Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 18, 2016  “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” a reality tv show, has some stiff competition coming from network news as it reports on the daily churn of the Trump Transition Team, which is providing enough intrigue for a thrice daily soap opera. At 6:37 a.m. on Wednesday, three NBC reporters announced that Donald Trump had “taken the unprecedented step of requesting his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, receive top-secret clearance to join him for his Presidential Daily Briefings.” By mid-morning Wednesday, the New York Times was denying the rumor. But by evening, ABC News was reporting that the “intelligence community” had confirmed the story to its reporters. Kushner is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka. He is 35 years old, has no intelligence background, no current security clearances, and is the publisher of a New York City-based newspaper, The New York Observer. A newspaper publisher is … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 17, 2016 After a humiliating election loss just eight days earlier, the Wall Street Democrats in the U.S. Senate laid the groundwork for another humiliating defeat in the midterms in 2018 by electing Senator Chuck Schumer to be the Senate Minority Leader. Schumer is considered the poster boy for Wall Street — as their mouthpiece for lax regulation and a reliable Senate confirmation vote for Wall Street cronies to lead regulatory agencies. Over the past five years, Schumer has raised over $25.8 million for his campaign committee and Leadership PAC with the leading donors being security and investments firms and their outside law firms, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Schumer’s top ten largest donors over his entire political career include seven major Wall Street banks: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, UBS and the now defunct Bear … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 16, 2016 The only thing standing between the American people and another apocalyptic financial collapse among by the biggest banks on Wall Street is the Federal Reserve’s stress tests and capital requirements. After Wall Street laid waste to the U.S. housing market and economy from 2008 through 2010, while propping itself back up with a feeding tube from the taxpayers’ pocketbook, the Obama administration passed the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in 2010.  It wasn’t so much legislation as it was an illusory 2300 pages of rules that might someday get implemented in a meaningful way if President Obama appointed tough cops to his financial regulatory bodies – which he decidedly did not do. One of the promises in Dodd-Frank was that the Federal Reserve would annually assess whether the biggest and most dangerous banks have adequate capital to withstand a severe recession and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 15, 2016 The corrupt and collapsing two-party political system in the U.S. is coming under renewed attack by the young generation.  Trump Tower in New York City, where Republican President-elect Donald Trump is holed up, has become a veritable police fortress at street level with much of the sidewalk area barricaded from pedestrian traffic. Progressive protesters have been regularly massing outside of the building since Trump’s win in the presidential election on November 8. Many of their posters read: “Not My President.” But yesterday, young progressive protesters targeted the Capitol Hill office of a sitting Democratic Senator, Chuck Schumer of New York. As two of his clerks attempted to look unruffled and busied themselves behind their computers, about two dozen young people marched into Schumer’s office singing this song: “We are standing for our future, we are hearing what is wrong, we are … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 14, 2016 Rudy Giuliani is said to be under serious consideration by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the U.S. Department of Justice as Attorney General. There are a number of serious problems with Giuliani serving in this post, including his track record of stomping on the Bill of Rights and his employment as a law partner with Greenberg Traurig, a corporate law firm with a long history of lobbying for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to weaken protections for the average citizen. During Rudy Giuliani’s two terms as Mayor of New York City, from 1993 through 2001, he was sued 30 times by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), the state affiliate of the ACLU. Of those 30 lawsuits, the NYCLU won 27 of the cases. (See Editor’s note below on her own case that was successfully challenged in court against the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 11, 2016  Yesterday, CNBC announced that anonymous sources had told the cable business news outlet that Trump’s advisers were considering JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon for U.S. Treasury Secretary. The rumor nugget was quickly spread by other media outlets. The likelihood is that the rumor is coming from Jamie Dimon’s hyper-charged public relations machine rather than from Trump’s closest advisers. Should Dimon get the nomination from Trump he would have to appear before the Senate Banking Committee for his confirmation hearing. He would be facing hostility from progressive Senate Democrats on the Committee like Senators Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown and Jeff Merkley for overseeing a Wall Street mega bank that has garnered an unprecedented three felony counts from the U.S. Justice Department in just the past three years while Dimon took home massive pay and bonuses. Two felony counts against the bank were for aiding … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 10, 2016 Yesterday, WikiLeaks released a new email that synthesizes why Hillary Clinton and the Democrats suffered such devastating losses in Tuesday’s election, losing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that should have been easy wins for the Democrats. The email clarifies how Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chairman, John Podesta, had created an impossible conflict in how he was running Clinton’s campaign: he wanted it to serve the dual role of embellishing President Obama’s legacy, thus muzzling Clinton on criticizing the President’s policies. It should have been readily clear that this was a losing gamble as tens of thousands turned out at Senator Bernie Sanders’ primary rallies as he called for a “political revolution” against the establishment in Washington while Clinton attracted modest crowds with her stay the course mantra. The email shows that on October 7, 2015, Hillary Clinton’s advisers were working on … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 9, 2016 As election day arrived in the U.S. yesterday, European newspapers signaled their grave concerns over a presidential election that has left them stunned and anxious. The French newspaper, Aujourd’hui En France, used its front page to question whether the American dream (Le Reve) even still exists in the U.S. The French Liberation publication featured a silhouette of Donald Trump’s face on its front cover with the prophetic bold headline, “Le Grande Flip.” The day before the election, Jonathan Freedland wrote in the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper: “…one thing will certainly be over – and that is the dizzying, sometimes nauseating, 18-month-long saga that has been the 2016 campaign….In 2012, the Guardian’s front-page story branded the battle of Barack Obama v Mitt Romney ‘one of the most closely fought and polarised in recent history’. Looking back, that race looks like a veritable philosophy seminar, exemplary … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 8, 2016  Two partners at major law firms have likely been holding their breath since WikiLeaks released an email on November 1 showing that Obama had vetted Hillary Clinton for Vice President and the review came back “too critical,” thus leading Obama to select Joe Biden as his Vice Presidential pick during the 2008 campaign. The vetting memorandum on Clinton shows in the email thread to have been transmitted with the email but WikiLeaks has not provided it – yet. According to the email, which carries a capitalized heading of “CONFIDENTIAL,” the vetting of Clinton had been done by James Hamilton, then a law partner at Bingham McCutchen LLP. Hamilton is now a partner at Morgan Lewis, a firm with a long history of ties to Wall Street. His official bio shows that he “served as the Clinton-Gore transition counsel for nominations and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 7, 2016 Yesterday, at 4:33 p.m., we checked at the digital front page of CNN to see how it was delivering the news that FBI Director James Comey had sent yet another letter to Congress (on a Sunday, no less). The letter indicated that the FBI had reviewed the additional emails from the private server of Hillary Clinton that were found on sext-addict Anthony Weiner’s laptop and that it had not changed its conclusions that Comey had expressed in his July statement. The July announcement from Comey found that Clinton had been “extremely careless” by transmitting information classified as Top Secret and Secret over a non secure server in the basement of her New York home while serving as Secretary of State in the Obama administration but that the investigation had concluded with no recommendation to charge her with any crime. The statement … Continue reading →