away. Gold typically rises when there is fear in stock markets. But the stock market has not been following its typical relationship to gold by selling off. Since Trump’s presidential win in early November, the Standard and Poor’s 500 has been on a steady … Continue reading
Trump’s Immigration Ban: Americans Can Listen In on Court Hearing Today
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 7, 2017 While President Donald Trump is proving himself to be a divider not a uniter, the Attorneys General of Washington State and Minnesota are getting the unity job done. Their case against the President’s ban on immigrants entering the U.S. from seven majority Muslim nations – even those holding valid visas and, sporadically, legal permanent residents with valid green cards – has been a clarion call to fellow citizens to stop Trump now before his Executive Orders come for their own rights. On Friday, Judge James Robart blocked Trump’s order nationwide. The case is now under appeal at the Ninth Circuit Court and the docket already has 92 entries. Constitutional scholars, law professors, more than a dozen nonprofits, almost 100 tech companies, and 16 Attorneys General from other states are asking the court to keep Judge Robart’s order in place. The public … Continue reading
Trump’s Immigration Court Battle Just Became a States’ Rights Case
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 6, 2017 In 2008, when corrupt and insolvent financial firms on Wall Street were being bailed out by the U.S. taxpayer after a vote by Congress, the firms were simultaneously funneling millions of those bailout dollars as bonuses to the very executives who had played a role in the firm’s demise. The American people were told by our government that the bonuses had to be paid because they were part of a legally binding contract between the company and the employee and contract law is sacrosanct in the U.S. Now flash forward to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order of January 27, 2017. The President issued a wide-ranging travel ban that set off chaos at the nation’s airports; disrupted thousands of lives; and prevented lawful residents of the United States from returning to their families and homes after travel abroad. The President directed a … Continue reading
Trump to Sign Orders Today Making Wall Street More Dangerous
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 3, 2017 On the campaign stump in Charlotte, North Carolina last October 26, Donald Trump promised to bring back a 21st Century version of the Glass-Steagall Act as a means of reforming Wall Street’s casino culture. At around noon today, Trump will continue the Orwellian reverse-speak of his campaign promises and do the opposite of what he promised. According to leaks to the financial media, Trump will today sign executive actions ordering swift reviews aimed at rolling back the feeble safeguards on Wall Street that currently exist while replacing them with — nothing. There has been no further word from Trump on bringing back the core principles of Glass-Steagall which would force the formal separation of banks holding taxpayer-backstopped insured deposits from the high-risk, derivatives-peddling, hedge-fund-financing investment banks. Trump is expected to sign one executive action today ordering financial regulators to review rolling back … Continue reading
Johnny Depp’s Finances Are in Disarray: Could It Happen to You?
By Pam Martens: February 2, 2017 Johnny Depp, the celebrated film star internationally known for his Pirates of the Caribbean series of movies for Disney, is currently engaged in a nasty, highly publicized court battle with his long time business management company, TMG, run by the well known attorney brothers Joel and Robert Mandel. Depp’s lawsuit is over the Mandels’ 17-year financial management of his income and assets. Depp filed his lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on January 13 alleging breach of fiduciary duty, fraudulent concealment, constructive fraud, unjust enrichment, wrongful foreclosure and myriad other charges. TMG filed a cross complaint on January 31, alleging they are owed money by Depp and portraying him as a “selfish, reckless and irresponsible” wild spender who is spreading “vile lies and frivolous allegations” against them, despite their constant warnings to him that he was living wildly beyond his means. The story went … Continue reading
Boycotting Mnuchin for Treasury: Democrats Had Strong Grounds
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 1, 2017 The U.S. Treasury Secretary is one of the four most powerful posts in the U.S. government, overseeing a sprawling network of functions that impact the average American every single day. Putting a man or woman in that post who has exhibited impeccable integrity throughout their career should be the sworn duty of every member of the U.S. Senate, which oversees the confirmation hearing process. Yesterday, every Democratic Senator on the Senate Finance Committee upheld their duty and boycotted the vote on Steven Mnuchin, President Donald Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary. The boycott denied the Senate Finance Committee the ability to have a quorum and a final vote. Trump had pushed Mnuchin forward not because of his sterling credentials but because Mnuchin had helped to raise millions of dollars for Trump as his Campaign Finance Chairman. As the tawdry details of Mnuchin’s … Continue reading
Donald Trump Has a Goldman Sachs Problem: Derivatives
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 31, 2017 In the midst of being skewered across media outlets yesterday for his chaotic rollout of an Executive Order that appeared to target Muslims, including those legally living in the U.S. as businessmen, doctors, university faculty and students — who were initially denied reentry after travel abroad — President Donald Trump tried desperately to change the subject. Following a plunge of over 200 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average yesterday, Trump pivoted to something he thought would please his financial backers on Wall Street. He called the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation passed in 2010 by the Obama administration a “disaster” and promised to “do a big number” on it soon. The Dow closed down 122 points — now wary of Trump’s fire-ready-aim leadership on complex matters. The legitimate fear across Wall Street right now is that Trump’s zero-vetting approach to rule-by-Executive-Order … Continue reading
The Chaos President
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 30, 2017 At 8:05 a.m. this morning in New York, futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were showing a potential loss of 55 points when the market opens at 9:30 a.m. At least some of the market jitters can be traced to the weekend of chaos at U.S. airports where legal residents of the U.S. found themselves in a twilight zone, unable to get back into the country as a result of President Donald Trump’s hastily penned Executive Order. As media word spread of university faculty, Ph.D. candidates, medical students and business executives being denied reentry into the U.S. after visits abroad, spontaneous protests erupted at major international airports across the U.S. including San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Dulles outside of Washington, D.C. The chaos resulted from an Executive Order signed by Trump on Friday that bans … Continue reading
Trump Is Driving On Unsafe Bridges as His Wall to Nowhere Gets Priority
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 27, 2017 During his first week in office, Donald Trump issued an executive order stating that it “is the policy of the executive branch” to “secure the southern border of the United States through the immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border” with Mexico. Researchers have put the cost of the wall at $15 to $25 billion. That price tag would come to a nation with a staggering national debt of $19.9 trillion and a D+ rating on its critical infrastructure that plays an essential role in the country’s economic growth and ability to pay its debt. Every four years the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) releases a comprehensive assessment of the U.S. infrastructure. The last report was released in 2013 giving a D+ rating to U.S. infrastructure. (The next report is due in March of this year.) The … Continue reading