Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens: February 14, 2013  At last we know how the grease is funneled to that revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. One only gets a $940,000 bonus from Wall Street’s Citigroup if you can land a “full time high level position with the United States Government or a regulatory body.” It can’t be just a part-time job, mind you; and you can’t be rank and file. Citigroup’s dangling carrot will only pay $940,000 if the company can add a “high level” government mover and shaker to their gold-plated Rolodex. This was the bombshell dropped by Senator Orrin Hatch yesterday in Jack Lew’s confirmation hearing for one of the highest offices in the land – Secretary of the U.S. Treasury who will also head the body that makes critical decisions impacting Citigroup – the Financial Stability Oversight Council. (Lew held an executive position with Citigroup at the time of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 13, 2013  President Obama delivered an uplifting State of the Union address to the Nation last evening, promising “to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class.” He said it was the country’s “unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country – the idea that if you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead.” He said it was his job “to make sure that this government works on behalf of the many, and not just the few.”  Unfortunately, the President’s speechwriter is not in charge of nominating candidates who could turn those lofty goals into realities. One must wonder exactly who is in charge of nominating candidates. When it comes to the most important posts that oversee Wall Street, the one industry in America that does more than any other to prevent hardworking Americans from getting ahead, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 12, 2013 Yesterday, the nonprofit group, Move to Amend, held a press conference with Congressman  Rick Nolan of Minnesota to announce the introduction of a Constitutional Amendment that would overturn the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Citizens United  v. Federal Election Commission, that put corporate campaign spending on an equal footing with other forms of free speech, effectively removing most limits on the amount of cash corporations can spend on elections. The proposed amendment will clarify that rights recognized under the Constitution belong to human beings only, and not to government-created artificial legal entities such as corporations and limited liability companies; and political campaign spending is not a form of speech protected under the First Amendment. Nolan said: “It’s time to take the shaping and molding of public policy out of corporate boardrooms, away from the corporate lobbyists, and put it back in city halls – back with county boards and state legislatures – and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 11, 2013  Senator Chuck Grassley set off a media uproar on Friday when he reported that President Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, had owned a Citigroup investment housed at a Cayman Islands building that President Obama has previously suggested was a tax scam due to almost 19,000 corporations being registered at that address. Lew had worked as a Deputy Secretary in the State Department for almost two years before he sold the investment in 2010 after returning to government service from Citigroup.  The response from the White House has been that Lew made this disclosure known to the Senate for his confirmation hearing in 2010 and the Senators didn’t raise any issues with it.  We first reported Lew’s investment in the Citigroup Venture Capital International (CVCI) private equity fund on January 14 of this year. In that report, we attached the financial disclosure report that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 8, 2013  President Obama might as well drape the White House with a giant banner declaring in bold red type: “Drop Dead 99 Percent.”  A pattern is emerging in the nominations coming out of the Oval Office. If you’ve played a role in collapsing a major bank, the President has a top slot for you. But only millionaires and billionaires need apply. Union busting scores extra points.  Jack Lew was paid millions as Chief Operating Officer for the very division of Citigroup that collapsed the bank in 2008 and Jack Lew is nominated by the President for U.S. Treasury Secretary. Before that, Lew played a key role in busting a grad students union at New York University.  Billionaire Penny Pritzker was involved in the collapse of the Superior Bank of Illinois, a Chicago savings and loan that went belly up in 2001 and now, according to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 7, 2013 U.S. Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner Tim Geithner, who recently stepped down as U.S. Treasury Secretary, is moving on. He won’t be getting that big pay day directly from a Wall Street firm that so many expected; but he will be getting that big payday. Geithner has been named a “distinguished fellow” at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a think tank whose Co-Chairman is Robert Rubin, a former U.S.Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton and the man who played a pivotal role on Citigroup’s Board during the financial crisis. Citigroup collapsed into the arms of the U.S. government with a bailout that exceeded $2.5 trillion, including equity infusions, assets guarantees and loans from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which Geithner headed before becoming U.S. Treasury Secretary. The SEC charged Citigroup with lying about its exposure to subprime debt by $39 billion and imposed … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 6, 2013  The Wall Street cartel that has for decades kidnapped the process of nominating anyone who has anything to do with money and high office in the United States (Federal Reserve Chair, New York Fed President, U.S. Treasury Secretary, Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or its General Counsel) has a powerful spin machine running full throttle to secure the confirmation of Mary Jo White to head the SEC.  Take the headlines and story threads that have been regurgitated throughout the business media since President Obama nominated White on January 24. The spin goes like this: she’s a former Federal prosecutor and she’s tough. Here’s how the widely circulated story by the Associated Press framed the nomination in its lead paragraph:  “President Barack Obama sent his strongest signal yet Thursday that he wants the government to get tougher with Wall Street, appointing a former … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 5, 2013  Late last night, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit in Los Angeles against the credit rating agency, Standard and Poor’s, over alleged deceptive ratings it gave to debt instruments it rated for large investment banks on Wall Street. The suit charges the deceptive ratings were motivated by a desire to gain more business from the Wall Street firms which pay for the ratings.  Ratings on debt instruments play a pivotal role in helping investors select suitable investments. Ratings of AAA through BBB- are considered investment grade with ratings below that viewed as non-investment grade or junk. And it’s not just individual investors who are impacted by ratings. Banks are legally limited in the amount of non-investment grade securities they can hold and are required to post additional capital when their investment risks rise. When rating agencies assigned AAA ratings to what … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 4, 2013  The U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer,George Osborne, plans to reform big banks in his country the way farmers keep raccoons out of their corn fields: an electrical fence. Banking reform by soap box and silly ideas has crossed the Atlantic. Osborne delivered a flurry of inspirational words today on his new plans for banking reform in the U.K. Curiously, he delivered his speech at JPMorgan’s back office operation in Bournemouth. Osborne said the site location was to remind everyone how many jobs banking brings to England and specifically mentioned a landscaping business called Stewarts that takes care of JPMorgan’s grounds that he planned to visit later. That was possibly not the best choice of examples since wealth and income inequality has been institutionalized by the lack of banking reform. On this side of the pond the suspicion rises that Chancellor Osborne’s site selection might … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 1, 2013  Wall Street’s Institutionalized Wealth Transfer System Is Preventing Retirement for Millions Gad Levanon, Director of Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board, and Ben Cheng, a Researcher in the organization’s economics department, have a new report out titled “Trapped on the Worker Treadmill.”  The report finds that of respondents aged 45 to 60, the percent that plans to delay retirement has gone up 20 percent in two years.  This and previous research by Levanon and Cheng made the following findings: In the mid-1990s, roughly 12 percent of workers were 55 and older, compared with 21 percent in 2011. Before the end of this decade more than one in four workers will be 55 or older; Business owners were more likely to delay their retirement than employees; Workers in highly paid occupations, such as managers and professionals, were more likely to delay retirement than workers in … Continue reading →