Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens: May 15, 2014 Since Michael Lewis first uttered the immortal words on 60 Minutes on March 30 that “stock market’s rigged” through the willful collusion of exchanges, large broker dealers and high frequency traders, it has become clear that the public relations game plan of the regulators and self-regulators is to pray for a technology-challenged Congress and a gullible public. J. Bradley Bennett, Executive Vice President of Enforcement at FINRA, the industry’s self regulator, suggested that high frequency trading was no different than buying a first class ticket on an airplane. (Wall Street On Parade suggested that this is only true if one has also hijacked the plane and robbed the passengers in coach.) Next up was SEC Chair Mary Jo White who flatly told the House Financial Services Committee on April 29 that “the markets are not rigged” despite three books and dozens of research papers documenting … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 14, 2014 Someone is perjuring themselves to Federal officials and that individual(s) should enjoy a nice long sabbatical at the courtesy of the taxpayer, forgoing the staid Armani for the more robust orange jump suit. Following SEC Chair Mary Jo White’s less than credible testimony to the House Financial Services Committee on April 29 that “the markets are not rigged,” Terrence Duffy, Executive Chairman and President of the CME Group which owns the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the largest futures exchange in the world, delivered the same message to the Senate Agriculture Committee yesterday. Duffy testified that “Our market data is sent to everyone at once. While customers have several options in terms of how they can receive data from us, we do not restrict access.  Having multiple connectivity options makes our markets accessible to a broader array of participants.” That statement stands in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 13, 2014 Variety reports that Sony Pictures is close to snagging the movie rights to the new book by Michael Lewis, “Flash Boys,” which builds the case that high frequency trading firms and Wall Street mega banks are conspiring with U.S. stock exchanges to rig the market against the average investor and the pension funds holding their meager retirement benefits. If Sony is smart, it will delay release of the film until it can replicate some real-life courtroom drama from the epic battle that is likely to ensue from a class-action lawsuit in the matter that was filed last month on April 18 in Federal Court in the Southern District of New York. The plaintiff in the lawsuit has elicited snickers from the moneyed crowd on Wall Street. It was filed on behalf of the city of Providence, Rhode Island, an area founded in 1636 that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 12, 2014 Tim Geithner, former head of the New York Fed during the lead up to the Wall Street melt down, then Secretary of the Treasury in President Obama’s first term, is undergoing his own version of a big bank stress test: does he have the capital to survive the storm he has stirred up with his new, revisionist history book, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises. Geithner’s book has barely made it to the bookstore shelves (it’s slated for official release today) and already he’s been called a liar by R. Glenn Hubbard, Dean of the Columbia Business School; Geithner is effectively calling author Ron Suskind a liar in the book; and the book’s attack on Neil Barofsky, former Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has warranted a strong response from Barofsky where he says he doesn’t believe former Treasury Secretary … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 9, 2014 This past Wednesday, Thomas Hoenig, the Vice Chairman of the FDIC and former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, gave a presentation to the Boston Economic Club warning that Dodd-Frank has not put an end to taxpayer bailouts. Hoenig explained why in plain-spoken language the average person can absorb. Hoenig has consistently shown the courage of his convictions in calling for breaking up the biggest Wall Street banks through the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act (strongly advocated by Wall Street On Parade as well) and warning that the complexity, leverage and interconnectedness of Wall Street banks that brought on the 2008 financial collapse has not ended. In his Wednesday talk, Hoenig makes the following key points: Mega banks are now “larger and more complex than they were pre-crisis”; “The eight largest banking firms have assets that are the equivalent to 65 … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 8, 2014 On October 10, 2013, bank examiner Carmen Segarra and her attorney, Linda Stengle of Boyertown, Pennsylvania, took on one of the mightiest and interconnected institutions on Wall Street: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They relied on the Federal court system, funded by the taxpayer, and a fair and impartial judge to level the playing field. Things got off to a promising start. Segarra was a bank examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a key regulator of Wall Street banks. She charged in her lawsuit that when she turned in a negative assessment of Goldman Sachs, she was bullied and intimidated by colleagues at the New York Fed to change her findings. When she refused, she was terminated from her job in retaliation and escorted from the Fed premises, according to her lawsuit. The case was assigned to Judge Ronnie … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 7, 2014 There is one key thing you need to know from the get-go about bank examiner Carmen Segarra’s Federal whistleblower lawsuit over being fired for her finding that Goldman Sach’s had no firm wide conflict of interests policy and landing in a Federal courtroom with even worse conflicts: this kind of McJustice has been tolerated in the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York for at least the past 20 years. Segarra was a bank examiner with a law degree at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, one of Wall Street’s key regulators, who charged in a Federal lawsuit filed in October 2013 that she was told to change her negative examination of Goldman Sachs by colleagues, who also obstructed and interfered with her investigation. When she refused to alter her findings, she was terminated in retaliation and escorted from the Fed … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 6, 2014 It appears that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder would like to change the subject from “stock market’s rigged” by our own U.S. stock exchanges and U.S. banks as asserted by bestselling author Michael Lewis on 60 Minutes on March 30 to a different subject involving “tax evasion” by Swiss and other foreign banks. In a clear sign that the Department of Justice and Holder plan to launch a public relations offensive with a trail of crumbs leading away from U.S. banks, yesterday the DOJ released a video of Holder asserting that no bank is too big to jail. That comes on the heels in the past few days of multiple media outlets reporting that Holder may be close to a guilty plea and more than a $1 billion fine against the large Swiss bank, Credit Suisse, over facilitating tax evasion by Americans. That Holder … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 1, 2014 SEC Chair Mary Jo White may have prejudiced ongoing criminal investigations of high frequency trading by the Justice Department and FBI by delivering her verdict on Tuesday that “The markets are not rigged.” Why the former chair of the litigation department at Debevoise & Plimpton would pre-judge an investigation by her Federal colleagues that is just getting underway should be a matter of great public concern. (The New York State Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, has also opened an investigation.) The predicament that White’s statement has placed investigators in is that if they find criminal wrongdoing and prosecute it, the head of the SEC will be stripped of credibility and potentially forced to step down as a discredited Wall Street cop with her head buried in the sand. If they don’t bring any serious cases, there will be the lingering doubt as to whether the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 30, 2014 The scene in the House Financial Services Committee hearing yesterday was surreal. After Mary Jo White bluntly told the panel that “The markets are not rigged,” (countering heavily publicized charges made by bestselling author Michael Lewis in his new book, “Flash Boys,” as well as a host of key market participants) members of Congress continued to ask about specific forms of market rigging that they know to be happening. While White refused to acknowledge that this obvious wrongdoing was occurring on her watch, she insisted repeatedly that these various non-problems were, nonetheless, being studied. Congressman David Scott from Georgia told White he sensed a lack of urgency on her part. The remarks from Congressman Michael Capuano of Massachusetts were particularly heated and generally reflected the frustration with White’s responses from a large part of the Committee. Capuano said: “Six years ago … Continue reading →