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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
Bloomberg Outs Zero Hedge Today; Zero Hedge Strikes Back
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 29, 2016 Bloomberg L.P., majority owned by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, with a net worth of $45.3 billion according to Forbes, has today outed the anonymous writers responsible for the popular financial blog, Zero Hedge, a competitor to Bloomberg L.P.’s financial web site. Raising eyebrows in journalism circles, Bloomberg’s reporters obtained the text of internal chat sessions at Zero Hedge which contained strategies for building traffic at the site. To some, that raises alarms of obtaining trade secrets – an issue over which Wall Street firms have sought, and received, criminal prosecutions. Also noteworthy, the article’s authors, Tracy Alloway and Luke Kawa, seem to take aim at the financial comfort of the people behind the blog, while failing to mention that their boss is the 8th richest person in the world, whose wealth intricately derives from the industry they cover. During Michael Bloomberg’s 12 … Continue reading
Is the Wall Street Cartel Regrouping? Regulator Fires Warning Shot
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 28, 2016 Remember the chat rooms dubbed “The Cartel” and “The Bandits Club” that contributed to felony counts against the mega Wall Street banks last May for rigging the foreign currency markets? How about that classic from the Barclays chat room trader: “if you aint cheating, you aint trying.” Well, apparently, one or more banks are causing concerns in this area again. Yesterday, the regulator of national banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, sent out a severe warning to its flock that there could be a five year jail sentence waiting in the wings for anyone attempting to use technology to block its mandated access to bank records. The letter was authored by Bethany Dugan, Deputy Comptroller for Operational Risk. The statement read in part: “The OCC has become aware of communications technology recently made available to banks that could prevent … Continue reading
Why the Vampire Squid Wants Small Depositors’ Money in 1 Frightening Chart
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 27, 2016 Back in 2010, with the public still numb from the epic financial crash and still in the dark about the trillions of dollars of secret loans the Federal Reserve had pumped into the Wall Street mega banks to resuscitate their sinking carcasses, Matt Taibbi penned his classic profile of Goldman Sachs at Rolling Stone, with this, now legendary, summation: “The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Historically, what smells like money to Goldman Sachs has been eight-figure money and higher. As recently as 2013, the New York Times reported that Goldman had a $10 million minimum to manage private wealth and was kicking out its own employees’ brokerage accounts if they were less than $1 million. Now, all of a … Continue reading
Trump States as Fact: “If You Collude in the Stock Market, They Put You in Jail.” Seriously?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 26, 2016 Yesterday, speaking before a rally audience in Rhode Island, Donald Trump called the coordination of election strategy between presidential candidates Senator Ted Cruz and Governor John Kasich “collusion.” (See video clip below.) He then made the following off the wall statement: “If you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail.” That statement is profoundly important on multiple levels. For one, it raises the question of just how closely Donald Trump has followed the serial crimes of Wall Street and the Justice Department’s failure to deliver jail time. Despite holding a degree from the Wharton School, perhaps Trump thumbs through the real estate section of the New York Times and skips over the Wall Street news. Maybe Trump is entrenched in an illusion that it’s his charisma and star quality that is responsible … Continue reading
Are Hillary Clinton and the DNC Skirting Election Law?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 25, 2016 Brad Deutsch, the attorney who authored the letter last week charging the Hillary Clinton campaign’s joint fundraising committee with dubious dealings that appear to violate Federal election law, isn’t just any ole lawyer. Prior to joining the law firm Garvey Schubert Barer in July 2014, Deutsch worked for more than a decade at the government’s top watchdog over Federal campaign financing – the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Deutsch, now lead counsel to Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign for President, would seem to be well qualified in defining what is and is not legal under Federal election law. From 2006 to 2014, Deutsch was Chief of Staff and Senior Legal Advisor to Commissioner Steven T. Walther at the FEC. Prior to that, he served as Assistant General Counsel at the FEC from 2004 to 2006 where he supervised a team of Federal election … Continue reading
GAO: JPMorgan Chase Customers Lost $5.4 Billion to Madoff
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 22, 2016 Buried in a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was a stunning piece of news. Customers of JPMorgan Chase, the bank that Wall Street analyst Mike Mayo has preposterously called the “Lebron James of banking,” were major victims of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme – to the tune of $5.4 billion – because of negligence on the part of the bank. The report states the following: “In 2014, DOJ [Department of Justice] assessed a $1.7 billion forfeiture – the largest penalty related to a BSA [Bank Secrecy Act] violation – against JPMorgan Chase Bank. DOJ cited the bank for its failure to detect and report the suspicious activities of Bernard Madoff. The bank failed to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program and report suspicious transactions in 2008, which contributed to their customers losing about $5.4 billion in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi … Continue reading
U.S. Government Is Now a Major Counterparty to Wall Street Derivatives
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 21, 2016 According to a study released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in March of last year, U.S. taxpayers have already injected $187.5 billion into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two companies that prior to the 2008 financial crash traded on the New York Stock Exchange, had shareholders and their own Board of Directors while also receiving an implicit taxpayer guarantee on their debt. The U.S. government put the pair into conservatorship on September 6, 2008. The public has been led to believe that the $187.5 billion bailout of the pair was the full extent of the taxpayers’ tab. But in an astonishing acknowledgement on February 25 of this year, the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, issued an audit report of the U.S. government’s finances, revealing that the government’s “remaining contractual commitment to the GSEs, if … Continue reading
New York Does Elections Like It Does Wall Street: With Its Finger on the Scale
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 20, 2016 New York State has the toughest financial fraud law in the country. Under New York’s 1921 Martin Act, the State Attorney General’s office can bring both criminal or civil charges. Despite that important fact, no CEO or CFO or key executive of any major Wall Street bank has been prosecuted by the New York State Attorney General for their role in the 2008 crash — which crippled the U.S. economy and has left the nation with GDP growth of two percent or less ever since. Despite the Martin Act’s unique anti-fraud statutes, Wall Street banks have been churning out serial new crimes since the 2008 crash, proving that both Justice Department prosecutors in Washington and timid prosecutors in New York are failing miserably at their jobs in deterring Wall Street crime. What power brokers in New York do best is flood … Continue reading
Wall Street Banking Model Takes Center Stage in Today’s New York Primary
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 19, 2016 Eight long years after the greatest Wall Street crash since 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression, U.S. mega banks on Wall Street still pose a systemic risk to the safety and soundness of banking and the overall financial stability of the United States. The public no longer has to guess as to whether the above statement is factual or simply the wild imagining of Wall Street activists. No less than the bank-cozy Federal Reserve confirmed on April 13 that three of the largest Wall Street banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo) did not have credible plans to unwind themselves without taxpayer assistance if they were to fail, raising the specter of another epic taxpayer bailout adding to the already staggering $19 trillion national debt, much of which resulted from the last bailout. In the case of JPMorgan Chase, … Continue reading
New York Primary’s Dirty Little Secrets Come Out of the Shadows
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 18, 2016 According to OpenPrimaries.org, 43 percent of Americans identify as politically independent. In New York state, voters who haven’t chosen a party affiliation total more than 2 million – more than 20 percent of all registered voters in New York. Unfortunately for them, they will be shut out of tomorrow’s New York primary where the stakes for the country’s future have never been greater. New York state is one of only 11 U.S. states that hold a “closed primary,” meaning that unless you are registered as either a Republican or a Democrat, you are precluded from voting in that party’s primary on April 19 in New York. Not only will Independents be barred from voting but those registered as Greens (about 26,000) or part of the Working Families Party (about 48,000) will also be locked out. This hits the Bernie Sanders campaign … Continue reading