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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
Brexit Vote: A Pie in the Face to the Global Elites
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 24, 2016 The anti-establishment trend has picked up its pace this morning, showing no signs of abating. Around 2:30 a.m. New York time, Wall Street traders were stunned by the news that U.K. voters had backed leaving the European Union by 51.9 percent versus a remain vote of 48.1 percent in the anxiously anticipated Brexit referendum held yesterday. The outcome slammed markets – leaving many wondering if big banks and hedge funds were going to take heavy losses this morning for placing wrong way trades. Futures markets were doing little to reassure that this wasn’t the case with futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average showing a loss of over 553 points before the market opened and major Wall Street banks like Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase off by 6 to 7 percent in premarket trading. In times of … Continue reading
House Republicans Think the Fed Is In Conspiracy With the Rich: Are They Right?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 23, 2016 Millions of Americans think that Congressional Republicans are in conspiracy with groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Cato Institute, Koch brothers, and the Mercatus Center to advance an agenda of increasing corporate profits while sacking the needs of the poor and middle class. That doesn’t mean, however, that Republicans can’t sometimes spot a conspiracy on the part of others. Yesterday, four Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee, during the semi-annual monetary policy testimony by Fed Chair Janet Yellen, presented a persuasive argument that it’s really the Federal Reserve (which was flattered by many House Democrats at the hearing) that’s sacrificing the poor and middle class in order to benefit the rich and “the Goldman Sachs CEOs of the world.” Congressman Ed Royce, Republican from California, said that he was “concerned that the Federal Reserve has created a third pillar … Continue reading
Buckle Up: Brexit Vote and Stress Test Results Arrive Tomorrow
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 22, 2016 Talk about bad timing. Tomorrow, while the Brexit vote takes place in the U.K. and is guaranteed to whipsaw markets through the Friday morning open when the results of the vote are expected, the Federal Reserve plans to add to market jitters on Thursday by announcing the results of its stress tests on the biggest banks — while withholding the final leg of the results until the following Wednesday. The stress tests are an annual Fed exercise which are meant to reassure the public and Congress that the mega banks are holding adequate capital for even an extreme economic downturn; in other words, that another epic taxpayer bailout of insolvent banks won’t sneak up on the Fed like it did in 2008. Unfortunately, according to the Federal agency established under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation to provide ongoing research on potential … Continue reading
Neel Kashkari: The Shadow Over Janet Yellen’s Head as She Testifies to Congress
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 21, 2016 At 10 a.m. this morning, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen will take her seat before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee to deliver her semi-annual testimony on monetary policy. She’ll perform the same task tomorrow before what is likely to be a far more hostile House Financial Services Committee, based on the fireworks that were flying in her last testimony there in February. There will be a shadow wafting over Yellen at both hearings. The shadow is being cast by Neel Kashkari, who took the reins as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis this past January and has effectively transferred the debate on too-big-to-fail banks from the hands of Yellen to his own regional institution. Kashkari has been conducting symposiums and delivering speeches on the issue and has promised a formalized plan to deal with the problem by the end … Continue reading
What’s Really Behind the Washington Post’s Efforts to Marginalize Bernie Sanders?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 20, 2016 An article in the Washington Post yesterday continued the paper’s unrelenting efforts to marginalize Senator Bernie Sanders and his effort to press forward on his call for a political revolution in America. The Post article brandished its most preposterous cudgel yet: the cost of Senator Sanders’ continuing protection by the Secret Service, which it suggested was a drain on taxpayers. Calling Sanders the “now-vanquished Democratic presidential candidate,” the Post’s John Wagoner laments that even though “Hillary Clinton has clinched the party’s nomination,” Sanders is still receiving Secret Service protection which could be costing taxpayers more than $38,000 a day. In fact, Clinton hasn’t clinched anything until there is an official vote taken at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, July 25-28, no matter how much corporate media might wish otherwise. And since there has never been a Presidential candidate like Clinton, … Continue reading
Stock Market Rallies on Murder of Jo Cox; Wall Street Journal Defends It
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 17, 2016 The U.S. stock market was mired in red ink yesterday morning with every major Wall Street bank trading down on news that multiple polls in Britain were showing that a majority of citizens were in favor of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union (EU). A referendum vote on the issue is to be held next Thursday. Then, at 12:17 p.m. New York time yesterday, Bloomberg News printed the following headline: “U.K. Lawmaker Jo Cox Is Murdered, Silencing Brexit Debate.” Cox was a Member of Parliament from the Labour Party who was an advocate for the U.K. remaining in the EU. Cox, a mother of two children, was shot and stabbed by a man said to be in favor of Brexit, the term for a British exit from the EU. On the news of her death, which fueled the market … Continue reading
Why Brexit Is Such a Threat to the New World Order
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 16, 2016 If you think that a referendum vote on June 23 by UK citizens on whether to withdraw from the European Union (called Brexit, short for British Exit), is simply a proxy on whether the UK should dislodge itself from the edicts of Brussels, think again. It’s morphed into a much broader debate on whether citizens worldwide should surrender their right to a participatory democracy in order to further the interests of multinational corporations, secret trade agreements packed with secret court tribunals, global banking hegemony and central banks attempting to keep all these balls in the air for their one percent overlords. One particular central bank is sure to come under fire today. Members of the British Parliament have been warning Mark Carney, head of the Bank of England (BOE), to not engage in political lobbying on the issue of Brexit, which … Continue reading
New Book: “The Business of America Isn’t Business Anymore.” It’s Tricked Up Financial Engineering.
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 15, 2016 Rana Foroohar has written the equivalent of a public guide to why Americans remain mad as hell at Wall Street and Washington and why a lot worse than a political revolution may ensue if the plutocrats don’t wake up soon. Foroohar is an assistant managing editor at Time magazine and its economics columnist. In “Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business,” the author lays out a number of undeniable truths, which she backs up with footnotes and facts, such as: “the business of America isn’t business anymore.” That’s given way to financial engineering tricks like loading up a company’s balance sheet with billions of dollars of debt in order to prop up the share price with buybacks of the company’s own stock. Foroohar, who has been a financial journalist for 23 years, correctly concludes that Wall Street … Continue reading
UK’s Largest Newspaper Says Run for Your Life: Vote Brexit. Americans Should Listen.
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 14, 2016 The UK’s largest newspaper, The Sun, with a daily print run of 1.7 million, has delivered a harsh indictment on its front cover today on continuing to allow European central planners and global bankers to run the UK by edict. UK citizens will vote on June 23 on whether to leave the European Union, a vote called Brexit, short for British Exit. The UK’s Guardian newspaper is reporting that two ICM polls, one conducted online and one by telephone, showed 53 percent support for leaving versus 47 percent for remaining in the EU. The message should serve as a sharp warning to Americans, who have allowed their central bank, the Federal Reserve, to march to the beat of the Wall Street bankers’ edicts while achieving catastrophic results for the country and its citizens. Since the Wall Street crash of 2008, enabled … Continue reading
Elizabeth Warren Draws Fire from Left and Right Over Clinton Endorsement
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 13, 2016 Senator Elizabeth Warren did not have a good weekend. After endorsing Hillary Clinton for President on Thursday, Warren was ridiculed by columnist Maureen Dowd in the New York Times on Sunday for previously portraying Clinton as a shill for big money interests while now vowing to jump into the ring to get Clinton elected to the highest office in the land. In a 2003 book, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke, co-authored by Warren and her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, the pair wrote that “Clinton had taken $140,000 in campaign contributions from the banking industry” and then sold out single mothers by voting in favor of a bankruptcy bill that Clinton had previously called “that awful bill.” Warren also addressed Clinton’s claim that she had worked to improve the bill by 2001 when she voted in … Continue reading