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Recent Posts
- Intel, Boeing and U.S. Steel May Hold the Secrets to What’s Behind All the Talk of a U.S. Sovereign Wealth Fund
- 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
Category Archives: Uncategorized
After Charges of Running a Price Fixing Cartel on Nasdaq in the 90s, Wall Street Banks Are Now Trading Their Own Stocks in Darkness
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 3, 2014 On July 17, 1996, the U.S. Justice Department charged the biggest names on Wall Street, names like Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan and predecessor firms to Citigroup, with price fixing on the electronic stock market known as Nasdaq. The Justice Department felt the firms were so untrustworthy to make a fair electronic marketplace that as part of its settlement it required that some traders’ phone calls be tape recorded when making Nasdaq trades and it gave itself the right to randomly show up and listen in on the traders’ calls. The scandal made headlines for years and revealed that the price fixing had been going on under the unwatchful eye of regulators for more than a decade. Now, more than six years after the greatest Wall Street crash since 1929, the public is still learning stomach-churning details about the lingering effects of de-regulating … Continue reading
FINRA Bombshell: Biggest Wall Street Banks Are Trading Their Own Stock in Dark Pools
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 2, 2014 Major business media is hot on the story tonight of which major Wall Street bank traded the most shares in their dark pool during the week of May 12 – 16. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) – a self policing body on Wall Street – released detailed dark pool data for the first time today. Thus far, the business media has overlooked the bombshell in the data: the biggest banks on Wall Street — the same ones the U.S. taxpayer bailed out in 2008 – have been making a market in their own stock inside the dark pools they own, right under the nose of FINRA and the SEC to the tune of tens of millions of shares a year if this data is typical of an average week. This is the equivalent of Bank of America or Citigroup being … Continue reading
Is the Market Crazy? Treasurys Are Screaming Crisis While Stocks Yawn
By Pam Martens: June 2, 2014 One critical gauge of how fair and efficient a market is resides in the degree to which it reflects the composite wisdom of all participants. A rigged market, for example, reflects the composite wisdom of just those doing the rigging since they are privy to information that is not shared with all market players. On March 30, bestselling author Michael Lewis appeared on 60 Minutes to summarize the findings in his newest book, Flash Boys, as follows: “stock market’s rigged.” Michael Lewis was talking about stock market manipulation by high frequency traders. Increasingly, the U.S. bond market is delivering almost the same message as Michael Lewis. The U.S. Treasury market, which is experiencing a flight to safety (that suggests a slowing economy, lower corporate earnings and thus a lower stock market in the future) is essentially saying that the current composite wisdom of the … Continue reading
SEC Chair Mary Jo White Earns the Wrath of the Media for Refusing to Acknowledge High Frequency Trading Perks as a Crime
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 30, 2014 SEC Chair Mary Jo White’s untenable position that “markets are not rigged” is bringing unwelcome attention to the SEC’s dismal record on ensuring that stock exchanges operating in the U.S. are fair. Since bestselling author, Michael Lewis, went on 60 Minutes on March 30 to detail, step by step, how the stock market is rigged – there has been a slow, but steady, realization that the woman President Obama sold to the American people as the white knight who would rein in abuses on Wall Street has failed miserably in that role. Under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, codified at 15 U.S. Code § 78f, the Securities and Exchange Commission is statutorily mandated to ensure that the rules of the stock exchanges are designed “to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices, to promote just and equitable principles of trade…to … Continue reading
Examinations of Wall Street’s Biggest Banks Come Under Foreign Microscopes
By Pam Martens: May 29, 2014 You know there is a lot more to the story when the top Federal regulator of Wall Street’s biggest banks turns to three foreign countries to figure out how to beef up examining these complex webs of darkness. And London (infamous now for its blinders as the biggest banks rigged Libor interest rates, foreign currency exchange and the metals market) can’t feel too good about being snubbed in the process. It all started last year when the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Thomas Curry, commissioned a peer review study by senior financial supervisors from Australia, Canada and Singapore. Why these three countries? According to the study, “the selection criteria were countries with significant and mature financial markets, well-respected supervisory regimes, and large commercial banks that have been consistently rated among the safest in the world. While virtually all … Continue reading
Try to Contain Your Laughter: Prince Charles and Lady de Rothschild Team Up to Talk About ‘Inclusive Capitalism’
By Pam Martens: May 28, 2014 Now that the worldwide Occupy Wall Street protest movement has been beaten, pepper-sprayed, mass-arrested and hog-tied into submission; now that assorted financial luminaries have exhorted corporate media to stop giving air time to people calling bankers evil; it’s now safe for the 1 percent to take over the debate – or so the thinking goes in London. Prince Charles, who lives in four mansions in England, Scotland and Wales, delivered the opening speech yesterday for a conference on “Inclusive Capitalism” hosted by Lady de Rothschild, wife of multi-billionaire Sir Evelyn Robert de Rothschild, in the heart of financial skulduggery, the City of London, Wall Street’s alter ego. Rounding out the day’s speakers were former President Bill Clinton, who repealed the depression era investor protection legislation known as the Glass-Steagall Act which deregulated Wall Street and is widely blamed for the 2008 financial collapse and … Continue reading
Newly Released Documents Show Outgrowth of ‘Homeland Security’ Is Corrupted Federal and Local Law Enforcement
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 27, 2014 Last week, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) released a trove of some 4,000 documents it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showing that the movements of the mostly peaceful participants in the Occupy Wall Street protests were subjected to an “enormous spying and monitoring apparatus” that included coordination between the Pentagon, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, local police, private security contractors and corporate interests. Increasingly, Americans’ time-honored First Amendment rights to peacefully assemble and dissent are playing out as open-season on protesters and mass arrests, followed by years of evidence destruction or tampering in court cases. As Wall Street On Parade perused the new documents from PCJF, one in particular raised red flags. Its subject line referred to the Occupy Wall Street movement as “Friggin Occupy” and it came from a veteran police officer. The PCJF is currently … Continue reading
Lawyer in Rigged Futures Market Battle Has an Insider’s Keen Sense of Trading
By Pam Martens: May 22, 2014 Three years before bestselling author Michael Lewis stunned the world on 60 Minutes on March 30 of this year with the announcement that “stock market’s rigged,” lawyer R. Tamara de Silva had made the case quite poignantly on her law firm’s blog. Even more importantly, she simultaneously called on the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice to commence an investigation. It was only after the charges in the Lewis book, “Flash Boys,” went viral around the globe that the FBI, Department of Justice and SEC acknowledged that there might be a problem with high frequency trading and the integrity of U.S. markets. Subpoenas are now flying. On January 17, 2011 at 9:23 p.m., de Silva wrote on her blog: “High frequency trading firms make profits of almost $21 billion a year by using inside information to cheat. “High frequency trading firms … Continue reading
Hubris at the Top: The Imperial and Tone Deaf CEO
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 21, 2014 There are lots of reasons to worry about America’s future. But one worry that we seldom hear discussed in any comprehensive way is the growing brand impairment resulting from the loss of Americans’ belief in their country’s sense of decency and the loss of credibility abroad from the too-big-to-discipline CEO – who, for better or worse, is acutely aligned with the corporate brand. Whether we like it or not, great corporate brands create jobs in America and tarnished brands result in job losses. There seems to be an intellectual disconnect in the thinking of the corporate Board of Directors who continue to lavish obscene pay on the discredited CEO and the reality that the corporate brand – the most valuable asset the corporation owns – is being severely diminished in the eyes of the consumer whose trust or distrust in that … Continue reading
The Inquest of JPMorgan VP Gabriel Magee: Case Closed; Move Along
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 20, 2014 If it’s at all possible, don’t die on the premises of a too-big-to-fail bank like JPMorgan. That’s because if you do your otherwise meritorious life and career is likely to be turned into a circus of slanderous tidbits in order to promote the reputation of the global banking behemoth as the benevolent guardian of all things noble and saintly. A coroner’s inquest began at 10 a.m. in London this morning to investigate how 39 year old Gabriel Magee, a technology Vice President who worked in JPMorgan’s European headquarters at 25 Bank Street in London, came to be found dead on a 9th level rooftop at approximately 8:02 a.m. on the morning of January 28 of this year. The inquest had barely begun when the wire service, Reuters, ran this headline: “JP Morgan Executive Had High Alcohol Level Before Skyscraper Plunge, London … Continue reading