Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 28, 2015 According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, “China was the United States’ 3rd largest goods export market in 2013.” That’s the latest year that data is available. The total of U.S. exports to China in 2013 reached $122.1 billion, a 10.4 percent increase over 2012. The top categories of goods that we export to China are: agricultural products, $25.9 billion; aircraft, $12.6 billion; machinery, $12.2 billion; electrical machinery, $11.4 billion; and vehicles, $10.3 billion. According to a March report from FactSet, “companies in the S&P 500 in aggregate generate about 10 percent of sales from the Asia Pacific region, most of which comes from China and Japan.” On Monday, China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell 8.48 percent (it was off another 1.7 percent at the close on Tuesday, closing at 3,663). From a June 12 high of 5,166, the Shanghai … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 27, 2015 Despite unprecedented efforts by the Chinese government to stem the rout in the Chinese stock market that had shaved as much as $4 trillion from share prices before the government’s interventions this month and last, the Shanghai Composite closed down 8.48 percent today at 3,725.558. The overnight rout has raised speculation in some quarters as to whether we are going to see another “glitch” on the New York Stock Exchange today similar to that of July 8 in the midst of another Chinese stock market tumble. As we reported at the time: “Yesterday, beginning at 11:32 a.m. and for the next three hours and forty minutes, the iconic New York Stock Exchange shuttered trading in all of its listed securities. The Exchange said it had experienced an internal glitch. “Unknown to most Americans, some of those shuttered stocks on the New … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 23, 2015  From the looks of JPMorgan’s share price, one would think the financial world is bathing in a sea of tranquility rather than experiencing crashing commodity prices, tremors in the Eurozone, Canada acknowledging two quarters of contraction, ruptures in China’s stock markets, and energy and mining junk bonds losing 20 to 30 percent in a month. JPMorgan’s share price hit an all-time closing high of $70.08 yesterday. The scary thing is, JPMorgan’s stock had a run from $32 to $42 just one month before Lehman Brothers blew up in 2008, marking the beginning of the biggest financial crash since the Great Depression; and there had been a year of financial warnings prior to that. (So much for global bank share prices being a bellwether on global financial stability.) Once the 2008 crash was clearly underway, JPMorgan shareholders saw 70 percent of their … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 22, 2015 We truly pity the earnest stockbroker today. Imagine trying to have a sensible conversation with your client about what’s going on in world markets when almost nothing makes sense anymore. It is an inherent underpinning of “free markets” that they must remain open for trading during regular market hours unless there is a catastrophic event like war or a terrorist attack. Even after the Tuesday, September 11, 2001 event when planes flew into two World Trade Center towers, leaving much of lower Manhattan covered in rubble and a jungle of tangled, destroyed electronic cables, the New York Stock Exchange reopened the following Monday. But here we are with no war (other than a war of words) and no terrorist attack and yet Greece’s stock market has been closed for more than three weeks. China is officially reporting that it is experiencing … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 21, 2015 Yesterday, domestic oil (West Texas Intermediate or WTI) dipped below $50 a barrel during intraday trading, reaching a level not seen since April. Gold closed at the lowest price in five years while sugar traded at a six year low. Wheat has lost almost 9 percent since last week. The Bloomberg Commodities Index traded at a 13-year low yesterday. The selloff in commodity prices is sending the following market messages: China is highly likely overestimating its economic growth rate of 7 percent that it reported last week; despite six years of central banks’ efforts to rev up economic engines, the money isn’t reaching consumers – it’s still flowing to the one percent. The chart below showing the relapse in commodity prices and stock prices in 1937, after the Fed thought it had beaten the worst of the Great Depression, should send … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 20, 2015 When it comes to sleuthing out how Wall Street has gamed the laws, conned the regulators and colluded to corrupt the whole financial system, there is no one in Congress sharper-eyed or more outspoken than Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is also exceptionally well-qualified to lead this Wall Street posse. Warren was a commercial law professor at Harvard for more than 20 years. She is widely credited with facilitating the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to protect consumers from the insidious rip-offs in mortgages, credit cards, student loans and other financial products. On July 7 of this year, Warren, together with fellow Senators John McCain, Bernie Sanders, Angus King, and Maria Cantwell, introduced the “21st Century Glass-Steagall Act of 2015,” (S.1709) legislation to separate insured, deposit-taking banks from Wall Street’s investment banks, brokerage firms, market makers, and hedge funds. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 16, 2015  Protesters were throwing fire bombs in the streets of Athens last evening over harsh new austerity measures being imposed on Greece, where banks and the stock market remain shuttered. One third of the stocks on the Chinese stock market remain suspended from trading in an effort to avert a crash. Bloomberg Business is reporting that institutional investors are holding the highest levels of cash since shortly after the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008. And just yesterday, America’s largest export market, Canada, slashed interest rates as its central bank announced its economy had contracted in the first two quarters of this year. The global landscape is beginning to look like the inevitable dystopian reality of a world ruled by the 1 percent. Against this backdrop, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, with her incessant chatter about raising interest rates before the year is … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 15, 2015 Fed Chair Janet Yellen cannot possibly be looking forward to her 10 a.m. testimony before the House Financial Services Committee today. Her last rendezvous with that Committee in February saw tempers flare and angry questioning from both Democrats and Republicans. At times in February, the typically mild-mannered Yellen answered questions curtly and at one point rolled her eyes at questioning from Congressman Scott Garrett (R-NJ). Garrett insinuated that Yellen has politicized her office by meeting so frequently with President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. Congressman Michael Capuano (D-MA) grilled Yellen about the living wills coming out of the too-big-to-fail banks. Capuano read from a statement by FDIC Vice Chair, Thomas Hoenig, which said these living wills “provide no credible or clear path through bankruptcy that doesn’t require unrealistic assumptions and direct or indirect public support.” Capuano crisply told Yellen “if … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: July 14, 2015  Remember the Super SIV, also known as the Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit or MLEC? That was a 2007 scheme in the U.S. to create a toxic waste dump where banks could stuff all their bad debts and instantly repair their balance sheets. It didn’t fly, leaving the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to come up with a raft of programs during the 2008 crisis to buy up, guarantee or ring fence hundreds of billions of dollars in bad bank debt. That effort was further enhanced with $13 trillion in secret, super cheap loans to Wall Street and foreign banks by the Federal Reserve. This produced a dystopian landscape on Wall Street, with Citigroup trading at 99 cents a share during the panic, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns collapsed, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac wards of the government, and Merrill … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 13, 2015 Goldman Sachs is raising eyebrows on Wall Street with its unchecked bullish stance on the stock markets in China, as other major Wall Street firms issue investor cautions or take outright negative outlooks. Communist government intervention in Chinese markets is reaching unprecedented levels of meddling. Companies have been allowed to simply stop trading their shares to halt further price declines; the government has barred executives and key shareholders from selling; margin rules have been lifted; and the central bank is funneling liquidity to brokerage firms. Since the rout began in June, $3.2 trillion has been shaved from the Chinese stock market with almost 2,800 stocks down 50 percent or more according to Wind Information. Despite these obvious fault lines, Goldman Sachs has remained steadfastly bullish. But what Goldman Sachs isn’t volunteering to investors is that the company holds stakes itself in Chinese … Continue reading →