Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 20, 2016 There’s a new mantra making the rounds of Washington and Wall Street. No matter how big the lie you’re caught in, no matter how much documented evidence exists against you, just deny, deny, deny. That’s how Democratic National Committee Interim Chair Donna Brazile handled the email released by WikiLeaks showing that she leaked a debate question to Hillary Clinton; that’s how Hillary Clinton handled revelations about sending classified government material over an unclassified server in the basement of her home; and that’s how Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is handling the widespread public perception that there’s a banking cabal meeting in secret to plot its continued dominance over the interests of the average U.S. citizen. Yesterday, CNBC’s David Faber interviewed Blankfein and asked about the suggestion that Donald Trump had made on October 13 in a speech in West Palm Beach, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 19, 2016 Emails released by WikiLeaks have led to the outing of an elaborate scheme to scour, buff and shine the decades of scandals attached to Hillary and Bill Clinton using the marketing, branding and messaging tricks employed by corporations to resuscitate a stale, discredited or sagging brand. We’ve also learned that at least one of those re-branders, Wendy Clark, had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the Clinton camp, agreeing not to divulge details of her work. Clark acknowledged that agreement at a recent Fortune Magazine forum. Clark is widely considered a corporate branding genius, having been responsible for the “Share a Coke” campaign at Coca-Cola which featured folksy names on the side of their cans and bottles. In January of 2015, it was reported that Clark was taking a three-month leave of absence from her demanding and high-level position as President … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 18, 2016  Last Friday Senator Elizabeth Warren released a 12-page letter calling for President Obama to remove Securities and Exchange Commission Chair, Mary Jo White. For a female Senator and former Harvard Law professor to publicly humiliate a female Federal agency head and fellow lawyer is an extraordinary event. There is a code in Washington that women in power support other women in power. Warren didn’t just violate the code, she shredded it.  Warren called Mary Jo White’s conduct as SEC Chair “brazen” and wrote that White was undermining the SEC’s central mission of investor protection. All of that is true as Wall Street On Parade repeatedly predicted it would be over three years ago. (See here and here.) Between White’s career at law firm Debevoise and Plimpton and her husband John W. White’s long term career at the international law firm Cravath, Swaine … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens  and Russ Martens: October 17, 2016 According to the above statement from the WikiLeaks Twitter account, a state party has intentionally cut off access to the Internet for Julian Assange, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks. This happened after the ninth consecutive day of releases of emails from the hacked account of John Podesta, the chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign committee. It also comes on the heels of a potentially serious campaign finance problem for the Hillary for America committee, the primary fundraising vehicle for Clinton, according to an email released by WikiLeaks just yesterday. This would be the second time in less than six months that the Clinton campaign’s finances have come under scrutiny. In April and May of this year, Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign charged the Clinton campaign with serious violations of campaign finance law, including “looting funds meant for the state parties to skirt … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 14, 2016 One would have had to have been in a coma for the past eight years not to realize there has been an ongoing Wall Street banking conspiracy in the United States. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) tallied it up and found it amounted to $16 trillion in secret loans from the Federal Reserve – an unfathomable bailout never approved by Congress. On May 20 of last year the U.S. Justice Department documented a vast conspiracy by global banks in the foreign currency markets with the banks admitting to the felony charges. The former heads of Federal regulatory agencies have written books about the conspiracy. Frontline and Sixty Minutes have produced documentaries on it. Banking whistleblowers have organized to fight it in an effort to save the country. A major motion picture, The Big Short, was released this year which put one … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 13, 2016 After the prior Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned in disgrace in July after Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks released emails showing that the DNC had actively engaged in derailing the presidential candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders to tip the field to Hillary Clinton, the woman who replaced Wasserman Schultz as Interim Chair of the DNC, Donna Brazile, is under the gun for putting her finger on the scale for Hillary Clinton. On March 12, 2016, Brazile was serving in the dual capacity as a Vice Chair of the DNC and a contributor to CNN. The recent WikiLeaks release of emails shows that on that date at 4:39 p.m., Brazile sent an email to Jennifer Palmieri, Communications Director for the Hillary Clinton campaign, titled: “From time to time I get the questions in advance.” The title clearly conveys … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 12, 2016  There have been many questions and much disappointment among progressives that Senator Elizabeth Warren withheld her endorsement of Senator Bernie Sanders for President when it could have potentially led to his victory in the primaries. After remaining silent on Sanders, Warren then gave an unrestrained endorsement of Hillary Clinton in June as well as in a keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in July. The convention endorsement led to loud chants of “we trusted you” from the audience. Yesterday, WikiLeaks released more emails that had been hacked from the email account of John Podesta, Chair of the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign. Podesta was also a former Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton during his presidency, co-chair of the Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign and a Counselor to Obama during his presidency. The emails show in great detail just how aggressively … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 11, 2016 The Presidential election of 2008 was held on November 4, with Barack Obama winning on a promise of delivering “hope” and “change” to a nation in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At that time, Citigroup was a financial basket-case. It had already received $25 billion from the government’s bailout program known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in October; it was secretly receiving hundreds of billions of dollars more each month in below-market rate, revolving loans from the Federal Reserve — information which the Fed refused to make public despite multiple Freedom of Information Act requests from the media; and Citigroup was just 19 days from more hemorrhaging, requiring an additional government infusion of $20 billion and asset guarantees of more than $300 billion. Citigroup’s stock was at $13.99, a decline of 63 percent … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 10, 2016 As repugnant as the thought is to the majority of Americans, it appears there is no escaping a locker room guy inhabiting the White House for the next four years. If it’s not Donald Trump, it will be Bill Clinton. In 1998, seven years before the then 59-year old Donald Trump said he could get away with grabbing women in the “p—y” because he was a celebrity, as a newly leaked video reveals, high-powered Washington D.C. lawyer Vernon Jordan was asked what he and then President Bill Clinton talked about on the golf course. He answered: “We talk p—y,” as reported by Newsweek and Time Magazine at the time. But Bill Clinton, whose penchant for scandal is that of a moth to a flame, has done a lot more than just engage in sexist locker room banter, according to a long … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 4, 2016 Yesterday, building on the momentum afforded her by a series of articles in the New York Times, Hillary Clinton asked the audience at a campaign stop in Toledo, Ohio: “What kind of genius loses a billion dollars in one year.” Clinton was referring to the New York Times revelation on Sunday that Donald Trump’s 1995 tax return showed a loss of $916 million. (See video clip below.) If Hillary really wants to know what kind of genius can lose a billion dollars in one year or $6.2 billion in the case of traders at JPMorgan Chase, she should ask the bank’s CEO Jamie Dimon. The $6.2 billion London Whale loss at JPMorgan Chase is far more scintillating a feat since it involved wild derivative gambles in London in 2012 using the taxpayer-backstopped, insured savings deposits at the largest bank in the U.S. The … Continue reading →