Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens: May 5, 2015 Last week we were reading an article by Matt Klein in the typically staid, button-down Financial Times. When we arrived at the 10th paragraph, Klein tells us that he’s been chatting with Chris Arnade, a man who spent 20 years as a trader at Salomon Brothers and Citigroup, who has now retired to “document the lives of those less fortunate.” The words “document the lives of those less fortunate” are hyperlinked to a blog by Chris Arnade with a story titled “Another Day.” The story and the photographs take us into a genre of poverty porn meets Schadenfreude – finding pleasure in another’s pain. The Broadway musical, Avenue Q, explains Schadenfreude in a song: Right now you are down and out and feeling really cr*ppy (I’ll say.) And when I see how sad you are It sort of makes me… Happy! (Happy?!) Sorry, Nicky, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 4, 2015 Last Wednesday, the grassroots organization, Move to Amend, held a press conference at the National Press Club to announce that six members of the U.S. House of Representatives were introducing legislation to overturn Citizens United v FEC to make free speech and all other rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution available only to “natural persons,” not corporations or limited liability companies. The legislation would also give Federal, state and local governments the ability to limit political contributions to “ensure all citizens,  regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process.” When corporations overturn the will of the people, it’s widely covered by corporate media. When the people fight back, the news is frequently blacked out. As of this morning, we could find no major corporate media outlet or corporate wire service reporting on last Wednesday’s press conference by Move … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 30, 2015 The Justice Department’s case against the 36 year old lone bedroom trader in the U.K., Navinder Singh Sarao, has now been thoroughly discredited by every Wall Street veteran who has studied it, most pointing out that what Sarao did is happening every second that Wall Street is open for business. Business writers at the New York Times, Financial Times, Newsweek, and Bloomberg View have given the charges an unequivocal thumbs down. The Justice Department’s complaint itself is unusual. It consists of a one page complaint cover sheet followed not by a detailed breakdown of the counts but by an affidavit from an FBI agent. The case is filed in the Federal District Court in the Northern District of Illinois but no U.S. Attorney or Assistant U.S. Attorney from that district has signed this complaint. The names listed at the top of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 29, 2015 Prosecutors from the U.S. Justice Department have already lost their case in the court of public opinion against Navinder Singh Sarao, the man they allege fueled the Flash Crash in the stock market on May 6, 2010, trading from his bedroom in his parents’ house in the U.K. Yesterday, Terry Duffy, Executive Chairman of the CME Group and the man who sits atop the futures market in Chicago where the Justice Department alleges Sarao tricked the market into a collapse, threw cold water on hopes of building this case before a jury. Duffy told Maria Bartiromo the following in an interview on Fox Business News: “They took Accenture to a penny [Accenture is a stock that trades in New York, not in the futures markets in Chicago]; noone’s talking about Accenture going to a penny that day…But yet they’re blaming the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 28, 2015 If you’ve been scratching your head since the middle of last year as consumer confidence surveys depicted an optimistic, eager to spend consumer while other hard economic data was showing a sputtering economy, we’re here to put your mind to rest. You’re not crazy. The U.S. economy is dramatically diverging from where most consumers think it is and we have three charts to prove it. Most Americans have never heard of the Labor Force Participation Rate. Consumers judge the availability of jobs, or lack of them, by the Unemployment Rate that is fed to them in newspaper headlines and TV sound bites monthly. The Unemployment Rate has been coming down nicely and fueling positive vibes among consumers. Unfortunately, the Labor Force Participation Rate, which measures the number of people who are either employed or actively looking for a job has been … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 27, 2015  Last Monday, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker held a press conference at the National Press Club to release his nonprofit’s plan for reforming U.S. bank regulation. Volcker’s plan includes elevating the Federal Reserve to even greater heights as a super regulator of a consolidated system. That’s exactly the opposite of what Congress has in mind as it holds hearings on fatal conflicts of interests between the Fed and Wall Street. At the press conference, Volcker delivered a thoroughly discredited statement suggesting some deep-pocketed backers are putting words in his mouth. Volcker said: “The Federal Reserve is the best-equipped, the most independent and most respected financial agency of the United States government.” Volcker’s views on financial reform must be seen against the backdrop of Volcker’s myriad conflicts and ties with the global ruling elite. His non-profit organization, The Volcker Alliance, has multiplied … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 24, 2015 Americans have been reading about Citigroup’s and JPMorgan’s roles in rigging the Libor interest rate benchmark for so many years that it’s a sure bet most folks think the U.S. Department of Justice has already fined and settled charges against these two banks. The truth of the matter is that despite seven years of probing these two banks’ involvement, the U.S. Justice Department has yet to lay one hand on either Citigroup or JPMorgan for their role in the Libor cartel. Libor is an interest rate benchmark used to set rates for trillions of dollars in consumer loans, swaps and interest rate contracts around the world. Banks having inside information on where Libor rates will set can make massive profits. The appearance of a home court advantage for these two U.S. banks comes in the wake of a guilty plea extracted … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: April 22, 2015 The U.S. Justice Department is relying on Americans’ gullibility with its arrest of a 36-year old in the U.K., charging him as a key culprit in the Flash Crash of the stock market on May 6, 2010. London newspapers report the young man trades from his bedroom in his parents’ middle class row house. The arrest came on the same day that news broke that Loretta Lynch was speeding toward a confirmation vote in the U.S. Senate as the next U.S. Attorney General, meaning that current U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is making his last hurrah after failing to prosecute any bigwigs on Wall Street throughout his tenure, notwithstanding their insidious role in the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. The first problem with the Justice Department’s complaint against the bedroom spoofer is that the complaint has gone missing. What was released to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 21, 2015 On October 23, 2008, with much of Wall Street lying in ruins and the U.S. economy rapidly heading toward a 1930s type of collapse, Henry Waxman, Chair of the House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee, attempted to elicit answers from Alan Greenspan, the former Chair of the Federal Reserve for an unprecedented 18 years who had pushed for the deregulation of Wall Street that had left the country teetering. After enumerating a series of  recent financial collapses occurring from either deregulation or corrupted business principles, Waxman said: “Each of these case studies is different, but they share common themes. In each case, corporate excess and greed enriched company executives at enormous cost to shareholders and our economy. In each case, these abuses could have been prevented if Federal regulators had paid more attention and intervened with responsible regulations.” In those three sentences, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 20, 2015 Manipulating Americans to organize or protest against their own interests is the sine qua non of big corporate front groups. These groups are alternately known as astroturf organizations because the grass in “grassroots” is fake turf. Just how fake that turf is came into crisp perspective on April 2 when Christine Stapleton, an investigative reporter at the Palm Beach Post, revealed that a protest rally called by the Tea Party of Miami and Florida Citizens Against Waste used paid actors from the Broward Acting Group as faux protesters. (Watch a video here.) The fake protest was in response to more than 100 real citizens turning out the prior month to demand that the South Florida Water Management District, a state agency, exercise its option before it expires to purchase 48,600 acres of corporate land owned by U.S. Sugar, a huge sugar … Continue reading →