Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens: November 16, 2012 The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) wants to teach the public financial literacy. It says “Our Financial Literacy Center serves as a credible resource for basic financial education to help people better understand and manage their personal finances.” Is the NYSE a credible source? Right off the bat, I’m not feeling confident when I read: “Only the highest quality companies can choose to list their securities on our exchanges. And once they do, NYSE Euronext plays a unique role in providing deep and liquid markets for the trading of those securities, benefiting all investors, large and small.”  Throughout the years, the NYSE has had to delist numerous companies that have turned out to be frauds or grossly mismanaged. They were not “the highest quality” companies by a long shot. Millions of Americans have lost their life savings believing that if a company trades on the NYSE, it was … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 15, 2012 Throughout the United States there are critical functions that society deems too essential to leave to the vagaries of the profit driven marketplace.  Fire and police departments, public schools, parks, libraries, roads, tunnels and bridges – all paid for with taxpayer dollars and overseen by government.  So why shouldn’t the U.S. have a parallel system of public banks with a public mandate and accountable to the people  – especially at a time of unprecedented corruption in commercial banking under the jackboot of Wall Street. Until the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, it was illegal for Wall Street firms to  own commercial banks.  Commercial banks made loans to consumers and businesses and Wall Street investment banks were assigned the job of allocating capital to worthy business enterprises by underwriting their stock and bond offerings. Today, just five Wall Street firms, JPMorgan Chase & Co., … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 14, 2012 Next month, it will be four years since the decades-long Madoff Ponzi scheme was discovered – not by the SEC which had for years received reams of documents from whistleblower Harry Markopolos outlining what he believed to be a Madoff Ponzi scheme – but by a confession from Madoff himself.  For those who lost every dollar of savings they had accumulated over a lifetime to Madoff’s scheme, one can only imagine the contempt with which they regard the SEC.   Yesterday, New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced a $210 million  settlement with the Ivy Asset Management, LLC, a Bank of New York Mellon subsidiary that advised clients to invest with Bernard Madoff, noting that “when added to future amounts Madoff investors anticipate receiving from the Madoff bankruptcy proceeding, today’s settlement is expected to return all or nearly all the original investment … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 13, 2012  Yesterday the International Energy Agency (IEA) delivered a stunning research study showing that a shale-oil bonanza in the United States would assist it in overtaking Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer by 2020.  In two decades, the U.S. would become largely self-sufficient as an energy producer. According to the report: “Energy developments in the United States are profound and their effect will be felt well beyond North America – and the energy sector. The recent rebound in oil and gas  production, driven by upstream technologies that are unlocking light tight oil and shale gas resources, is spurring economic activity – with less expensive gas and electricity prices giving industry a competitive edge – and steadily changing the role of North America in global energy trade. By around 2020, the United States is projected to become the largest global oil producer (overtaking Saudi Arabia until … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 12, 2012  Over the past five years, more than $150 million of taxpayer money has been dumped into a spy center in Lower Manhattan where employees of Wall Street firms and real estate behemoths sit side by side with municipal police to spy on the comings and goings of pedestrians on the streets around Wall Street.  But none of the thousands of spy cameras positioned around the city that feed into this center foresaw the storm surge that put as much as 40 feet of corrosive salt water in the basements of commercial buildings in Lower Manhattan, crippling thousands of businesses along with the lives of area residents.  With major businesses and employees dislocated indefinitely as landlords of commercial buildings deal with boilers and electrical systems destroyed by massive flooding, soggy debris that must be carted out, and in some cases extensive cleanup from toxins from … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 9, 2012 Millions of Americans have no idea that there is a world of difference between money market accounts and money market funds. Two extremely critical words define the difference: FDIC insurance.  Money market accounts are offered by FDIC insured banks and extend the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) umbrella of protection to the accounts.  Money market funds are a mutual fund where the values of the pooled investments can fluctuate and the investor is not insured against loss.  Now that banks and brokerage firms are housed under one parent since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, both types of accounts may be offered to the customer by the firm and the distinction is not always spelled out.  The confusion seems to be intentionally aided by the fact that money market funds are permitted to perpetually price at a stable $1 per share, making it appear that the principal … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 8, 2012 Wall Street was at war with itself over which presidential candidate received its financial backing. The Wall Street firms were funneling lopsided financial support to Mitt Romney, but the largest Wall Street law firms were doing just the opposite: they were pumping money into the Obama campaign, sometimes 10 times more than they bestowed on Romney. As the accompanying graphic illustrates, the top five contributors to Romney were all Wall Street firms. (See our reporting here for the lopsided support given to President Obama by the Wall Street law firms.) Now that the election returns are in and President Obama has emerged the winner, the question remains: why would the largest Wall Street law firms risk alienating their largest Wall Street clients by financing the candidate that Wall Street wanted to unseat, along with his Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. The answer seems clear enough: … Continue reading →

Following is the full transcript of President Obama’s victory speech, delivered at the McCormick Convention Center in Chicago. President Obama: Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward. It moves forward because of you. It moves forward because you reaffirmed the spirit that has triumphed over war and depression, the spirit that has lifted this country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope; the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family, and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people. Tonight, in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back, and we … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 7, 2012 America woke up this morning to the news that President Obama had been reelected to a second term, despite the 29 electoral votes in Florida still being too close to call for either candidate. As for Congress, it will remain split, with Republicans controlling the House and Democrats in charge in the Senate. Florida was still counting votes due to a heavy turnout in Miami-Dade County which saw people still in line to vote after midnight.  About 38 percent of Florida voters, or roughly 4.5 million people, had cast their ballots in early voting before the polls opened on Tuesday.  Fears that the Republican operation, Strategic Allied Consulting, run by Arizona Republican Nathan Sproul, would play a corrupting role in the election in Florida did not appear to pan out.  That could be, however, because of the early detection of fraudulent voter registration forms in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 6, 2012  This will be the first Presidential election since the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, gave corporations the ability to spend unlimited sums in our elections, effectively turning the race to the White House into a competition between corporate propaganda (over corporate-owned airwaves) and the will of the people.  There is no clearer proof that this is the case than two foreign polls.  People who have not been similarly brainwashed by corporate money would give a landslide victory to President Obama.  The BBC had GlobeScan/PIPA conduct a poll from July 3 to September 3, 2012 in 21 countries.  President Obama was the choice by 50 percent while Mitt Romney received a meager 9 percent.  The balance expressed no preference.  This was a large poll, encompassing 21,797 people.  A separate poll conducted for UPI by Win-Gallup International in September 2012 among 30 … Continue reading →