Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 6, 2016 The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has set up an online database of financial horror stories that shows what happens when an average American interacts with one of the financial supermarkets (a/k/a universal banks) that grew out of the repeal of the investor protection legislation known as the Glass-Steagall Act. The complaints are concentrated against the biggest Wall Street banks. If you are one of the lucky Americans who has not already been mugged in the shopping aisles of the financial supermarkets, you should carefully browse through the database to see what awaits the unwary. Just go to the complaint archive, and place the name of any bank you want to examine in the upper right-hand search box. Searching under the name Citibank (part of the Wall Street behemoth Citigroup) will bring up 29,000 rows of complaints. A search under Chase, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 1, 2016 President Obama holds the highest office in the United States. He has a law degree from Harvard Law and was a former editor of the Harvard Law Review. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton holds a law degree from Yale University. Despite the legal background of the President and former Secretary of State, both seem to be winking at the serious legal issues surrounding the former Democratic National Committee Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Wasserman Schultz has been sued along with the DNC in the Federal District Court of South Florida, where the lead plaintiff, Carol Wilding, resides. The lawsuit is on behalf of Senator Bernie Sanders’ supporters and alleges fraud, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive conduct, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence. There are already more than 100 named plaintiffs and the court was told in the amended complaint that an additional 1,000 … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 31, 2016 Democratic primary voters in South Florida’s 23rd Congressional District ignored the Democratic National Committee scandal that has engulfed Debbie Wasserman Schultz and gave the incumbent a 56.46 percent win over her Democratic challenger, Tim Canova, who claimed 43.54 percent of the vote. Unfortunately for Canova, who had the backing of Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters, Independents were not allowed to vote in this closed primary. Wasserman Schultz will still have to compete against a Republican rival, Joe Kaufman, in the November 8 general election. Her District is heavily Democratic, however, and she is expected to achieve an easy win – unless new scandals arrive between now and election day. Canova is a law professor at Nova Southeastern University. This was his first endeavor in running for public office. His strong showing in this race and his ability to raise $3.3 … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 30, 2016 Over the past week Rasmussen polls have captured the epic disgust of voters in the direction America is heading. Only 31 percent of likely voters believe the country is heading in the right direction; 67 percent of voters are angry at the current policies of the federal government; and just 24 percent trust the federal government to do the right thing most or nearly all the time. The smooth functioning of the U.S. economy is based on citizens having confidence in the country’s leaders. Over two-thirds of the U.S. economy stems from consumer spending. When consumers lack confidence, they scale back spending. When businesses lack confidence, they lay off workers or stop hiring. When new home buyers lack confidence, they postpone signing a contract. Last Friday, Bloomberg News reported that the CEO of Signet Jewelers Ltd., Mark Light, was blaming a slowdown … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 29, 2016 Mavi Ramirez is a Mom, a social media entrepreneur and a dedicated citizen journalist who took a day off from work to cover the first hearing on August 23 in the Federal lawsuit that has been filed by Senator Bernie Sanders’ supporters against the Democratic National Committee and its former Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The lawsuit, which currently has more than 100 plaintiffs and more than a thousand in the wings with retainer agreements, is charging the DNC with fraud, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive conduct, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence. Leaked DNC documents and emails by Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks show Wasserman Schultz disparaging the Sanders’ campaign while key DNC officials actually plotted to sabotage the Sanders’ campaign by putting the word out that he is an atheist (which Sanders says he is not) and characterizing his campaign as … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 26, 2016 According to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for Washington, D.C., it has still not determined a cause of death for Shawn Lucas, the 38-year old process server who delivered the class action lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee and its then Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to the DNC headquarters on July 1. One month later, the girlfriend of Lucas came home to find him dead on the bathroom floor. It has now been more than three weeks since Lucas died with no cause of death announced. We asked the Chief Medical Examiner’s office if the delay was a result of toxicology tests being conducted. We were told it can make no comment beyond the fact that the cause of death is “pending.” The official report from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. indicates that officers Kathryn Fitzgerald and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 25, 2016 On July 25, during the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, Senator Elizabeth Warren made the following comments during her speech: “Here’s the thing: America isn’t going broke. The stock market is breaking records. Corporate profits are at all-time highs.” We noted at the time that Senator Warren is one of the smartest members of Congress; a former Harvard law professor who taught commercial contracts and bankruptcy law; a member of the Senate Banking Committee and its Economic Policy Subcommittee. If Senator Warren was not aware that quarterly earnings on a year-over-year basis as measured by the largest companies in America – the Standard and Poor’s 500 – were on track to log in their fifth consecutive quarterly decline in earnings, how could the average American possibly know this? Equally important, if the stock market was setting new highs based … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 24, 2016 On Monday, Andrea Tantaros, a Fox News host, became the latest in a growing drumbeat of voices charging Fox News with tolerating and condoning a hostile work environment for women that “operates like a sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency, and misogyny,” according to the lawsuit Tantaros filed in New York State Supreme Court. Tantaros charges in the lawsuit that she was sexually harassed by Roger Ailes, who recently stepped down as Fox News CEO, while he ran an intimidation campaign against her through his public relations department. This is the second lawsuit to be filed against Ailes by Fox News women in as many months. In July, Gretchen Carlson went public with similar charges against Ailes in a high-profile lawsuit. According to the Washington Post, Carlson’s lawyers have received reports from more than 20 women that “they were … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 23, 2016  What people across Wall Street cannot figure out is why the Board of JPMorgan Chase, America’s biggest bank by assets, didn’t sack its CEO, Jamie Dimon, at some point between the bank’s first two felony counts in 2014 and its third felony count in 2015. Or, as two trial lawyers, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer point out on their web site, during the past five years as JPMorgan Chase racked up $35.7 billion in fines and settlements for “fraudulent and illegal practices.” JPMorgan Chase’s abuses of its own customers are so vast that Chaitman and Gotthoffer had to create a Wheel of Misfortune to catalog the scams for ease of viewing by the public. And here’s the worst part: those are just the frauds that the public is allowed to read about. JPMorgan Chase, along with other notoriously abusive banks … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 22, 2016 Last Thursday the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Student Loan Ombudsman released a report detailing the hurdles and outright barriers that college students who took out student loans face when they attempt to get Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans. These plans allow student loan payments to be tied to income. The report found that the debt holders are reporting that they are facing prolonged processing delays and wrongful rejections by their private student loan servicing companies. Some facets of the report suggested that student debt holders are intentionally getting the runaround by the outside servicing company. The report noted: “Borrowers report being rejected because their application had missing information or because their servicer lost paperwork, without ever being notified by their servicer or being given a chance to fix the problem. Other borrowers report being rejected simply for checking the wrong box, without … Continue reading →