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Recent Posts
- Trump and Paulson’s Proposal: U.S. Sovereign Wealth Fund (or Another Grifter Bailout)
- 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
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Why Is the Fed’s Stanley Fischer Tilting at Windmills?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 31, 2015 Last Friday and again yesterday, the Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Stanley Fischer, delivered speeches that attempted to refocus his audience away from the systemic global risk posed by behemoth Wall Street banks and redirect their gaze to dangers lurking in the nonbank sector: things like mutual funds and hedge funds. Reading the speeches, we had an epiphany here at Wall Street On Parade: if something does blow up in the nonbank sector it is highly likely to be caused by an interaction with a Wall Street bank. The insurance company, AIG, would not have failed during the last financial crisis had it not agreed to engage in Credit Default Swaps (CDS) with Wall Street mega banks. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would not have failed had they not been seduced into buying dodgy mortgages, mortgage-backed securities, and derivatives from … Continue reading
Paranoia Reigns in Congress Over an International Financial Cabal
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 30, 2015 It’s tough to keep up with the conspiracy theories that run rampant from day to day in the hallowed halls of Congress. But one that is gaining traction is that the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Stability Oversight Council (whose acronym is pronounced F-SOC) is the handmaiden of an international finance cabal and is obediently marching to its beat instead of the mandates of Congress. These suspicions were on display at the Senate Banking Committee hearing last Wednesday and the House Financial Services Committee hearing the week before where U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who Chairs F-SOC, was pummeled with thinly veiled, and not so thinly veiled, accusations. F-SOC was created under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010. It is charged with the early identification of emerging risks to the financial system. Every major regulator of Wall … Continue reading
What If Janet Yellen Is Dead Wrong on the Strength of the U.S. Economy?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 26, 2015 Yesterday, economists at the Atlanta Fed’s Center for Quantitative Economic Research notched down their forecast for real GDP growth – the seasonally adjusted annual rate – to a tepid 0.2 percent for the first quarter of 2015. The revision from the earlier forecast of 0.3 percent followed yesterday’s durable goods report that showed a dramatic decline of 1.4 percent in February on a seasonally adjusted basis. Durable goods are products like refrigerators, washing machines or computers, items expected to last for at least three years. Because durable goods carry higher price tags than most other consumer outlays, a weakening in durable goods can be a warning of a tapped out or retrenching consumer. This first quarter forecast stands at odds with the Federal Reserve Board’s FOMC statement of March 18, 2015 which singled out “strong job gains” and rising household spending. … Continue reading
Draghi’s ECB: Quantitative Easing or Cash for Trash?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 25, 2015 Bloomberg News is carrying an article today that raises the question as to whether cash for trash may be the comeback kid at the European Central Bank. That, in turn, leads to speculation as to how long it will be before the comeback kid leaps across the pond and nestles into the arms of the U.S. Federal Reserve. According to the article, the European Central Bank is buying up billions of Euros in asset-backed securities made up of things like Spanish auto loans, Portuguese home loans, and legacy deals that have been stuck on the balance sheets of European banks since the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. The article notes that the ABS market is down from a peak of 524 billion Euros in annual issuance in 2006 to a paltry 77 billion Euros in annual average issuance over the past … Continue reading
Questions Swirl Around the Death of Wall Street Journal Reporter, David Bird
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 23, 2015 Wall Street Journal oil reporter, David Bird, set out from his New Jersey home for a brief walk on January 11, 2014 and disappeared without a trace. Last Wednesday, 14 months after his disappearance and the very same day David Bird’s family had launched a web site to urge the public to help them locate their beloved husband and father, Bird’s body was found in the Passaic River. It was conclusively identified through dental records. A search had been underway for Bird since the evening of his disappearance. He had left his home on Long Hill Road in the Millington section of Long Hill Township, New Jersey to take a short walk. The circumstances were inconsistent with someone who intended to disappear: he was wearing a bright red jacket with yellow zippers; he was a recipient of a liver transplant and … Continue reading
Shhh! We Can’t Talk About the Dollar’s Flash Crash on Wednesday
By Pam Martens: March 20, 2015 One would think we had asked for missile launch codes when we reached out to the futures exchanges to find out what caused the precipitous plunge in the U.S. Dollar’s futures contract at 4:04 P.M. Wednesday afternoon – long after the Federal Reserve’s market moving news had been digested by traders. If currencies are now the new weapons of mass destruction – maybe we were asking for the equivalent of missile launch codes. Our curiosity was piqued when the intrepid Eric Hunsader of market data firm, Nanex, published amazing charts showing a precipitous plunge in the U.S. Dollar just after the equity markets had closed in New York. Hunsader wrote: “On March 18, 2015 between 4:02 and 4:09 PM Eastern Daylight Time, the U.S. Dollar flash crashed, losing over 3% of its value in just under 4 minutes, then gaining most of it back … Continue reading
The Clintons and the Fed Are Gasping Over the April Issue of Harper’s
By Pam Martens: March 19, 2015 Hillary Clinton just can’t catch a break. As her self-inflicted imbroglio over erasing 30,000 emails involving her time as Secretary of State continues to command press attention, the April issue of Harper’s Magazine is focusing gasp-worthy attention on the “loan-sharking” business that Bill Clinton, as President, assisted in transforming into the too-big-to-fail Citigroup that played a leading role in bringing the country to the brink of financial collapse in 2008. Janet Yellen’s Fed can’t be too happy either about the revelations. The Fed just gave Citigroup a clean bill of health last week under its so-called rigorous stress tests and is allowing the bank to spend like a drunken sailor, raising its dividend 400 percent with permission to buy back as much as $7.8 billion of its own stock. The Fed’s qualitative portion of the stress test is said to look at both risk … Continue reading
Janet Yellen Speaks at Press Conference Following FOMC Meeting
Related Articles: Memo to Fed: Interest Rates Are a Sideshow; the Problem is Income Inequality Reforming the Fed: Who’s Right; Who’s Wrong?
U.S. Treasury Drops a Bombshell Yesterday: “Quicksilver Markets”
By Pam Martens: March 18, 2015 Yesterday, an agency of the Federal government, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research (OFR), released a study warning that by three separate measures the U.S. stock market is approaching dangerous “two-sigma thresholds” which can lead to “quicksilver markets.” Translation: we could be heading for a big crash. A two-sigma threshold is when market valuation metrics move at least two standard deviations above the historical mean. The study notes that “valuations approached or surpassed two-sigma in each major stock market bubble of the past century.” Think 1929, 2000 and 2007. A quicksilver market, as defined by the study, is when stable markets turn on a dime and “change rapidly and unpredictably.” The study was authored by Theodore (Ted) Berg and notes that it may not necessarily reflect the official position or policy of the OFR or Treasury. Berg is a Chartered Financial Analyst with … Continue reading
Paul Craig Roberts Shames Corporate Media Hucksters Masquerading as Journalists
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 17, 2015 Last week the Press Club of Mexico honored Paul Craig Roberts with the International Award for Excellence in Journalism. Roberts used the occasion to call out a tainted brand of journalism in this country which frequently involves “lying for the government and for the corporations.” Roberts is one of the most prolific writers in America and a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. His journalism career includes Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service and Creators Syndicate. Roberts has also been one of the most strident critics of both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, calling them “vassals” of the corporate titans. Increasingly, Roberts sees the corporate media as a twin evil to Washington, writing recently that “the so-called ‘mainstream media’ has been transformed into a Ministry of Propaganda.” Roberts’ … Continue reading