Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 23, 2015 Yesterday, Rajlakshmi De and Hamid Mehran, two researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, posted an interesting treatise on what it takes to climb into the ranks of the largest banks in the U.S. The duo inform us that as of 2007, prior to the financial crisis, just 0.4 percent of all U.S. banks held $50 billion or more in assets. The six largest U.S. banks in 2007, with assets ranging from $2.1 trillion to $238 billion, had one unique quality in common – they were all more than a century old, except for Wachovia which was one year short of a century. Wachovia was teetering in 2008 during the financial crisis and was merged into Wells Fargo. The authors do not mention this or that another of the six banks, Citigroup, became insolvent in 2008 but was illegally … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 22, 2015 Jeb Hensarling, Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, has his nose to the ground, hot on the scent of crooks and liars in the finance industry. But are they the important crooks and liars? The ones that crash economies? Like a dogged blood hound, Hensarling is determined to root out a Fed leak that occurred three years ago. This Thursday, he’s planning to beat up some more on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the young, underfunded agency that’s trying its best to protect average Americans against Wall Street’s crime wave. The concern is that Hensarling, a Republican from Texas who calls himself “a life-long conservative,” has a broken antenna. While Hensarling is hunting down a Fed leak that is already under a Justice Department investigation, here’s what else is going on in the financial world. The U.S. Treasury’s Office … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 19, 2015 Yesterday, Mary Jo White was in London to address the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). While there, she commented on the U.K.’s new plan to hold senior managers in the finance industry responsible for fraud in their departments. Each senior manager will have a specific delegated responsibility and if fraud occurs in their area, he or she can be terminated and banned for life from the industry if the senior manager had knowledge of the fraud. White called the idea “intriguing.” While White was chatting with her fellow securities regulators in London on this novel idea of actually holding crooked Wall Street bosses accountable, Thomas Hayes was on trial in another section of London over charges that he rigged the benchmark interest rate, Libor, on which interest rates on loans and financial instruments are set around the world. Yesterday, Hayes produced … Continue reading →

By James A. Kidney: June 18, 2015 President Obama has two vacancies to fill on the five-member Securities and Exchange Commission.  One will be a Democrat and the other must be a Republican or independent.  Rather than use these appointments as an opportunity to bring on both real-world experience from finance and open the commissioner ranks beyond Washington and New York, early word is that the likely nominees are from the same old well:  Wall Street lawyers and congressional staffers.  These selections possibly have the virtue of relatively easy confirmation through a recalcitrant Senate, but they are a lost opportunity. Daniel Gallagher, one of two Republican commissioners, is resigning after serving since November 7, 2011. Long-time Democratic Commissioner Luis Aguilar is leaving after serving since July 31, 2008. Their replacements will serve well into the next administration.  They will face continuing issues in the long, drawn-out implementation and enforcement of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 17, 2015 After the U.S. government pumped the secret, astronomical sum of more than $13 trillion into Wall Street during the years surrounding the 2008 financial crisis to bail it out of its own greedy and reckless gambles, Wall Street is shamelessly asking for more government handouts in the opinion pages of the New York Times. The woman pitching this pathetic poppycock, Kathryn S. Wylde, was actually on the Board of Directors at the New York Fed during the crisis – the very institution that sluiced the secret $13 trillion into Wall Street’s coffers. If you live outside of New York City, you’ve never heard of the Partnership for New York City. Even if you live inside New York City, unless you’re part of the black tie cocktail circuit, you’ve still never heard of the group. So when the New York Times gave … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 16, 2015 Earlier this month, Senator Elizabeth Warren was so exasperated with the obstructionist role that Mary Jo White has played at the SEC that she sent her a sternly worded, 13-page letter calling her out on her serial broken promises. Senator Warren highlighted White’s failure to finalize rules requiring disclosure of the ratio of CEO pay to the median worker; her failure to curb the use of waivers for companies that violate securities law; the SEC’s continued practice of settling the vast majority of cases without requiring meaningful admissions of guilt; and White’s repeated recusals related to her prior employment and her husband’s current employment at law firms representing Wall Street. Now, Wall Street On Parade has uncovered a major new area of concern. For more than two years now, SEC Chair Mary Jo White has been aware that the most dangerous … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 15, 2015 The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research (OFR), the body created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation to make sure another 2008 epic crash never happened again, quietly released a report last week which not only suggests another 2008-style crash is possible but that regulators will likely be blindsided again. The report, written by Jill Cetina, John McDonough, and Sriram Rajan, reveals that the big Wall Street banks are ginning up their capital measures by engaging in opaque and potentially dangerous “capital relief trades.” To illustrate how dangerous this kind of capital relief arbitrage can be, the report says that JPMorgan’s London Whale trades (which blew a $6.2 billion hole in the insured bank) was a capital relief trade. Here’s the precise language from the report: “JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s losses in the 2012 London Whale case were the result of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 11, 2015 New York University, which has been rocked by revelations of providing multi-million dollar residences, forgivable mortgages, and sweet-deal, in-house financing for luxurious vacation homes to an elite group of staff and faculty, is now linked to the Hillary and Bill Clinton cash-by-the-truckload scandal. According to an analysis by the Washington Post, since leaving the White House in January 2001, Bill Clinton was paid $104.9 million for speaking fees through January 2013 when Hillary stepped down as Secretary of State. In addition, their nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation, has reported over $2 billion in donations from corporations and foreign governments around the world. In May, Hillary released a new financial disclosure form in conjunction with her candidacy for President. That form covered the period from January 2014 through May of this year, showing that the Clintons earned an additional $25 million for speeches. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 10, 2015 On Monday, Richard Berner worried aloud at the Brookings Institution about what’s troubling the smartest guys in the room about today’s markets. Berner is the Director of the Office of Financial Research (OFR) at the Treasury Department. That’s the agency created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation to, according to their web site, “shine a light in the dark corners of the financial system to see where risks are going, assess how much of a threat they might pose,” and, ideally, provide the analysis to the folks sitting on the Financial Stability Oversight Council in time to prevent another 2008-style financial collapse on Wall Street. Two notable concerns stood out in Berner’s talk. First was a concern about liquidity in bond markets evaporating rapidly for reasons they don’t yet “sufficiently understand.” Berner explained: “…liquidity appears to have become increasingly brittle, even … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 9, 2015 Those complaining that Senator Elizabeth Warren went too far in her complaints against Mary Jo White’s leadership at the Securities and Exchange Commission obviously didn’t see yesterday’s Federal court decision coming. It now appears that Senator Warren would have had good grounds to also charge Mary Jo White with replicating the judicial practices of King George III – against whom the Declaration of Independence was drafted. U.S. District Court Judge, Leigh Martin May, ruled yesterday in Atlanta that the SEC’s system of selecting in-house judges to hear and decide SEC cases brought against individuals charged with securities violations was “likely unconstitutional.” The Judge imposed a preliminary injunction in an SEC insider-trading case until she issues her final decision in the matter. During the tenure of Mary Jo White at the SEC, the agency has increasingly used its own in-house judges to … Continue reading →