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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
The Gov’s Plan from Hell: Disgusted With Wall Street Fees Eating Into Your 401(k), You Can Move It To Even Higher Fees At an Insurance Company
By Pam Martens: May 13, 2013 Did you just find out your 401(k) is leaking 8 percent in a hodgepodge of Wall Street management fees, transactions costs, sales commissions, and marketing schemes. Maybe you did the math and realized your account value, without your new additions, is still where it was in 2007. Or did you just check BrightScope and find out that your 401(k) is so abysmal that you’ll need 18 additional years of work to make up for the $215,500 in lost retirement savings. Or maybe you tuned in to the April 23 Frontline documentary on PBS to learn that it is quite possible for Wall Street to gobble up two-thirds of your retirement savings in your 401(k) while keeping you in the dark for the next 50 years. If so, there’s no reason to seethe in silence. The U.S. Department of Labor wants to hear from you … Continue reading
Pritzker for Commerce: President Obama Sends a Devastating Message to America’s Young People
By Pam Martens: May 10, 2013 President Obama adds to the rising stench of his nominations to the U.S. Treasury and Securities and Exchange Commission with the nomination of the billionaire Hilton Hotel heiress, Penny Pritzker, to be the next U.S. Commerce Secretary. With the confirmed nominations of Mary Jo White as Chair of the SEC, Jack Lew as Treasury Secretary and now the nomination of Pritzker to lead Commerce, the President is sending the chilling message to the Nation’s young people that it’s legal if you can get away with it; and if you get away with enough and get rich enough, the President of the United States admires that and you can join the power elite. Building a career through honesty and hard work is for suckers. Jack Lew, the President’s pick for Treasury, was paid millions as Chief Operating Officer for the very division of Citigroup that collapsed … Continue reading
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew’s Infamous Ugland House Ties Pop Up Again in Foreclosure Check Scandal
By Pam Martens: May 9, 2013 That shady offshore tax haven known as Ugland House in the Cayman Islands strikes again. After consuming a chunk of Jack Lew’s Senate confirmation hearing, with Senators grilling Lew on why he owned an investment housed in this offshore tax dodge while working for the Obama administration, the Cayman Islands’ address has surfaced once again in the foreclosure settlement scandal. On April 30 of this year, just 18 days after the first wave of checks from the Federal government’s settlement of the so-called Independent Foreclosure Review began arriving in the mail – and bouncing – Citigroup Venture Capital International (CVCI), Lew’s former Ugland House investment, bought a large stake in the company that was mailing the checks, SourceHOV, parent of Rust Consulting. As reported by Naked Capitalism, the ownership stake was made despite Citigroup being one of the banks in the foreclosure settlement. After correcting the humiliating problem … Continue reading
Schneiderman to Sue Big Banks: Monitor Has Known for Months That Banks Are Flagrantly Violating Mortgage Settlement
By Pam Martens: May 7, 2013 Yesterday, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said his office would bring suit against Bank of America and Wells Fargo for “flagrant” violations of last year’s National Mortgage Settlement – a deal signed onto by 49 state attorneys general which promised to reform the shady mortgage servicing practices of five of the largest mortgage lenders in the U.S. The question that arises is why the Monitor of the National Mortgage Settlement had not already brought a lawsuit in Federal Court to stop the violations. During his press conference yesterday announcing the lawsuit, Schneiderman said his office has logged 210 complaints against Wells Fargo for violations of the settlement and 129 involving Bank of America. Those figures, however, are dwarfed by the findings of Joseph A. Smith, Jr., the man put in charge of monitoring the settlement and bringing enforcement actions to the Federal … Continue reading
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew Holds a Closed Door Meeting With Jamie Dimon and Hedge Fund Titans
By Pam Martens: May 6, 2013 U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, whose loan dealings with New York University and acceptance of $940,000 in bonus money from taxpayer bailout funds paid to the insolvent Citigroup in early 2009 rendered him a scandalous choice for the high treasury post in the Obama administration, is fully living up to his past reputation. Last Thursday, May 2, the U.S. Treasury released its “Daily Treasury Guidance” which lets the public know what the U.S. Treasury Secretary will be doing each day on behalf of the taxpayer who is paying his salary and on whose behalf he is supposed to be working. The guidance for last Thursday noted that Secretary Lew would be departing Washington for New York in the afternoon “where he will attend a roundtable with business leaders hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) to discuss the state of the U.S. and global economies. This … Continue reading
May Day Protesters With Sign “It’s Not a Crisis, It’s a Scam,” Cuffed and Jailed by NYPD
By Pam Martens: May 1, 2013 If you’ve spent any time at all on this web site, you know that a seven word poster – “It’s Not a Crisis, It’s a Scam” – neatly sums up what myself, Matt Taibbi, Paul Craig Roberts, Yves Smith, Ellen Brown, and Mike Krauss have devoted millions of words attempting to convey to the American public. Barry Ritholtz has also greatly advanced the topic as have many others. Despite the veracity of the poster, a number of protesters from among the May Day marchers in New York City today were cuffed and jailed by the NYPD as they marched behind the sign. The police will not, at this time, give the tally of arrests. The same group of protesters, calling themselves the Anti-Capitalists, sang out as they marched: “One, two, three, four — I declare a class war; five, six, seven, eight — eat the rich and smash the … Continue reading
Now That You Know Wall Street Can Eat Up Two-Thirds of Your 401(k) With Fees, You Should Also Know It Formed a Coalition to Block Full Disclosure of That Fact
By Pam Martens: April 30, 2013 Last week we reported on a PBS Frontline program showing that a 2 percent mutual fund management fee can gobble up two-thirds of your nest egg for retirement over a span of 50 years of saving. Now comes an equally ugly truth. Since at least 1998 the U.S. Department of Labor, which oversees the nation’s 401(k) plans, has known that fee gouging was eroding the ability of workers to adequately build wealth for retirement in 401(k) plans. It took more than a decade for the Federal agency to pass a regulation mandating that 401(k) recipients receive fee disclosure in an annual mailing. Leading the charge against full disclosure was a coalition of trade associations dominated by Wall Street. On April 13, 1998, the U.S. Department of Labor published a “Study of 401(k) Plan Fees and Expenses,” noting the following: “Expenses of operating and maintaining … Continue reading
Occupy Wall Street to Remind America This Wednesday — Democracy Is Not a Spectator Sport
By Pam Martens: April 29, 2013 This Wednesday is May Day, the day that labor traditionally gives its state of the union address – not in the lobbyist filled chambers of Congress but in the homeless filled streets of the richest 1 percent on earth. Thanks to the Occupy Wall Street movement (that growing, ever-evolving movement that corporate media keeps telling us is dead) there will be coast to coast marches, rallies, protests and street theatre. Other countries will be participating as well. As with last year’s May Day rallies, the demands for change are broad-based, covering immigration, a living wage, the environment, Wall Street’s continuing unbridled greed, the corporate theft of elections, and the growing wealth and income gap in America and around the world. Below is a tiny sampling of activities planned in New York City and elsewhere: Occupy Wall Street in New York City: May Day Student Convergence: Students … Continue reading
The Price of Gold and the Consumer’s Fiscal Cliff
By Pam Martens: April 26, 2013 There is one thing that sets apart all traders on Wall Street: those who sat behind computer terminals on Wall Street on October 19, 1987 and those who didn’t. On that day, a stock market bubble that had been building for years popped in one trading day, shaving 508 points off the Dow for a decline of 22 percent. On Wall Street they call this a “capitulation,” when market perception hits a wall of reality on high volume and big price declines. Big volume and big price declines occurred in the price of gold this month on April 12 and April 15, marking the biggest two day decline in gold in 30 years, but failing to erase enough of the price run up since 2007 to be considered the capitulation stage. During the two day span, gold lost $203 an ounce. Gold has made up some lost … Continue reading
PBS Drops Another Bombshell: Wall Street Is Gobbling Up Two-Thirds of Your 401(k)
By Pam Martens: April 25, 2013 If you work for 50 years and receive the typical long-term return of 7 percent on your 401(k) plan and your fees are 2 percent, almost two-thirds of your account will go to Wall Street. This was the bombshell dropped by Frontline’s Martin Smith in this Tuesday evening’s PBS program, The Retirement Gamble. This is not so much a gamble as a certainty: under a 2 percent 401(k) fee structure, almost two-thirds of your working life will go toward paying obscene compensation to Wall Street; a little over one-third will benefit your family – and that’s before paying taxes on withdrawals to Uncle Sam. To put it another way – you work for Wall Street. You are their slave, their lackey and as long as their toadies dominate in Congress, nothing is going to change on the legislative front to stop the looting. Wall Street seized … Continue reading