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Recent Posts
- The Fed Just Kicked the Capital Increases for the Dangerous Megabanks and their Derivatives Down the Road for Years
- 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
Category Archives: Uncategorized
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
Lessons from the Madoff Account Statements
By Pam Martens: October 31, 2013 Millions of Americans, if not most Americans, have no idea how to go about checking their investment statements for accuracy and to protect against fraud. In that respect, Bernard L. Madoff might render a service to the country – if we pay close attention. To veterans of Wall Street who handle retail accounts (those for the average individual investor), there has been the ongoing mystery as to how Madoff could have created fake account statements for thousands of clients showing the nitty-gritty details that we know to be captured on legitimate account statements. For example, every transaction that generates cash into the account must be captured: the quarterly payment of dividends on a stock or semi-annual interest on a bond; the proceeds of a sale of a security; the payment of interest on a money market fund used to “sweep” the proceeds of sales. … Continue reading
Wall Street’s Biggest Banks Had a Trading Scheme With Madoff
By Pam Martens: October 30, 2013 The trial of five former employees of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi operation is currently playing out in Manhattan as the U.S. Justice Department weighs bringing charges against JPMorgan Chase, where Madoff had his primary business banking account, for ignoring flashing red lights that a fraud was taking place. According to lawsuits filed by Irving Picard, the Trustee handling the Madoff recovery fund, JPMorgan knew that Madoff was supposed to be engaged in managing stock portfolios for hundreds of clients. JPMorgan even created structured investments that allowed investors to make leveraged bets on the returns achieved by Madoff. But the Madoff business bank account that JPMorgan Chase oversaw, showed billions of dollars in cash being wired in and out but no payments ever going to any party engaged in processing or clearing a stock trade. Under Wall Street’s Know Your Customer Rule, the activity in the … Continue reading
JPMorgan Is In a Boatload of Trouble Over Madoff: Here’s Why
By Pam Martens: October 29, 2013 There are five words that neatly sum up JPMorgan Chase’s dilemma in its efforts to avoid a deferred prosecution agreement or a more serious outcome over its handling of Bernard Madoff’s business account for more than two decades: the “Know Your Customer Rule” and recidivism. The Know Your Customer Rule is ingrained in every banker and broker on Wall Street by the legions of compliance officers who send out terrifying memorandums depicting recent examples in the news or the courts of what happens to unwitting financial reps who didn’t know their customers. The memos are backed up with equally terrifying compliance meetings and compliance handbooks that one must acknowledge receiving in writing. Some firms now require brokers to take computer-based continuing education classes which further enshrine the mandates of the Know Your Customer Rule. The object of this rule is to make the banker … Continue reading
Criminal Investigation of Madoff and JPMorgan Shines Harsh Light on NYU
By Pam Martens: October 28, 2013 Last week the business press reported that the U.S. Department of Justice may assert charges against JPMorgan Chase for its role in perpetuating the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme which defrauded investors out of $17 billion in actual funds and $64 billion in paper losses based on the falsified values shown on client statements. Unnamed sources said the Justice Department may agree to a deferred prosecution agreement in exchange for an outside monitor or, in the alternative, charge JPMorgan’s banking division with violations of the Bank Secrecy Act for failing to report its Madoff suspicions to Federal authorities. Interestingly, JPMorgan did report its suspicions to a government regulator – in the United Kingdom, not in the U.S. Such a development would also raise serious new questions about how the Board of Trustees of NYU handles conflicts of interest. The Board is already under withering criticism … Continue reading
An Ad Man Mentions Damage to America’s Brand and Corporate Media Wakes Up
By Pam Martens: October 24, 2013 When Martin Sorrell speaks about America’s brand, important people listen. Sorrell is CEO of the monster advertising and marketing company, WPP, a brand unremarkable to the average worker around the world. Sorrell took recognized advertising brands like J. Walter Thompson, Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam, and Grey, bundled them with mega public relations firms like Hill & Knowlton and Burson-Marsteller to sit atop the image makers of the new world order. WPP – the parent brand – stands for Wire and Plastics Products Plc, a name which likely 9 out of 10 people around the world could not identify. But don’t question the brand masters of the universe. Earlier this month, Sorrell was quoted in the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper on the potential for a shutdown of the U.S. government. Sorrell said, “If you were running a company like this, and stopped paying your … Continue reading
The Dangerous Underpinnings of Why Wall Street Cheers a Weak Jobs Report
By Pam Martens: October 23, 2013 Yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a very weak jobs number: just 148,000 new nonfarm jobs had been added by employers in September. To the rational mind, an appropriate reaction in the stock market would have been to sell off on the basis that the economy remains weak. Instead, the Standard and Poor’s 500 hit a new record, closing at an all time high of 1,754.67. The general thesis to explain this reaction is that today’s Wall Street is running a racket similar to Lance Armstrong. It’s on a heavy doping regimen in the form of the $85 billion a month that the Federal Reserve is funneling into the markets through the purchase from Wall Street of U.S. Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities. When the Fed buys those instruments, it forces $85 billion of cash each month into the hands of traders to deploy … Continue reading
Have Jamie Dimon’s Interests Diverged from JPMorgan’s
By Pam Martens: October 22, 2013 It’s difficult to take a major newspaper seriously when its editorial page lives in the land of Oz. Reading “The Morgan Shakedown” yesterday in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal is the latest reminder of just how detached from reality these opinion writers are. The editorial attempted revisionist history for JPMorgan by misinforming the public that “Federal law enforcers are confiscating roughly half of a company’s annual earnings for no other reason than because they can and because they want to appease their left-wing populist allies.” It’s pretty hard for one editorial to get so many facts and the big picture so horribly wrong. First, left-wing populists will be happy with nothing less than Jamie Dimon losing his dapper worsted wools and presidential cufflinks for an orange jumpsuit. Second, JPMorgan’s earnings last year were $21.3 billion so a proposed “confiscation” of $13 billion … Continue reading
President Obama Proclaims National Character Counts Week As NYU Enshrines a Very Different Message
By Pam Martens: October 21, 2013 As the U.S. sinks to a rank of 19 on Transparency International’s list of the least corrupt countries, President Obama has issued a proclamation declaring this to be the week that we come together as a Nation to reflect on our moral values. The President’s Proclamation reads in part: “…During National Character Counts Week, we reflect on the ways we support one another, the ways we come together and seek common ground, and the lessons we teach our children about what citizenship means in the United States of America…The children we raise today are surrounded by proud examples of integrity, and moral courage, but it is our task as parents, community members, and leaders to teach them not only the skills they need to succeed, but also the values that keep our country strong…” Yes, our children are surrounded by wonderful, wholesome role models … Continue reading
New York State Is Facing a Contagion of Corruption
By Pam Martens: October 18, 2013 The Wall Street Journal is running a titillating headline this morning, “Prosecutors and SAC Head Toward a Possible Record-Breaking Settlement.” CounterPunch is running my cheerless headline this morning, “It’s Now Official: New York is Drowning in Bribes and Corruption.” There’s an intellectual junction between the two stories. The Obama Justice Department, ensconced with partners from the law firm, Covington & Burling, which helped Big Tobacco hide the dangers of smoking for decades, believes in this formula: money = justice. Thus, SAC Capital Advisors LP, the hedge fund charged with securities fraud and encouraging a culture of insider trading, is rumored to be about to offer up more than $1 billion to settle its charges. That follows on the heels of the $1 billion and counting that JPMorgan Chase has recently paid to settle a mountain of charges of wrongdoing. There’s said to be many … Continue reading