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Recent Posts
- Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” Is a Grotesque Giveaway to Fossil Fuel Billionaires While Adding $3.3 Trillion to Nation’s Debt
- Senator Chris Murphy Charges that Trump “Has Opened a Channel for Bribery”
- Congressman Casten: Trump’s Assault on the Rule of Law Is Causing Capital Flight Out of U.S. by Foreign Investors
- Trump’s Approval Rating Drops to 80-Year Low; IMF Says U.S. Tariffs Now Exceed the Highs During the Great Depression
- Nasdaq Has Lost More than 3,000 Points Since Trump’s First Full Day in Office in 2025; the Pain Has Barely Begun
- The Bond Crisis Last Week Was a Global No-Confidence Vote in U. S. President Donald Trump
- Trump’s Tariff Plan Guts $5 Trillion in Stock Value in Two Days; Senator Warren Calls for Emergency Action Before Markets Open on Monday
- Trump’s Attacks on Big Law, Universities, and the Media Have a Common Goal: Silence Dissent Against Authoritarian Rule
- Trump Administration Gives All Clear to Laundering Money through Shell Companies and Bribing Foreign Officials
- Four Megabanks on Wall Street Hold $3.2 Trillion in Uninsured Deposits – Which May Explain Senator Schumer’s Pivot to the GOP to Stop a Government Shutdown
- Here’s What Came Crashing Down Yesterday for Trump’s “Genius” Guy, Elon Musk: Tesla Stock, Access to Twitter (X), His Years of Secret Calls with Putin
- After Banning the Associated Press, Trump Is Now Targeting Specific Journalists That He Wants to See Fired
- Closely Watched Atlanta Fed Model Predicts Negative U.S. Growth in First Quarter
- Trump’s Gangster Diplomacy Makes Front Page Headlines Around the Globe
- Who Benefits Alongside Elon Musk If He Succeeds in Killing the CFPB: the Megabanks on Wall Street that Underwrite His Tesla Stock Offerings
- In Trump 1.0, the State Department Used Taxpayer Money to Publish a Book Elevating Elon Musk to a Superhero; It Was Funded by USAID, the Agency Musk Wants to Quickly Shut Down
- News Host Joy Reid Raises Threat of Trump Selling U.S. to Putin; Ten Days Later Her Show Is Cancelled
- Elon Musk’s DOGE Appears to Be Violating a Court Order; It Has Taken Down Hundreds of YouTube Videos that Educate Americans on How to Avoid Being Swindled
- Barron’s Releases Audio of Jamie Dimon Cursing Out His Workers at a Town Hall, as Dimon Plans to Dump Another One Million JPM Shares
- There’s One Federal Investigative Agency that Neither Trump nor Elon Musk Can Touch: It Just Opened an Investigation into DOGE
- Elon Musk’s Companies Were Under Investigation by Five Inspectors General When the Trump Administration Fired Them and Made Musk the Investigator
- Donald Trump Gives the Greenlight to Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to Return to Bribing Foreign Officials
- After Tech Geeks Built a Back Door to Loot Billions from FTX, Republicans Refuse to Investigate What Elon Musk’s Tech-Squad Did Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System
- Former Prosecutor, Now U.S. Senator, Informs Tesla That CEO Musk May Be Violating Federal Law and to “Preserve All Records”
- Trump’s Hedge Fund Guy Is Now Overseeing the U.S. Treasury, IRS, OCC, U.S. Mint, FinCEN, F-SOC, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- As Elon Musk Begins Shutting Down Payments to Federal Contractors, a Strange Money Trail Emerges to His Operatives Inside the U.S. Treasury’s Payment System
- JPMorgan Chase Charged by Yet Another Internal Whistleblower with Cooking the Books
- We Asked Google’s AI Search Model, Gemini, Questions About the Fed and Wall Street Megabanks: It Got the Answers Dead Wrong
- With Trump and Melania’s Crypto Coins Likely to Raise Legal Challenges, Why Didn’t Trump Fire the SEC’s Inspector General in His Purge of IGs?
- Fossil Fuel Industry Could End Up Paying Tens of Billions for LA Wildfires and Deceiving the Public on Climate Change for Decades
- It’s Being Called the Biggest Grift by a President in U.S. History: Trump and First Lady Launch their Own Crypto Coins
- Trump Plans to Install a Fracking CEO to Head the Energy Department and Declare a National Emergency on Energy to Gain Vast Powers
- Fossil Fuel Money Played a Role in the Los Angeles Fires and the Push to Install Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense
- When It Comes to Wealth Retention in Retirement, Concrete May Be the New Gold
- Wall Street Watchdog Warns “Clock Is Ticking on a Coming Catastrophic Financial Crash”
- Wall Street Is Sending the Same Message to Americans on Fossil Fuel Financing that It Sent on Cigarettes: Drop Dead
- In a Six-Week Span, this Dark Pool with a Curious Past Traded 3.7 Billion Shares
- Wall Street’s Lobby Firm Hired Eugene Scalia of Gibson Dunn to Sue the Fed for Jamie Dimon
- Postmaster General Louis DeJoy Made $561,051 in Compensation in 2024, as Mail Costs Spiked and Delivery Deteriorated
- Fed Chair Jay Powell Sends a Bold Message to Trump and Tanks the Dow by 1123 Points
- The Head of Fixed Income at T. Rowe Price Makes the Scary Case for the 10-Year Treasury to Spike to 6 Percent
- $663 Billion in Cash Assets Have Gone Poof at the Largest U.S. Banks
- Donald Trump to Ring Bell at New York Stock Exchange Today as Hit List Posters Appear in Manhattan Targeting Wall Street CEOs
- Trump Has a Slush Fund to Prop Up the Dollar – Will He Use It to Prop Up Bitcoin Instead?
- A CEO Assassination; a Billionaire Heiress/NYPD Commissioner; a Secret Wall Street Spy Center – Here’s How They’re Connected
- Despite More than 1600 Tech Scientists Signing a Letter Calling Crypto a Sham, Trump Names a Crypto Cheerleader for SEC Chair
- The Fed Rings a Warning Bell: Hedge Funds and Life Insurers Are Reporting Historic Leverage
- Trump’s Nominee for FBI Director, Kash Patel, Has Businesses Financially Intertwined with Trump
- Donald Trump Is at Risk of Getting Named in a Fossil Fuels Conspiracy Lawsuit
- Trump Is Having Difficulty Getting a Lawyer to Accept the Nomination for SEC Chair: Here’s Why
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Paul Atkins Attacks Eliot Spitzer in Wall Street Journal on Eve of Primary
By Pam Martens: September 9, 2013 Wall Street has marshaled every ounce of political and public relations clout it can muster to defeat Eliot Spitzer from advancing into the position of New York City Comptroller. The New York City primary is tomorrow and, like clockwork, today’s Wall Street Journal’s opinion page features a vicious attack on Spitzer by Paul Atkins, a former SEC Commissioner turned public relations pro/opinion writer/media pundit and consultant to Wall Street. Atkins heads a firm, Patomak Global Partners, that provides consulting and litigation support to the financial services industry. Its web site boasts that “Our professional team includes two former Commissioners and a former General Counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a former member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and others with diverse backgrounds and senior management experience in both public and private sector leadership positions.” In other words, they … Continue reading
The Missing Pieces in the Criminal Probe of JPMorgan’s Energy Trading
By Pam Martens: September 5, 2013 Yesterday, mainstream media was busy framing the news that JPMorgan is now under an eighth investigation by the U.S. Justice Department, this time a criminal probe into whether some of its employees obstructed the investigation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) into the company’s manipulative trading of electricity in California and the Midwest. This is a highly unusual development for a number of reasons. FERC settled its claims against JPMorgan Ventures Energy Corporation for $410 million on July 30 of this year. That amount included a civil penalty of $285 million to the U.S. Treasury and a disgorgement of $125 million to be returned to ratepayers. Typically, when a company pays a settlement of that size, its lawyers have made sure there are no loose ends – especially not a criminal probe waiting in the wings. Once the money is paid out, the bank … Continue reading
The Defense Mounted by S&P Is As Jaded As Its Ratings of Subprime Debt
By Pam Martens: September 4, 2013 Someone needs to instant message Standard and Poor’s Financial Services LLC a legal tip: when you’re in a hole, stop digging. That would be potentially more sage advice than it’s currently getting from the three law firms representing it in its court battle with the U.S. Justice Department over the alleged bogus ratings it assigned to subprime Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) and Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) in the run up to the Wall Street financial collapse in 2008. In a court filing yesterday, S&P attempted to cast aspersions on the motives of the government in bringing the suit, telling the court: “Plaintiff commenced this action in retaliation for Defendants’ exercise of their free speech rights with respect to the creditworthiness of the United States of America. Such free speech is protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the retaliation, causing … Continue reading
What We Don’t Know About the Biggest Wall Street Banks Could Kill the Economy – Again
By Pam Martens: September 3, 2013 After the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, after endless hearings in Congress going nonstop since 2008, after the voluminous report from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, one would think we should know a great deal about the largest Wall Street banks that created the havoc and that stringent laws would have quickly been put in place to prevent another repeat. Tragically, a Nation that can transmit trading data between New York and Chicago in 13.1 milliseconds, still has no idea what the biggest banks on Wall Street own or what threats those black holes of information pose to the national economy. This lack of transparency, combined with the failure of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation to, as yet, impose restraints on speculative trading (Volcker rule) and position limits on trades, renders the Wall Street of today even more dangerous than the Wall … Continue reading
Public Banking Institute Calls Largest Wall Street Banks “Unsafe,” and Backs It Up
By Pam Martens: August 29, 2013 The Public Banking Institute has released a new video making serious claims, backed by graphs and government documents, that the largest Wall Street banks are an unsafe choice for the savings of moms, pops and public payrolls. Citing a December 10, 2012 jointly approved plan between the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Bank of England, which resides on the FDIC’s federal web site, the organization says depositors in the U.S. could see portions of their deposits confiscated, similar to what happened in Cyprus, should there be another Wall Street collapse as occurred in 2008. The first question, of course, is why the U.S. government is negotiating its banking policy with the United Kingdom instead of the U.S. Congress. The obvious answer is that global banks, now allowed to troll the planet in search of the next high-flying derivatives trade, must harmonize … Continue reading
The “Grave Threat” Hearing You’ve Never Heard About
By Pam Martens: August 28, 2013 One day after terrorists set off a bomb at the Boston Marathon leaving a tragic trail of senseless human suffering, the U.S. House of Representatives held a scheduled hearing to debate another form of terrorism – the kind of economic terrorism that gripped the United States from 2008 to 2010 and lingers today in the form of 46 million Americans living in poverty, mass underemployment, stagnating wages, a shaky housing market, tepid GDP growth and ballooning national debt. The House was debating the “grave threat” to the Nation posed by the too-big-to-fail banks. You likely didn’t hear about the hearing because the media was focused on the Boston Marathon and its more easily understood, visually shocking form of terrorism. On April 16, 2013, members of the House Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee of the Financial Services Committee wanted to learn more about two words, “grave … Continue reading
George Melloan: Pity the Big Banks – the Problem Is Populists
By Pam Martens: August 27, 2013 George Melloan has done a deep disservice to the ever-shrinking pool of ethical investigative writers covering Wall Street, civic-minded prosecutors, and to the underpaid but dedicated career regulators overseeing the financial markets. (No, the revolving door from Wall Street to Washington hasn’t quite killed off all that is good.) Yesterday, Melloan penned an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that was so Koch-esque, so preposterously skewed, and so utterly lacking in factual basis that it must be called out. Melloan makes the claim that the big banks aren’t doing anything more egregious than they have done in the past and the growing charges of fraud are the product of overly zealous regulators, “encouraged by the Obama administration” to blame the nation’s economic ills “on the rich, Wall Street, moneybags bankers, deal makers like Mitt Romney or almost anyone else who still wears a suit … Continue reading
A Few Glitches in the President’s Month Long Charm Offensive
By Pam Martens: August 26, 2013 The sine qua non of image handlers dealing with negative revelations in the media is to infuse the happy faces of children and puppies into the equation. Did you hear that the Obamas have a new puppy? Her name is Sunny and like her big brother, Bo, she’s a Portuguese Water Dog. There’s photos and even a video at WhiteHouse.gov showing the adorable pair frolicking on the White House lawn. As former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, has continued to leak documents to newspapers showing that President Obama has overseen a surveillance dragnet on innocent Americans and U.S. allies, raising serious questions about this former constitutional law professor’s respect for democratic ideals, the President took to the road in a bus during the month of August to promote a new agenda to help the middle class. This past weekend the emphasis was on making college … Continue reading
$1 Trillion Student Debt Gets the President’s Attention; Too Bad It Doesn’t Get NYU’s
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
More Tech Issues for Tech-Laden Nasdaq
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