Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens: August 23, 2013 President Obama spoke to students yesterday at the State University of New York in Buffalo and at Henninger High School in Syracuse on his plans to make college more affordable for middle class families. Total student debt in the U.S. now exceeds $1 trillion and, according to the President, is crushing the ability of graduates to buy homes or start a business and thus holding back economic growth. On learning of the President’s new college affordability initiative, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who has been in a tug of war for the last six months with New York University (NYU), one of the most expensive universities in the country with a four-year tab estimated at $280,000 including dorm, released the following statement: “I agree with President Obama on reducing college costs and student debt.  One area for consideration is college spending on high executive … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 22, 2013 The Nasdaq stock market, home to some of the most sophisticated tech companies in America (Apple, Cisco, Intel and Microsoft, to name a few) had another bout of tech problems today, halting trading in all of its member shares and options from approximately 12:14 p.m. until about 3:25 p.m. – just 35 minutes before the closing bell rang at the New York Stock Exchange, which remained open throughout the Nasdaq halt. The trading fiasco came just two days after Goldman Sachs said it had a computer misfire and issued erroneous trading instructions to three exchanges, resulting in a mess of trade cancellations and potentially tens of millions of dollars in losses. Nasdaq is rapidly gaining the reputation of a tech exchange that needs some techies. On May 29 of this year,  the SEC fined Nasdaq $10 million for the trading debacle on the day Facebook … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 22, 2013  The lingering impact of the Wall Street crash of 2008 to 2010 has devastated the job market for young college grads. The government debt piled on to bail out Wall Street has killed the prospects for the next generation’s standard of living. Now, Wall Street is literally killing the next generation.  Moritz Erhardt, a 21-year old college intern working for the investment banking division of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, was found dead in his shower after working around the clock for three straight days at the U.S. bank’s offices in London, according to published reports from fellow interns who shared the premises.  Merrill Lynch, known on the street as “Mother Merrill,” wants you to know it is “deeply shocked and saddened.”  London newspapers are reporting that Erhardt had worked eight all-nighters in a two-week period in hopes of securing a permanent post at Merrill … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 21, 2013 The last 30 days have been pretty much the summer from hell for the Obama administration’s efforts to shore up confidence that its policing of Wall Street is producing results. Still under multiple investigations for rigging the interest rate benchmark known as Libor, we learned late last month that Wall Street’s largest firms have also gained effective control of the London Metal Exchange and are causing financial damage to the economy by hoarding aluminum in metal warehouses. On top of that, JPMorgan recently paid a $410 million fine for rigging electricity markets in California and the Midwest while two of JPMorgan’s traders were just criminally indicted for their role in the infamous London Whale matter where $6.2 billion of bank deposits were lost in a wild trading scheme. Certainly no slouch, Goldman Sachs is holding up its end in the busting of public confidence … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 20, 2013 The White House issued a statement yesterday on the President’s meeting with the federal agencies that regulate Wall Street. Curiously, the phrase used to describe the agencies was “independent regulators.” The President’s Deputy Press Secretary, Josh Earnest, held a press briefing with reporters yesterday, taking questions on the meeting. In that briefing, Earnest referred to the regulators as “independent” seven times. If the President now finds it necessary to attempt to brainwash the American public through endless repetition of the word “independent” to shore up sagging public doubt that there are any real cops on the beat when it comes to policing Wall Street, he has no one to blame but himself. When President Obama appointed Mary Jo White to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Jack Lew for U.S. Treasury Secretary, and has floated the idea for weeks that Larry Summers could … Continue reading →

August 19, 2013 This afternoon, the White House released the following statement on what transpired at the 2:15 p.m. meeting today between the President and Wall Street regulators. According to the President’s daily schedule printout, the meeting took place in the Roosevelt Room. We will have significantly more to say on this subject tomorrow. ~~~ “This afternoon, President Obama hosted a meeting with lead independent financial regulators.  In addition to White House staff, participants include the Comptroller of the Currency, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Acting Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), and the chairs of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the National Credit Union Administration, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).  Treasury Secretary Jack Lew also attended the meeting. “The President and the regulators … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 19, 2013  On January 16 of this year, Richard Fisher, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, delivered a speech on the continuing threat to the U.S. economy posed by the too-big-to-fail banks. Fisher said: “I submit that these institutions, as a result of their privileged status, exact an unfair tax upon the American people. Moreover, they interfere with the transmission of monetary policy and inhibit the advancement of our nation’s economic prosperity.”  As part of his talk, Fisher presented a chart showing the Frankenbank nature of the five largest banks in the U.S. – JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley. Cumulatively, these five banks are the parent to 19,654 subsidiaries or affiliates while their nondeposit liabilities total over $4.1 trillion – a figure equal to 26.3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country.  On July 23, 2013, the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 15, 2013 New York University, under withering public criticism following media disclosures that it was providing mortgage loans on vacation homes (which it frequently forgave) to elite administrators and faculty, has announced it will limit mortgage loans in the future to primary residences. In the same announcement, the University said John Sexton, NYU’s President who has received no-confidence votes from five NYU schools, will remain in his position until his current contract expires in 2016. Wall Street on Parade, the New York Times, and the New York Post have highlighted in multiple articles the lack of financial accountability at NYU. Senator Chuck Grassley took the Congressional lead in the matter when he learned during the Senate confirmation hearing of Jack Lew, President Obama’s nominee for U.S. Treasury Secretary, that NYU had given Lew more than $1 million in loans to buy a home in Riverdale, New York, and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 15, 2013  Yesterday, the popular New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, weighed in on the potential nod by President Obama to Larry Summers for Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Dowd writes with the political intuition and confidence of someone who has a Pulitzer on her shelf and three decades under her belt at the New York Times.  Dowd thinks the idea for Summers for Fed chief is being pushed by “a bunch of alpha males who prefer each others’ company and who all flatter themselves that they’re smart enough to know how smart Summers is.” Among that group, Dowd lists former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who teamed up with Summers in the Clinton administration to push for bank deregulation and “paved the way for the country’s ruin.”  Driving this untenable push to place Summers atop the most critical monetary seat in America is, according to Dowd, … Continue reading →

With criminal charges imminent, we look back on reporting of the London Whale revelations at Wall Street On Parade.  Personal Investing Lessons From JPMorgan’s London Whale Debacle  Despite a multitude of formulas for measuring risk, multiple layers of oversight management, 28 members of a risk management team with titles like Managing Director, Executive Director, and Vice President, it somehow didn’t occur to any of these folks that the number one criteria for a trading investment is that you need to be able to get out of it. Continue Reading…  JPMorgan: Poster Child for the Most Dangerous Financial System Since 1929 Last Friday, Senator Carl Levin told the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that JPMorgan “piled on risk, hid losses, disregarded risk limits, manipulated risk models, dodged oversight, and misinformed the public.” And here’s the punch line: that’s not even the worst of what JPMorgan did. Continue Reading…  The Other Thing JPMorgan Was … Continue reading →