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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
JPMorgan and Bloomberg News: Leading Wall Street’s Blundering Herd
By Pam Martens: November 18, 2013 Last week was a lesson in obscene wealth breeding abject stupidity. The brands of JPMorgan Chase and Bloomberg News took a self-inflicted beating from preposterously dumb ideas from top management. In both instances, the companies reflected a haughty contempt and insular assessment of public sensibilities. Congress has spent the better part of the year worrying about too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to prosecute mega banks on Wall Street. JPMorgan seemed to prove last week that these behemoths are even too big to think rationally. In the midst of eight high profile criminal or civil investigations by the U.S. Justice Department involving the fleecing of the little guy’s pocket, JPMorgan decided to effectively take the pulse beat of public sentiment toward its brand. It decided to do this not in a closed-door focus group but in the most public … Continue reading
Janet Yellen Takes Oath in U.S. Senate Hearing; Jack Lew Was Given a Pass
By Pam Martens: November 14, 2013 Prior to her testimony before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee today, Janet Yellen, President Obama’s nominee to Chair the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, was asked to take an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But nine months ago, when Jack Lew went before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee for his confirmation hearing for U.S. Treasury Secretary, no such hand went in the air and no oath to tell the truth was taken. Why the disparity? The Fed Chairman directs monetary policy for the country. The U.S. Treasury Secretary pays the nation’s bills, prints its currency, oversees the collection of its taxes, and since the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, chairs the Financial Stability Oversight Council (F-SOC). This is not some slouch job. Lew came to his confirmation hearing with enough conflicts of interest to … Continue reading
Janet Yellen Confirmation: Expect Great Theatre and No Hard Answers on Fed Conflicts
By Pam Martens: November 14, 2013 The Federal Reserve system turns 100 this coming December 23. Today, for the first time, a woman will undergo a Senate confirmation hearing to lead the Fed – an historic first. But gender is the last thing on anyone’s mind today when it comes to the new Fed Chairman. The Republicans are simmering over what they feel are “easy money” policies at the Fed. Wall Street will be measuring every syllable for a hint of when the Fed’s cash punchbowl of $85 billion a month in bond purchases might end. A few Democrats will delicately quiz Yellen on her views on ending too big to fail banks. What is very unlikely to emerge amid the theatrics in the Senate Banking confirmation hearing this morning, is the most basic question of all: how did a 100-year old institution created to implement independent monetary policy in … Continue reading
Elizabeth Warren: The System Is Broken
By Pam Martens: November 13, 2013 Four seminal events occurred yesterday which carry dramatic overtones for next year’s midterm elections and the Presidential race in 2016. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren delivered a speech warning her Congressional colleagues in strident tones that Wall Street is now more dangerous than it was five years ago when it crashed. Warren, again, called for the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act to prevent another financial calamity. Gallup released a poll showing the approval rating of Congress had fallen to nine percent, the lowest reading in the 39 years the firm has been asking the question. A Quinnipiac University poll reported President Obama’s popularity has fallen to the lowest point of his presidency, with a majority of Americans, 54 percent, now disapproving of his performance. And, finally, Americans for Financial Reform together with the Roosevelt Institute issued a 126-page report in conjunction with the speech by … Continue reading
President Obama Taps Another Wall Street Law Firm Partner to Head a Regulator
By Pam Martens: November 12, 2013 President Obama is about to do it again – appoint one of those revolving door Wall Street lawyers to head a critical top post at one of Wall Street’s key regulators. This time it’s the Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). According to multiple leaks in the business press today, this afternoon the President will nominate Timothy Massad to head the CFTC – a man who spent 27 years at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, a core part of Wall Street’s legal muscle. Massad is not coming directly from Cravath this time around. On June 30, 2011, Massad was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as the Department of Treasury’s Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability. If confirmed to head the CFTC, Massad will play a critical role in the regulation of derivatives, an area that has received heavy pushback from his former … Continue reading
Tulip Mania and the Madness of Crowds: Circa 2013
By Pam Martens: November 11, 2013 It’s time to visit the musty shelves of those rare book stores and ferret out a copy of Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness Of Crowds, or simply buy a reprinted version. Mackay’s book was first published in 1841and takes a hard look at greed-based manias like the tulip bubble in Holland in the 1600s and the South Sea bubble in the early 1700s. At the peak of the tulip bubble in 1637, it is reported that a single tulip bulb sold for many times the annual wage of a skilled laborer. The South Sea bubble was built around the British South Sea Company which seduced investors with the vision of great wealth from trade with South America. The company’s share price collapsed in the early 1700s, seriously impacting the British economy. Subsequent investigations revealed bribes and trading manipulations to pump up … Continue reading
Why Wasn’t the NSA Spying on Bloomberg Chat Rooms Where Unprecedented Market Rigging Was Taking Place?
By Pam Martens: November 7, 2013 In recent months we’ve learned that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on tens of millions of law-abiding citizens’ emails and telephone calls placed through companies like Google, Yahoo, Verizon, AT&T and Sprint Nextel. What the NSA does not appear to have been spying on are the Bloomberg chat rooms where real financial frauds involving potentially trillions of dollars in trades have been occurring for years. Now, the ultimate embarrassment has occurred for those sleuths at the NSA. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that investigators probing a new line of market manipulation, rigged foreign currency trading, have found that potential lawbreakers were so cavalier about their conduct that they used chat names such as “The Bandits’ Club” and “The Cartel.” On December 20, 2012, we reported that the Bloomberg chat room was the brand choice for traders plotting to rig the … Continue reading
As Wall Street’s Mayor Exits With $31 Billion in Wealth, Bill de Blasio Must Claim His Mandate for Change
By Pam Martens: November 6, 2013 Public Advocate, Bill de Blasio, running on the Democratic ticket, won a landslide victory for New York City Mayor last evening, beating his Republican challenger, Joe Lhota, 73.3 percent to 24.3 percent with 99.7 percent of the vote counted thus far. The landslide victory is a harsh rebuke to the current billionaire Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who used his enormous wealth to overturn the previous two-term limit, giving himself an extra four years in office. It is also a long in the making victory for those who believe Bloomberg’s 12 years in office ushered in a merciless gilded age, bestowing benefits on the rich and Wall Street elite while savaging the poor and middle class, and silencing dissent with brutal police force. The Republican choice of Joseph (Joe) Lhota demonstrated the tone-deaf quality of the party bosses in New York. Lhota had a 14-year Wall … Continue reading
Tweet This: You’ll Need More than 140 Characters of Knowledge to Avoid Being Suckered By Wall Street
By Pam Martens: November 5, 2013 I’d like to go on the record that I think tweeting is to journalism what Pop Tarts are to breakfast. And I’d like to go one step further: to explain why Twitter is coming to market as an Initial Public Offering (IPO) right now, requires long-form journalism. Think about that. If an enlightened citizen is the best defense against a rigged Wall Street and a hollowed out democracy, how much enlightenment can one convey with a Twitter limit of 140 characters on your speech. There are mushrooming signs that this stock market is being artificially hyped in much the same way that the dot.com mania was delivered to the public. Consider this excerpt from the Wall Street paper of record, the Wall Street Journal, from two days ago: “ ‘After all these years of the market going up, investors are getting reacquainted with equities,’ … Continue reading
Despite Eight Ongoing Criminal/Civil Investigations of JPMorgan, the Bank’s a Law Enforcement Partner With the NYPD
By Pam Martens: November 4, 2013 Nothing reveals the incestuous, one-percent-mindset that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly have with Wall Street than the next to last photo at this link. The photo shows an employee of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s number one target for financial fraud investigations, JPMorgan Chase, working inside a high security spy center in Lower Manhattan to — wait for it — help the New York City Police Department catch crooks. While most law enforcement bodies around the U.S. would instantly weed out serial wrongdoers as job hires, Bloomberg and Kelly have created an art form out of joint policing ventures with Wall Street, operating both a rent-a-cop program with Wall Street as well as pumping at least $150 million of taxpayer money into the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center where Wall Street employees sit elbow to elbow with NYPD … Continue reading