Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 4, 2016 Having closely observed how Citigroup collapsed under the weight of its own corruption and risk-taking hubris in 2008 and spread its contagion across Wall Street, a headline we never dreamed we would see in our lifetime is shown above from Risk Magazine’s web site. The article under the heart-stopping headline is dated January 27, 2016 and informs readers that Citigroup is now viewed by clients as one of the top-three market makers in single name Credit Default Swaps in both North America and Europe.  Credit Default Swaps are the instruments that blew up the giant insurance company, AIG, in 2008, requiring the U.S. government to bail out the company to the tune of $185 billion. The bailout money went in the front door of AIG and was then funneled out the backdoor to the big Wall Street banks that had used … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 3, 2016 Deutsche Bank is starting to resemble the financial basket case that Citigroup became in 2008, leading to Citigroup’s partial ownership by the U.S. government for a time and the bank requiring the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. financial history. Citigroup’s teetering condition and its interconnectedness to other mega banks played a critical role in the Wall Street crash and collapse of the U.S. economy. That Deutsche Bank (which is highly interconnected to other major Wall Street banks and locked and loaded with tens of trillions of dollars in derivatives) is now showing the same kind of stresses as Citigroup back in 2008, raises the obvious question about just how effectively the Obama administration has reined in systemic financial risk after six years of reassurances that Dodd-Frank financial reform was getting the job done. On this date a year ago, Deutsche Bank’s … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 2, 2016 In the Afterword that appears in the paperback edition of “Flash Boys,” author Michael Lewis writes that following the publication of the hardcover edition of the book in 2014 and his appearance on 60 Minutes (in which he called the U.S. stock market rigged and mapped out the case against high frequency trading) “it has sounded like a desperate bid by a slumlord to gussy the place up to distract inspectors. In any case, the slumlords seem to realize that doing nothing is no longer an option: Too many people were too upset.” Doing nothing while going through the motions of doing something perfectly defines the Securities and Exchange Commission. Today the Securities and Exchange Commission is continuing its illusion of dealing with the rigged structure of the U.S. stock market by holding a meeting of its Equity Market Structure Advisory … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 1, 2016 According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Great Recession (that was brought on by the implosion of Wall Street) ended in June 2009. What we’ve been in since that time is supposed to be the “recovery” part of the cycle. But for tens of millions of Americans, it has been hard to tell the recovery from the crisis in terms wealth accumulation, wage growth, or ability to earn a decent rate of interest on savings. On Friday the Commerce Department released second quarter Gross Domestic Product data, showing that the U.S. economy grew at a 1.2 percent annual rate. That tepid number came on the heels of an anemic 0.8 percent rate of GDP growth for the first quarter. It has now been more than a decade since the U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 3 percent … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 29, 2016 The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington D.C. and its U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan “have launched a criminal investigation into whether individuals at Mossack Fonseca & Co., the law firm at the center of the ‘Panama Papers’ scandal, knowingly helped its clients launder money or evade taxes…” That investigation, if conducted thoroughly and without improper interference, could turn up the heat on some powerful Wall Street players. On May 16 Wall Street On Parade broke the story that the Miami office of Citigroup’s Private Bank at 201 South Biscayne Blvd. was the listed address for dozens of offshore companies whose agent is Mossack Fonseca. (See graph below.) Our information was obtained from a search of the public database made available by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which received more than 11.5 million … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 28, 2016  Senator Elizabeth Warren, during her speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Monday night, made the following statement: “Here’s the thing: America isn’t going broke. The stock market is breaking records. Corporate profits are at all-time highs. CEOs make tens of millions of dollars. There’s lots of wealth in America, but it isn’t trickling down to hard-working families like yours.” It is true that the stock market has been setting new record highs as measured by the Standard and Poor’s 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average but that’s primarily because corporations are going into deeper debt and using the money to buy back their own stock. This is happening at a time of a scary profits recession for corporate America. Not only are profits not setting records, but profits in the S&P 500 have declined year-over-year for the past … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 27, 2016 It had been in the planning for weeks and it was executed as flawlessly as the DNC’s own strategy to steal the election for Hillary Clinton. As Clinton’s nomination to serve as the presidential candidate was confirmed at the Democratic National Convention yesterday, hundreds of Senator Bernie Sanders’ delegates staged a walkout protest, leaving large swaths of the seats in the convention center empty. Waving signs that read “The Revolution Continues,” “A Future to Believe In,” “No TPP,” and chanting “This is what democracy looks like,” the marchers peacefully left the convention center and rallied outside. Numerous protestors wore tape or material over their mouths to protest how the DNC’s actions had illegally silenced their voices. (See second video below.) Several hundred Sanders’ supporters also took over part of the media tent for the convention for a period of time. Shyla … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 26, 2016 The problem with conspiracy theorists is that, quite frequently, the theorists lack adequate imagination. That seems to be the case when it comes to the Democratic National Committee’s behind-the-scenes machinations to muscle Hillary Clinton into the White House while plotting against her main challenger, Bernie Sanders. That conclusion stems from the trove of 20,000 DNC emails dumped into the public sphere by Wikileaks last Friday. The leaked emails have cost Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job as Chair of the DNC but other top DNC officials captured in devious plots against Sanders in the email exchanges still have their jobs – or at least no official firings have been announced. This makes the conspiracies seem more like a DNC business model. The DNC’s own charter demands that it treat all Democratic primary candidates fairly and impartially, but top DNC officials made a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 25, 2016 First it was Hillary Clinton handling Top Secret national security matters in emails with the caution of a drunken sailor. Now it’s emails leaked by Wikileaks showing that key officials at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) attempted to derail the Democratic campaign of Bernie Sanders in direct violation of the DNC’s own Charter.  Loose email lips are sinking a lot of ships in the Democratic corridors of power. And a lot more emails and depositions may be coming as a class action lawsuit filed in Federal Court gets underway. Article 5, Section 4 of the DNC Charter mandates the following: “The Chairperson shall be responsible for ensuring that the national officers and staff of the Democratic National Committee maintain impartiality and evenhandedness during the Democratic Party Presidential nominating process.” Instead, according to more than 20,000 DNC emails exposed by Wikileaks on … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 22, 2016 A mere three months after JPMorgan Chase and three of its competitors (Citicorp, Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland) pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to rig foreign currency trading and paid criminal fines totaling over $2.5 billion, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, began meeting in secret with his competitors in the asset management field. On February 1 of this year, the Financial Times reported that “secret summits” had been held beginning in August 2015 between “asset management bosses” including Jamie Dimon, Abby Johnson of Fidelity, Larry Fink of BlackRock, and Tim Armour of Capital Group. The article went on to report that Dimon and Warren Buffett had convened the sessions at JPMorgan’s headquarters in New York to discuss “a statement of best practice on corporate governance.” Secret meetings between competitors, regardless of what they are … Continue reading →