Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 26, 2017 The majority of American citizens have never heard of the U.S. Treasury agency known as FinCEN – short for Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. But for those who work for Wall Street brokerage firms or the mega Wall Street banks like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup or German banking giant Deutsche Bank, just the mere mention of FinCEN can quickly produce beads of sweat dripping onto those expensive Canali suits. That’s because FinCEN is the Federal agency where suspicious financial activity that might turn out to be money laundering gets reported. All three banks, and numerous others, have had their share of scandalous run ins with money laundering. In recent weeks, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, Senate Intelligence Committee and the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee have all shown an interest in what FinCEN might have in its database that would shed sunshine … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 25, 2017 President Donald Trump’s demands for loyalty from the individuals in his administration have been a hot topic for weeks in U.S. media. But what the media has yet to explain is how so many law partners from global corporate law firms that were outsized donors to Hillary Clinton’s presidential run last year, giving crumbs by comparison to Trump’s campaign, now hold seats of power throughout the Trump administration. Let’s start with the weirdest example of all: Jones Day.  Wall Street On Parade reported earlier this year that on January 20, 2017 – the very day of Trump’s inauguration – Jones Day announced that a whopping 12 of its law partners were moving into the Trump administration. Among the 12, key slots went to Donald F. McGahn II as White House Counsel; Noel Francisco, first named as Principal Deputy Solicitor General and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 24, 2017 It became clear yesterday why President Donald Trump needed thousands of miles between himself and Washington D.C. when his administration dropped its budget proposal on the American people. It immediately drew sharply negative reactions from both sides of the aisle and outright ridicule from mainstream media. Max Ehrenfreund, writing for the Washington Post, said the promise that the Trump budget would balance federal finances in a decade was based on “vague savings and unspecified sources of new revenue” consisting of over $2 trillion in “mystery money.” Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine said Trump’s budget assumptions contain a “$2 trillion basic arithmetic error” that is just downright “embarrassing.” Anger among Democratic leaders over the budget’s attack on Americans that are least able to sustain more financial pain boiled over on Capitol Hill yesterday. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Ranking Member of the Senate … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 23, 2017 Citigroup, the Wall Street mega bank that taxpayers were forced to prop up in the largest bailout of a financial institution in U.S. history from 2008 to 2010, is also a recidivist lawbreaker that the U.S. Justice Department fails to tame regardless of who occupies the Oval Office. Under the Obama administration, Citigroup was repeatedly fined by its Federal regulators for serious abuses of the law and its customers but only once was a felony count leveled against the bank. On May 20, 2015, Citicorp, a unit of Citigroup, pleaded guilty to a felony charge in connection with the rigging of foreign currency trading. (Three other banks, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays PLC and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) also pleaded guilty to felony charges in the same matter. UBS, at the same time, pleaded guilty to rigging the interest rate benchmark … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 22, 2017 Robert Mueller, the former FBI Director who has been appointed as Special Counsel to oversee the investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 Presidential election may find out quickly that there is an obstacle course of roadblocks preventing him from doing his job. (Mueller served from September 4, 2001 to September 4, 2013 as FBI Director, under both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama. He is widely respected by both Congressional Democrats and Republicans in Washington.) On January 28, President Trump quietly and with little fanfare signed an Executive Order that bars an Executive Branch employee from participating “in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts.” This concept is further defined in the Executive Order to mean “matters in which … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 19, 2017  If the plan was to soften the grilling by Democratic Senators at yesterday’s Senate Banking Committee hearing by bringing along his Stoic-faced fiancée Louise Linton, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was disappointed. Neither Linton nor Mnuchin should have been surprised. Mnuchin had faced an equally hostile reception from Democrats at his January 19 confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. During yesterday’s hearing Mnuchin dispelled the lie that the Trump administration has fostered for months — that it was considering restoring the Glass-Steagall Act and breaking up the big banks on Wall Street. After Mnuchin attempted to say this had never been their position, Senator Elizabeth Warren called his testimony “bizarre,” “crazy,” and “like something straight out of George Orwell.” Mnuchin’s reception from Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada was equally frosty. Masto, who previously served as the Attorney General of Nevada … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 18, 2017 At a time of growing loss of confidence in the credibility of President Donald Trump, his Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, declared today that the Trump administration never had any intention of restoring the Glass-Steagall Act and separating the taxpayer-backstopped insured commercial banks from the high risk Wall Street investment banks. Under intense questioning from Senator Elizabeth Warren at a Senate Banking hearing today, Mnuchin effectively said that his idea of supporting a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act meant doing the opposite of what Glass-Steagall did: he would leave the commercial banks and investment banks under the same roof. The Glass-Steagall legislation enacted in 1933 did only two key things: it enacted Federal insurance on bank deposits to restore confidence in the country’s deposit-taking banks at a time of unprecedented defaults tied to Wall Street gambles and it barred those insured commercial banks … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 18, 2017  Yesterday, an earnest group of House Democrats held a widely covered press conference to variously cajole and shame Republicans into signing legislation that would result in the appointment of an Independent Commission to investigate Russia’s involvement in the 2016 Presidential election. At the end of the day, there was no Independent Commission but there was the stunning news that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has signed an order naming the widely respected former FBI Director, Robert Mueller, to become Special Counsel for the inquiry. At the press conference, Congressman Elijah Cummings, the Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, chided the Committee’s Republican Chairman, Jason Chaffetz, for repeatedly threatening to use his “subpoena pen” but never actually getting around to doing so. Cummings said: “In March, just a month after the President allegedly pressured Director Comey to drop the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 18, 2017 Four of the largest Wall Street banks that were counting on a powerful President Trump to roll back Dodd-Frank financial reform regulations lost a combined $37.60 billion in their market capitalization yesterday. The worst hit in terms of percentage decline was Bank of America, parent of the giant brokerage firm Merrill Lynch, which fell 5.92 percent for a market cap loss of $14.14 billion. Goldman Sachs, which has become closely associated with President Trump as a result of a raft of its former partners and its immediate past President serving in his administration, fell an eyebrow-raising 5.27 percent yesterday for a market cap loss of $4.676 billion. JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup added to the carnage.  JPMorgan Chase fell 3.81 percent with a hit to its market cap of $11.87 billion while Citigroup fell 4.02 percent, losing $6.91 billion in market cap. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 17, 2017 When the Commerce Department released its data on April 28 for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the first quarter, it signaled the slowest growth in three years. The economy had grown at a tepid 0.7 percent annual rate as a result of weak consumer spending. The individual consumer matters greatly to growth in the U.S., accounting for more than two-thirds of economic activity. In the first quarter, consumer spending registered at a 0.3 percent rate, a pace not seen since the depths of the financial crisis in the fourth quarter of 2009.  It is perhaps ironic that the 1 percent in America control Washington through lobbyists and a perverse campaign finance system but the 99 percent, the consumers, control the economic fate of the country. If consumers lose confidence in the country’s leadership, they will retrench from spending in order to … Continue reading →