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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
Fed Chair Bernanke Gives a History Lesson
By Pam Martens: July 11, 2013 The Federal Reserve used to manage its future monetary policy in bare whispers; under Chairman Ben Bernanke of late, it’s been lightning bolts of declarative statements that send the stock and bond markets careening in one direction and then another. In June, Bernanke said the Fed might begin later this year to taper downward its monthly purchases of $85 billion of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities, signaling the beginning of the end of cheap money. While Bernanke did at the time mention economic caveats before this tapering would begin, the markets heard only the lightning bolt of an end to easing and sold off in short order. Bernanke was out on the stump again yesterday, delivering a 4,000-word speech to the National Bureau of Economic Research at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This time, Bernanke delivered a history lesson on the Fed and curtailed … Continue reading
Spying Documents Demanded Under Public Interest FOIA
By Pam Martens: July 10, 2013 The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the National Security Agency (NSA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to learn further details about the mass surveillance programs exposed by Edward Snowden. The nonprofit organization is demanding to know the scope of the programs, their operating guidelines and procedures, the retention of data collected through such programs, and internal evaluations attempting to justify these programs’ legality and constitutionality. The FOIA request reads in part: “The people of the United States have an urgent need for disclosure of the requested information regarding what appears to be the largest covert surveillance program directed against them in U.S. history. The U.S. government and its agencies that are carrying out these unprecedented surveillance programs are not entitled to hide these … Continue reading
New York Stock Exchange to Take Over Libor: And That’s Supposed to Instill Confidence?
By Pam Martens: July 9, 2013 According to a report out of London this morning, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE/Euronext) has been selected from a number of bidders to take over administration of Libor, the now discredited, rigged interest rate benchmark that had been previously overseen by the British Bankers Association, a lobbying organization for banks. The idea that turning over the administration of Libor to the NYSE, whose major shareholders include some of the Wall Street firms currently under investigation for rigging Libor, would restore confidence in using Libor as an interest rate benchmark is…well…typical of Wall Street’s irrational thinking. According to a March 31, 2013 report from Morningstar, the following Wall Street firms are among the major shareholders of NYSE/Euronext: Citigroup, 6.5 million shares; Morgan Stanley, 5.9 million shares; JPMorgan Asset Management (UK) Ltd., 4.9 million shares; Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., 4.2 million shares; Deutsche Bank … Continue reading
Schumer Is As Wrong on Wall Street Reform in 2013 As He Was in 2006
By Pam Martens: July 8, 2013 Senator Charles (Chuck) Schumer of New York is writing letters and pounding the table to try to stop sweeping new regulation of derivatives from being put into effect by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) four days from now on July 12. Schumer is leading an assault against Gary Gensler, Chair of the CFTC, who wants to impose cross-border rules which would prevent firms like JPMorgan Chase from simply moving its derivative trades to London or another foreign trading venue to escape U.S. rules – the situation that allowed JPMorgan to lose $6.2 billion of deposits in its infamous London Whale derivatives episode. Schumer’s actions and those of other Senate Democrats who joined with him in a letter to Jack Lew, Treasury Secretary, brought a sharp rebuke last week from the editorial board of the New York Times: “In the letter to Mr. Lew, the senators … Continue reading
The Fed’s New Capital Rules for Big Banks: The Devil Is In the Details
By Pam Martens: July 3, 2013 The Federal Reserve Board yesterday announced that it had “approved a final rule to help ensure banks maintain strong capital positions,” but it was as clear as mud when or if the new rule would take effect and how it would lessen the risk of the too-big-to-fail banks and prevent another taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. After years of stonewalling on higher capital rules for banks, there was the nagging suspicion that the Federal Reserve decided to talk the talk on tougher standards after the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing last Wednesday that delivered a devastating assessment of how dangerous the largest Wall Street banks remain to the U.S. economy. Thomas Hoenig, former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and now Vice Chair of the FDIC, reflected the general mood at the hearing when he stated that the biggest … Continue reading
Snowden’s Cry for Help Is a Cry for America
By Pam Martens: July 2, 2013 In July 2002, less than a year after Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, Nancy Chang, then Senior Litigation Attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, published a prophetic and comprehensive book about the legislation titled: Silencing Political Dissent: How Post-September 11 Anti-terrorism Measures Threaten our Civil Liberties. Chang was one of the early visionaries to see that the USA Patriot Act was not so much about protecting us from terrorists but a weapon to control, contain and criminalize political dissent. I had the privilege of assisting in a New York City book launch event for Chang in September 2002, where Chang warned that the endless war on terrorism theme was critically different from past assaults on Constitutional freedoms during war time. The earlier crises came to an end when the country returned to peacetime. With an endless war mantra, there would be no … Continue reading
Latest NSA News Leaves New York Times Speechless
By Pam Martens: July 1, 2013 Yesterday, beginning in the morning, every major online news outlet had a front page article on the breaking story that the NSA had electronically bugged the diplomatic offices of the European Union in Washington, D.C., at the United Nations and in Brussels – every outlet except the paper of record, the New York Times. The news first broke on Saturday at the online site of the German magazine, Der Spiegel, and went viral thereafter. The details of the story came from new documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor now sought by the U.S. for extradition and prosecution. Snowden is believed to be in an airport in Moscow while he seeks permanent asylum from Ecuador or another country. On Sunday, as hour after hour went by, as more outrage and invective flowed out of Europe, the story was nonexistent on the Times … Continue reading
MF Global and Wall Street: Whose Job Is It To Take the Keys Away
By Pam Martens: June 28, 2013 The day after the U.S. House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee held a hearing on why their seminal financial reform legislation, Dodd-Frank, is a bureaucratic boondoggle that will not prevent another taxpayer bailout of Wall Street in the event of a systemic collapse, we learn just how vulnerable the system is to powerful men allowed to play with other people’s money. Yesterday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) brought charges in Federal Court against MF Global, its former CEO, Jon Corzine, and its former Assistant Treasurer, Edith O’Brien. Corzine is a former U.S. Senator and Governor of New Jersey. The two are charged with the unlawful allocation of customer money at the commodities trading firm. The company has agreed to settle the charges against the firm for $100 million. The claims remain outstanding against the individuals. MFGlobal collapsed in October 2011. Corzine had directed the … Continue reading
Is Sheila Bair Dangerously Naïve When It Comes to Dodd-Frank
By Pam Martens: June 27, 2013 Former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chair, Sheila Bair, was watching the clock on the wall yesterday during her questioning by the House Financial Services Committee on whether the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation can stop another taxpayer bailout of too-big-to-fail banks. In the midst of the hearing, it was announced that Bair would have to depart at 12 noon. Based on the answers coming from Bair versus the three other witnesses, there was the impression that Bair wanted to beat a hasty retreat to lunch. The problem comes down to this: Bair and many on the Democrats’ side of the aisle, refuse to acknowledge that their much ballyhooed financial reform legislation passed in July 2010, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, is an utter failure in reining in the abuses of the Wall Street behemoths as well as useless in preventing another … Continue reading
House Financial Services Convenes Today on Too Big to Fail
By Pam Martens: June 26, 2013 The U.S. House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee will convene at 10 a.m. this morning to hear new warnings about the growing dangers posed by the too big to fail Wall Street banks. On deck to testify are: Thomas Hoenig, Vice Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC); Richard W. Fisher, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; Jeffrey Lacker, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond; and Sheila Bair, former Chair of the FDIC, now with the Pew Charitable Trust. (Bair wrote the quintessential insider’s account of the 2008 crash, Bull by the Horns.) Tragically, these individuals spent hours writing their testimony with the full knowledge that it will far on the deaf ears of a Congress that is incapable of seeing a train wreck coming down the tracks until the mangled cars lie scattered over the landscape. Here’s a … Continue reading