-
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
Distrust Fuels Outrage at House Financial Services Committee
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 9, 2015 Paranoia is rampant among Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee and was on display throughout its hearing yesterday. Unfortunately for the nation, much of that paranoia is well founded. Just take a look at the photo above. The panel of witnesses that testified yesterday represent just eight of the ten voting members of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC; which is pronounced F-Sock), another layer of oversight imposed by the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to monitor an ever sprawling octopus of a financial system that looks to most Americans as if it is still out of control, seven long years after the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. Behind each of the regulators on the panel (see list and testimony below), with the exception of S. Roy Woodall, the independent member of FSOC with insurance expertise, there … Continue reading
What Hillary Clinton Didn’t Tell You in Her New York Times OpEd
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 8, 2015 Yesterday, the New York Times gave Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton a free infomercial (a/k/a OpEd) to spin her toothless plan “to rein in Wall Street.” Hillary begins by telling us this: “Seven years ago, the financial crisis sent our economy into a tailspin. Over five million people lost their homes. Nearly nine million lost their jobs. Nearly $13 trillion in household wealth was wiped out.” But that’s not what her husband, former President Bill Clinton told us was going to happen when he repealed the 66-year old Glass-Steagall Act on November 12, 1999. Here’s what Bill Clinton promised us from this massive deregulation of Wall Street: (See video of his full remarks below.) President Bill Clinton: “You heard Senator Gramm characterize this bill as a victory for freedom and free markets. And Congressman LaFalce characterized this bill as a victory for … Continue reading
What President Obama Didn’t Address: Who’s Funding the Hate Campaign Against Muslims?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 7, 2015 Last evening, in his speech to the nation from the Oval Office, President Obama reminded Americans that “Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes — and, yes, they are our men and women in uniform who are willing to die in defense of our country.” In his concluding remarks, the President told viewers that our nation was “founded upon a belief in human dignity — that no matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you look like, or what religion you practice, you are equal in the eyes of God and equal in the eyes of the law.” (See full video of the speech below.) What the President didn’t say is that while the recent mass killing in San Bernardino, California was conducted by a married couple who were Muslim, the … Continue reading
Prayer Comes Under Fire in Wake of San Bernardino Shootings
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 3, 2015 It’s not every day that you wake up to an American newspaper cover like the one shown here from the New York Daily News today. The 96-year old newspaper is expressing its outrage at conservative Republicans who repeatedly invoke God and prayer following mass shootings instead of standing up to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and outlawing assault rifles and high-capacity magazines like the ones used yesterday at a county facility in San Bernardino, California where 14 people were killed and 17 injured. According to the newspaper, the U.S. is “now populated with more firearms than people” and has experienced “355 mass shootings so far this year” – more than the number of days elapsed. Today’s editorial at the New York Daily News explains the simmering anger that was expressed earlier yesterday in other publications and across Twitter after conservative Republican … Continue reading
Junk Bonds Having Worst Year Since 2008 Crisis: Three Red Flags
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 2, 2015 There are three major red flags waving in the wind over the U.S. junk bond market. First, the market is now approximately $1.8 trillion, about double the amount of junk bonds outstanding at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. Also, yields have skyrocketed, showing a growing aversion to risk by investors. As the above chart indicates, the lowest rated junk bonds (also called “high yield”) which have a CCC or lower rating, have seen their yields double from 8 percent to 16 percent since July of last year. And, finally, downgrades to ratings are swamping the number of upgrades, a telling sign of an overall deteriorating market. According to the ratings agency, Moody’s, the ratio of upgrades to downgrades is at the worst level since the financial crash in 2008-2009. What have junk bond investors gotten in return for … Continue reading
The Fed’s New Bailout Rule Expands Its Powers Rather than Limiting Them
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 1, 2015 Yesterday, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors voted 5-0 to approve a new rule that was required under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation to rein in the type of vast, secret, and below-market-rate lending the Fed engaged in during the 2007 to 2010 financial crisis. But rather than rein in its hubris, the Fed seems to have gone out of its way to emphasize that it has the power to make loans to “persons,” not just financial firms whose illiquidity might pose a threat to the nation’s overall financial stability. Most Americans understand that the U.S. is experiencing unprecedented wealth inequality and that there are many billionaires in the U.S. whose net worth exceeds that of many regional banks (think Koch brothers or the Walton family behind Walmart). But if individual “persons” should get in a financial bind, is it … Continue reading
7 Critical Reforms Needed on Wall Street to Prevent Another Bust
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 30, 2015 The problem with Wall Street is not just that individual participants serially disrespect the law. The bigger problem is that Wall Street as an industry has structured itself as an ingrained law-avoidance system. There’s simply no other industry in America where you could start the sentence – “Wall Street is the only industry in America where…” – and find endless ways to finish that thought. Jamil Nazarali, the head of Citadel Execution Services, the trading arm of a hedge fund and dark pool operator, gave the above sentence a trial run on October 27 at a Securities and Exchange Commission meeting on market structure. Nazarali said: “This industry is the only one that I am aware of where a for-profit public company regulates its customers and competitors. And I understand that you guys think that that’s important but what is it … Continue reading
Obscene Golden Parachutes Are Part of America’s Rising Wealth Inequality
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 25, 2015 America’s new gilded age has been lined with Golden Parachutes with pathological underpinnings. On September 11, 2002, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought charges against the three top executives of Tyco International. The complaint began with this: “This is a looting case.” The SEC charged that Tyco’s CEO, Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Schwartz, its CFO, “took hundreds of millions of dollars in secret, unauthorized and improper low interest or interest-free loans and compensation from Tyco.” The transactions were concealed from shareholders and, according to the SEC, “Kozlowski and Swartz later pocketed tens of millions of dollars by causing Tyco to forgive repayment of many of their improper loans” and “engaged in numerous highly profitable related party transactions with Tyco and awarded themselves lavish perquisites — without disclosing either the transactions or perquisites to Tyco shareholders.” USA Today reported that the Manhattan … Continue reading
Meet the Nobel Laureate Nader Wants Janet Yellen to Talk To
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 24, 2015 After lamenting in a recent book how Presidents George W. Bush and Obama didn’t answer his letters (Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President, 2001-2015), Ralph Nader has finally been requited by a powerful person in Washington. Nader had the temerity to write Fed Chair Janet Yellen a letter on October 30, pointing out how the Fed’s zero bound interest rate policy is crimping the spending ability of savers who rely on such things as savings accounts and money market interest for added income to survive. Yesterday, Yellen boldly answered Nader’s letter with a smackdown. The letter has caused an outbreak of sexism charges against Nader by various writers for his suggestion in the letter that Yellen would be wise to “sit down with your Nobel Prize winning husband, economist George Akerlof, who is known to be consumer-sensitive.” Annie Lowrey … Continue reading
John Reed: How to Be Dead Wrong as a CEO and Still Get Super Rich
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 23, 2015 April 18, 2000 was the day John Reed retired from Citigroup, pushed out in a board room coup, leaving Sandy Weill the sole Chairman and CEO. In 1998, the two had, with great fanfare, merged the FDIC-insured Citibank with Salomon Smith Barney, an investment bank and brokerage firm, and insurance companies controlled by Travelers Group to create the global behemoth known as Citigroup. The pair had initially served as Co-Chairmen and Co-CEOs. At the time, the deal violated the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression era law which barred firms primarily engaged with underwriting securities to affiliate with insured banks. The Bill Clinton administration would obligingly repeal the Glass-Steagall Act the year after the Citigroup merger. At the close of trading on April 18, 2000, the day Reed stepped down, 100 shares of Citigroup were worth $6,212. Today, a decade and a half … Continue reading