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Recent Posts
- Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Is a Grotesque Giveaway to Fossil Fuel Billionaires While Adding $3.3 Trillion to Nation’s Debt
- Senator Chris Murphy Charges that Trump “Has Opened a Channel for Bribery”
- Congressman Casten: Trump’s Assault on the Rule of Law Is Causing Capital Flight Out of U.S. by Foreign Investors
- Trump’s Approval Rating Drops to 80-Year Low; IMF Says U.S. Tariffs Now Exceed the Highs During the Great Depression
- Nasdaq Has Lost More than 3,000 Points Since Trump’s First Full Day in Office in 2025; the Pain Has Barely Begun
- The Bond Crisis Last Week Was a Global No-Confidence Vote in U. S. President Donald Trump
- Trump’s Tariff Plan Guts $5 Trillion in Stock Value in Two Days; Senator Warren Calls for Emergency Action Before Markets Open on Monday
- Trump’s Attacks on Big Law, Universities, and the Media Have a Common Goal: Silence Dissent Against Authoritarian Rule
- Trump Administration Gives All Clear to Laundering Money through Shell Companies and Bribing Foreign Officials
- Four Megabanks on Wall Street Hold $3.2 Trillion in Uninsured Deposits – Which May Explain Senator Schumer’s Pivot to the GOP to Stop a Government Shutdown
- Here’s What Came Crashing Down Yesterday for Trump’s “Genius” Guy, Elon Musk: Tesla Stock, Access to Twitter (X), His Years of Secret Calls with Putin
- After Banning the Associated Press, Trump Is Now Targeting Specific Journalists That He Wants to See Fired
- Closely Watched Atlanta Fed Model Predicts Negative U.S. Growth in First Quarter
- Trump’s Gangster Diplomacy Makes Front Page Headlines Around the Globe
- Who Benefits Alongside Elon Musk If He Succeeds in Killing the CFPB: the Megabanks on Wall Street that Underwrite His Tesla Stock Offerings
- In Trump 1.0, the State Department Used Taxpayer Money to Publish a Book Elevating Elon Musk to a Superhero; It Was Funded by USAID, the Agency Musk Wants to Quickly Shut Down
- News Host Joy Reid Raises Threat of Trump Selling U.S. to Putin; Ten Days Later Her Show Is Cancelled
- Elon Musk’s DOGE Appears to Be Violating a Court Order; It Has Taken Down Hundreds of YouTube Videos that Educate Americans on How to Avoid Being Swindled
- Barron’s Releases Audio of Jamie Dimon Cursing Out His Workers at a Town Hall, as Dimon Plans to Dump Another One Million JPM Shares
- There’s One Federal Investigative Agency that Neither Trump nor Elon Musk Can Touch: It Just Opened an Investigation into DOGE
- Elon Musk’s Companies Were Under Investigation by Five Inspectors General When the Trump Administration Fired Them and Made Musk the Investigator
- Donald Trump Gives the Greenlight to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to Return to Bribing Foreign Officials
- After Tech Geeks Built a Back Door to Loot Billions from FTX, Republicans Refuse to Investigate What Elon Musk’s Tech-Squad Did Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System
- Former Prosecutor, Now U.S. Senator, Informs Tesla That CEO Musk May Be Violating Federal Law and to “Preserve All Records”
- Trump’s Hedge Fund Guy Is Now Overseeing the U.S. Treasury, IRS, OCC, U.S. Mint, FinCEN, F-SOC, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- As Elon Musk Begins Shutting Down Payments to Federal Contractors, a Strange Money Trail Emerges to His Operatives Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System
- JPMorgan Chase Charged by Yet Another Internal Whistleblower with Cooking the Books
- We Asked Google’s AI Search Model, Gemini, Questions About the Fed and Wall Street Megabanks: It Got the Answers Dead Wrong
- With Trump and Melania’s Crypto Coins Likely to Raise Legal Challenges, Why Didn’t Trump Fire the SEC’s Inspector General in His Purge of IGs?
- Fossil Fuel Industry Could End Up Paying Tens of Billions for LA Wildfires and Deceiving the Public on Climate Change for Decades
- It’s Being Called the Biggest Grift by a President in U.S. History: Trump and First Lady Launch their Own Crypto Coins
- Trump Plans to Install a Fracking CEO to Head the Energy Department and Declare a National Emergency on Energy to Gain Vast Powers
- Fossil Fuel Money Played a Role in the Los Angeles Fires and the Push to Install Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense
- When It Comes to Wealth Retention in Retirement, Concrete May Be the New Gold
- Wall Street Watchdog Warns “Clock Is Ticking on a Coming Catastrophic Financial Crash”
- Wall Street Is Sending the Same Message to Americans on Fossil Fuel Financing that It Sent on Cigarettes: Drop Dead
- In a Six-Week Span, this Dark Pool with a Curious Past Traded 3.7 Billion Shares
- Wall Street’s Lobby Firm Hired Eugene Scalia of Gibson Dunn to Sue the Fed for Jamie Dimon
- Postmaster General Louis DeJoy Made $561,051 in Compensation in 2024, as Mail Costs Spiked and Delivery Deteriorated
- Fed Chair Jay Powell Sends a Bold Message to Trump and Tanks the Dow by 1123 Points
- The Head of Fixed Income at T. Rowe Price Makes the Scary Case for the 10-Year Treasury to Spike to 6 Percent
- $663 Billion in Cash Assets Have Gone Poof at the Largest U.S. Banks
- Donald Trump to Ring Bell at New York Stock Exchange Today as Hit List Posters Appear in Manhattan Targeting Wall Street CEOs
- Trump Has a Slush Fund to Prop Up the Dollar – Will He Use It to Prop Up Bitcoin Instead?
- A CEO Assassination; a Billionaire Heiress/NYPD Commissioner; a Secret Wall Street Spy Center – Here’s How They’re Connected
- Despite More than 1600 Tech Scientists Signing a Letter Calling Crypto a Sham, Trump Names a Crypto Cheerleader for SEC Chair
- The Fed Rings a Warning Bell: Hedge Funds and Life Insurers Are Reporting Historic Leverage
- Trump’s Nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel, Has Businesses Financially Intertwined with Trump
- Donald Trump Is at Risk of Getting Named in a Fossil Fuels Conspiracy Lawsuit
- Trump Is Having Difficulty Getting a Lawyer to Accept the Nomination for SEC Chair: Here’s Why
Category Archives: Uncategorized
A Realistic Look at July’s Nonfarm Payrolls
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 5, 2016 The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its nonfarm payroll data this morning, showing that 255,000 jobs were created in July. The unemployment rate remained at 4.9 percent. May data was revised up from the eyebrow-raising low number of 11,000 jobs to 24,000 jobs while June was also revised upward from 287,000 jobs to 292,000. That brought the monthly average to 190,000 jobs over the past three months. Unfortunately, drilling down into the more granular details, a far less rosy picture emerges; a picture which is far more consistent with an economy feeling the continued weight of unprecedented wealth and income inequality; a picture that is far more correlated to an economy where “58 percent of all new income since the Wall Street crash has gone to the top 1 percent,” to quote Senator Bernie Sanders. The data for July shows … Continue reading
Bailed Out Citigroup Is Going Full Throttle into Derivatives that Blew Up AIG
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 4, 2016 Having closely observed how Citigroup collapsed under the weight of its own corruption and risk-taking hubris in 2008 and spread its contagion across Wall Street, a headline we never dreamed we would see in our lifetime is shown above from Risk Magazine’s web site. The article under the heart-stopping headline is dated January 27, 2016 and informs readers that Citigroup is now viewed by clients as one of the top-three market makers in single name Credit Default Swaps in both North America and Europe. Credit Default Swaps are the instruments that blew up the giant insurance company, AIG, in 2008, requiring the U.S. government to bail out the company to the tune of $185 billion. The bailout money went in the front door of AIG and was then funneled out the backdoor to the big Wall Street banks that had used … Continue reading
Is Deutsche Bank as Dangerous to Financial Stability as Citigroup Was in 2008?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 3, 2016 Deutsche Bank is starting to resemble the financial basket case that Citigroup became in 2008, leading to Citigroup’s partial ownership by the U.S. government for a time and the bank requiring the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. financial history. Citigroup’s teetering condition and its interconnectedness to other mega banks played a critical role in the Wall Street crash and collapse of the U.S. economy. That Deutsche Bank (which is highly interconnected to other major Wall Street banks and locked and loaded with tens of trillions of dollars in derivatives) is now showing the same kind of stresses as Citigroup back in 2008, raises the obvious question about just how effectively the Obama administration has reined in systemic financial risk after six years of reassurances that Dodd-Frank financial reform was getting the job done. On this date a year ago, Deutsche Bank’s … Continue reading
Author Michael Lewis: Rigged Markets Show Signs of a Desperate Slumlord
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 2, 2016 In the Afterword that appears in the paperback edition of “Flash Boys,” author Michael Lewis writes that following the publication of the hardcover edition of the book in 2014 and his appearance on 60 Minutes (in which he called the U.S. stock market rigged and mapped out the case against high frequency trading) “it has sounded like a desperate bid by a slumlord to gussy the place up to distract inspectors. In any case, the slumlords seem to realize that doing nothing is no longer an option: Too many people were too upset.” Doing nothing while going through the motions of doing something perfectly defines the Securities and Exchange Commission. Today the Securities and Exchange Commission is continuing its illusion of dealing with the rigged structure of the U.S. stock market by holding a meeting of its Equity Market Structure Advisory … Continue reading
U.S. Economy Was Growing at the Slowest Pace Since WW II; Now It’s Worse
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 1, 2016 According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Great Recession (that was brought on by the implosion of Wall Street) ended in June 2009. What we’ve been in since that time is supposed to be the “recovery” part of the cycle. But for tens of millions of Americans, it has been hard to tell the recovery from the crisis in terms wealth accumulation, wage growth, or ability to earn a decent rate of interest on savings. On Friday the Commerce Department released second quarter Gross Domestic Product data, showing that the U.S. economy grew at a 1.2 percent annual rate. That tepid number came on the heels of an anemic 0.8 percent rate of GDP growth for the first quarter. It has now been more than a decade since the U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 3 percent … Continue reading
Panama Papers: Will Wall Street Get Swept Up in Justice Department’s Investigation?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 29, 2016 The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington D.C. and its U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan “have launched a criminal investigation into whether individuals at Mossack Fonseca & Co., the law firm at the center of the ‘Panama Papers’ scandal, knowingly helped its clients launder money or evade taxes…” That investigation, if conducted thoroughly and without improper interference, could turn up the heat on some powerful Wall Street players. On May 16 Wall Street On Parade broke the story that the Miami office of Citigroup’s Private Bank at 201 South Biscayne Blvd. was the listed address for dozens of offshore companies whose agent is Mossack Fonseca. (See graph below.) Our information was obtained from a search of the public database made available by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which received more than 11.5 million … Continue reading
Elizabeth Warren Gets It Dead Wrong on Corporate Profits in Convention Speech
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 28, 2016 Senator Elizabeth Warren, during her speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Monday night, made the following statement: “Here’s the thing: America isn’t going broke. The stock market is breaking records. Corporate profits are at all-time highs. CEOs make tens of millions of dollars. There’s lots of wealth in America, but it isn’t trickling down to hard-working families like yours.” It is true that the stock market has been setting new record highs as measured by the Standard and Poor’s 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average but that’s primarily because corporations are going into deeper debt and using the money to buy back their own stock. This is happening at a time of a scary profits recession for corporate America. Not only are profits not setting records, but profits in the S&P 500 have declined year-over-year for the past … Continue reading
Sanders’ Delegates Stage Walkout Protest on Hillary Clinton Nomination
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 27, 2016 It had been in the planning for weeks and it was executed as flawlessly as the DNC’s own strategy to steal the election for Hillary Clinton. As Clinton’s nomination to serve as the presidential candidate was confirmed at the Democratic National Convention yesterday, hundreds of Senator Bernie Sanders’ delegates staged a walkout protest, leaving large swaths of the seats in the convention center empty. Waving signs that read “The Revolution Continues,” “A Future to Believe In,” “No TPP,” and chanting “This is what democracy looks like,” the marchers peacefully left the convention center and rallied outside. Numerous protestors wore tape or material over their mouths to protest how the DNC’s actions had illegally silenced their voices. (See second video below.) Several hundred Sanders’ supporters also took over part of the media tent for the convention for a period of time. Shyla … Continue reading
Wikileaks Emails Bring New Attention to Hillary Victory Fund “Money Laundering” Charges
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 26, 2016 The problem with conspiracy theorists is that, quite frequently, the theorists lack adequate imagination. That seems to be the case when it comes to the Democratic National Committee’s behind-the-scenes machinations to muscle Hillary Clinton into the White House while plotting against her main challenger, Bernie Sanders. That conclusion stems from the trove of 20,000 DNC emails dumped into the public sphere by Wikileaks last Friday. The leaked emails have cost Debbie Wasserman Schultz her job as Chair of the DNC but other top DNC officials captured in devious plots against Sanders in the email exchanges still have their jobs – or at least no official firings have been announced. This makes the conspiracies seem more like a DNC business model. The DNC’s own charter demands that it treat all Democratic primary candidates fairly and impartially, but top DNC officials made a … Continue reading
After Chaotic Weekend for Democrats and Wasserman Schultz, A Class Action Lawsuit Lies Ahead
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 25, 2016 First it was Hillary Clinton handling Top Secret national security matters in emails with the caution of a drunken sailor. Now it’s emails leaked by Wikileaks showing that key officials at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) attempted to derail the Democratic campaign of Bernie Sanders in direct violation of the DNC’s own Charter. Loose email lips are sinking a lot of ships in the Democratic corridors of power. And a lot more emails and depositions may be coming as a class action lawsuit filed in Federal Court gets underway. Article 5, Section 4 of the DNC Charter mandates the following: “The Chairperson shall be responsible for ensuring that the national officers and staff of the Democratic National Committee maintain impartiality and evenhandedness during the Democratic Party Presidential nominating process.” Instead, according to more than 20,000 DNC emails exposed by Wikileaks on … Continue reading