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Recent Posts
- The Fed Just Kicked the Capital Increases for the Dangerous Megabanks and their Derivatives Down the Road for Years
- Intel, Boeing and U.S. Steel May Hold the Secrets to What’s Behind All the Talk of a U.S. Sovereign Wealth Fund
- Trump and Paulson’s Proposal: U.S. Sovereign Wealth Fund (or Another Grifter Bailout)
- A Wall Street Regulator Is Understating Margin Debt by More than $4 Trillion – Because It’s Not Counting Giant Banks Making Margin Loans to Hedge Funds
- After JPMorgan Threatens to Sue, the Fed Cuts Its Capital Requirement on the 5-Count Felon from a Planned 25 Percent Hike to Less than 8 Percent
- Three Megabanks Had Loans Outstanding of $1.832 Trillion to Giant Hedge Funds on March 31
- Jamie Dimon’s Washington Post OpEd Gets Pummeled at Yahoo Finance
- In the Span of 72 Hours, Four People Tied to a Hewlett-Packard Criminal Case Died in Two Separate Events
- Crypto Took Down Another Federally-Insured Bank and Just Handed Its CEO a 24-Year Prison Sentence
- All the Devils from 2008 Are Back at the Megabanks: Leverage, Off-Balance-Sheet Debt, Over $192 Trillion in Derivatives, Shaky Capital Levels
- New Study Says the Fed Is Captured by Congress and White House — Not the Megabanks that Own the Fed Banks and Get Trillions in Bailouts
- Data from the Fed’s Emergency Funding Program Shows Spring 2023 Banking Crisis Was Far Deeper than Americans Were Told
- These FDIC-Insured Banks Have Lost 69 to 40 Percent of their Market Value Year-to-Date
- Exposure at Hedge Funds Has Skyrocketed to Over $28 Trillion; Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Are at Risk
- We Charted the Plunge and Rebound in the Nikkei Versus Nomura and Citigroup; the Correlation Is Frightening
- Former U.S. Labor Secretary Says Billionaires Have No Right to Exist Because their Wealth Comes from Five Illegal or Bad Practices
- Citigroup Is Having a Helluva Summer: A Protest on Thursday Will Turn Up the Heat
- Nikkei Has Biggest Drop in History: Here’s What’s Causing the Global Market Selloff
- JPMorgan Is Tapping Illiquid Assets in its Global Collateral Program; the New York Fed Is Paying for Its Services
- Bank Regulators Issue Warnings on Fintech and Banking as Disasters Pile Up
- Donald Trump Gives a Speech on Not Letting China Win the Crypto Race – Not Realizing China Banned Crypto Mining and Transactions Four Years Ago
- The New York Fed Has Contracted Out Key Functions to JPMorgan Chase; We Filed a FOIA and Got These Strange Invoices
- On the Eve of Netanyahu’s Address to Congress, Senator Bernie Sanders Delivers a Breathtaking Assessment of His War Crimes
- Trump’s Sit-Down with Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago Will Cost U.S. Taxpayers Millions While Profiting Trump’s Business
- Protecting Trump and His Jet-Setting Adult Children During His Presidency Cost Taxpayers Over $1 Billion
- A Congressman and a Doctor Reported a Woman Being Shot at Trump Rally: She’s Vanished from Official Reports
- Jamie Dimon Goes Missing from Earnings Call, After Dumping $183 Million of His JPMorgan Chase Stock Earlier this Year
- U.S. Senate Candidate Backed by Hedge Fund Billionaires Was Sitting in Front Row at Trump Rally as the Sniper Fired into the Bleachers
- Project 2025: The Fossil Fuel and Banking Money Behind the Madness
- The Fund Created to Unwind a Failing Megabank Has a Problem: There’s No Money in It
- Joe Biden Versus the New York Times
- Grand Jury Transcript in Jeffrey Epstein Case Is Released, Raising Questions about Epstein’s Darkest Secrets Being Protected in JPMorgan Cases
- The Supreme Court Crowns a King, Immunizing Future Criminal Acts Under Project 2025 – a Right Wing Manifesto
- The Debate Disaster and the Supreme Court’s “Chevron” Repeal Have a Money Trail Leading to Charles Koch
- Congressman Andy Barr Stacks a Hearing on the Fed’s Stress Tests with Lobbyists for Megabanks
- The Fed Posts Historic Operating Losses As It Pays Out 5.40 Percent Interest to Banks
- Goldman Sachs’ Bank Derivatives Have Grown from $40 Trillion to $54 Trillion in Five Years; So How Did Its Credit Exposure Improve by 200 Percent?
- The Fed and FDIC Wake Up Suddenly to the Threat of Derivatives, Flunking the Four Largest Derivative Banks on their Wind-Down Plans
- Is the Stock Market Setting Investors Up for a Tech Bust Similar to the Dot.com Bust?
- Chase Bank Customers Are Reporting a Wave of Wire Fraud in their Accounts; the Bank Won’t Make Good on the Looted Funds
- The Senate Race in Ohio Is the Sickest in U.S. History in Terms of Billionaire Money from Outside the State
- Sullivan & Cromwell’s Legal Work for Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto House of Fraud Is Getting a Closer Look in Two Federal Court Cases
- Crypto Tries to Recreate the Koch Money Machine to Pack Congress with Shills
- French Fears Ignite Selloff in U.S. Megabanks and Foreign Peers
- Crypto Just Got Exponentially More Dangerous: Meet Fairshake
- Nvidia Hit a $3 Trillion Market Cap Last Week; Dark Pools Are Making Over 300,000 Trades in the Stock Weekly
- The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Is Making Enemies in All the Right Places
- A Former Exec at Citibank Raises Alarm Bells in Federal Court Over Failed Risk Controls Inside the Bank
- Charles Koch’s Money Is Being Used in Elections in Ways Only Orwell Could Have Imagined
- Freakonomics and Frankenbanks: JPMorgan Chase Sucked Up 18 Percent of All Profits of 4,568 FDIC-Insured Banks in the First Quarter
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Greg Smith Joins a Crowd: How Many Wall Streeters Have to Tell the Same Story Before Congress Listens
By Pam Martens: October 23, 2012 Yesterday, a reporter at a mainstream media outlet ran the following sentence in her coverage of Greg Smith, the Goldman Sachs Vice President who resigned in March via an oped in the New York Times charging the firm with a corrupt environment: “Smith is the first former employee to write a critical account of his career at New York-based Goldman Sachs …” I wrote to the reporter and the editor of the piece requesting a correction, alerting them that a highly respected former managing director of Goldman Sachs, Nomi Prins, had specifically attributed leaving a 15-year career on Wall Street to one firm’s hubris — Goldman Sachs. I included this passage from Prins’ 2004 book, Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America: “When I left Wall Street, at the height of a wave of scandals uncovering scores of massively destructive deceptions, my choice … Continue reading
Goldman Sachs Smears Greg Smith: Shades of Christian Curry
By Pam Martens: October 22, 2012 On April 5, 2010, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi famously depicted Goldman Sachs as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” But if last week’s performance by its human relations department is any guide, the great vampire squid is flailing around in quicksand. No one in the legal or HR department at Goldman Sachs has apparently ever heard the phrase, if you’re in a hole, stop digging. With Goldman whistleblower Greg Smith’s book, Why I Left Goldman Sachs, set to launch today and his highly anticipated appearance last night on CBS News’ 60-Minutes (typically watched by 13 million viewers), one would have expected Goldman to hire a sophisticated crisis management firm imbued with some tiny inkling of just how repugnant it and its colleagues on Wall Street are to the average … Continue reading
Ranking Dems Demand Answers From RNC Chair Following Arrest of Operative
By Pam Martens: October 19, 2012 As we reported earlier today, Colin Small, a man linked to the Republican National Committee, was arrested yesterday in Virginia for tossing completed voter registration forms into a dumpster. The arrest comes on the heels of growing claims of voter registration fraud carried out by firms tied to Nathan Sproul. Small was previously employed by Sproul’s firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, until it was terminated by the RNC at the end of last month, according to news reports. This afternoon, three ranking Democrats in Congress issued the following letter to Reince Priebus, Chair of the RNC, demanding answers regarding the RNC’s relationship with Sproul. Separately, Elections Subcommittee Ranking Member Charles A. Gonzalez wrote to the Virginia State Board of Elections to ask how it would handle further cases of potential voter disfranchisement as the scandal there continues to unfold. ~ ~ ~ October 18, 2012 Reince Priebus, Chairman Republican National Committee 310 First Street, … Continue reading
Nathan Sproul’s Money Trail Leads to California Republican Party
By Pam Martens: October 19, 2012 A Sacramento law firm that touts its sophistication in campaign finance matters has been linked to companies secretly operated by Nathan Sproul to register voters. Sproul’s operation is under investigation in Florida and by members of Congress for voter registration fraud, including registering dead people, forging signatures, falsifying addresses, and changing party affiliations. Yesterday, a former employee was arrested in Virginia for tossing completed voter registrations into a dumpster, as reported by Joseph Tanfani at the Los Angeles Times. Charles H. Bell, Jr. and Thomas W. Hiltachk, founded the law firm now known as Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk in 1991. It bills itself as a leader in campaign finance and regularly brings election law matters before the Federal Election Commission and Appellate Courts. Bell is currently General Counsel to the California Republican Party, serving in that position since 1999. He also held that position from … Continue reading
The Incestuous World of Pro-Romney Super PACs and the Candidate’s Campaign
By Pam Martens: October 18, 2012 The landmark 2010 Citizens United decision at the U.S. Supreme Court, effectively ending democracy as we know it, made it legal for advocacy groups to accept unlimited funds from secret donors while openly campaigning for a candidate. Super PACs can now also accept unlimited sums from a single donor and spend every dime on attack ads against an opponent, providing they keep their activities separate from the candidate’s campaign. What has evolved from the Citizens United decision is an incestuous world where campaign rules matter little to the masters of the universe. The pro-Romney super Pac, Restore Our Future, has raked in $96,667,002 in this campaign cycle according to a recent filing at the Federal Election Commission. Almost half of that has sluiced out the back door to the ad buying firm of Mentzer Media. Mentzer Media is the firm that placed over $18 million in ads attacking … Continue reading
The Debate: More Signs of Xenophobia from Romney
By Pam Martens: October 17, 2012 Despite how one feels about President Obama’s policies, he is still the President and Commander in Chief of our Nation. In public, televised settings that will be transmitted around the globe, he should be addressed with respect. In last night’s debate, Governor Romney gave the appearance that he has, in his mind, already become the President. He spoke rudely to President Obama, reprimanding him as one might speak to a child: “You’ll get your chance in a moment. I’m still speaking.” As we’ve worried aloud before, Mitt Romney seems to have a mean streak. In an increasingly volatile world, diplomacy and measured words from our President are more important than ever before. Which leads us to another concern: Mitt Romney’s hostile absorption with the Chinese. In both his first and second debate, Romney seemed hell bent on demonizing China from a public stage — versus quiet, private … Continue reading
Nine Essential Questions for the Presidential Debates
By Pam Martens: October 16, 2012 (1) Mr. President, both Ron Ruskind and Sheila Bair have written books that suggest that your Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, is a tool of Wall Street and, specifically, Citigroup. Mr. Suskind indicated that you had instructed Mr. Geithner to unwind Citigroup and he ignored your order. Will you tell Americans once and for all if that is true, and if it is, why the President of the United States would tolerate insubordination from his Treasury Secretary. (2) Governor Romney, you and your running mate, Paul Ryan, believe we have too much government: too many governmental controls in business, too many government entitlement programs. But when it comes to women’s bodies and abortion, you advocate letting the government control. Can you explain the seeming dichotomy of your logic and, also, why it would be humane to bring unwanted children into a country where one in every five … Continue reading
High Tech Stalking and the Presidential Election
By Pam Martens: October 15, 2012 A little over a month ago, I went to the web site of the Koch Industries roster of their version of “facts,” and stumbled upon, completely by accident, the billionaire brothers’ wholesale attack on Robert Greenwald, the filmmaker who released the documentary Koch Brothers Exposed earlier this year. For the balance of the day, wherever I went on the internet, various versions of Koch ads popped up, berating Greenwald and his film. I felt like I was being stalked. According to a techie friend, I had picked up a cookie at the Koch Industries web site and it was using that cookie to follow me around and attempt to brainwash me against Robert Greenwald and his film. I had to erase all my cookies to stop this stalking. If you think this is over-the-top creepy, you obviously have not yet read the article in the New … Continue reading
Political Debates and the Wall Street Reality
By Pam Martens: October 12, 2012 Watching the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates, it’s easy to get caught up in personality over substance, rhetoric over reality. The reality check is to remind ourselves what industry is giving massive, lopsided support to the Romney/Ryan ticket: Wall Street. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the top five funders of Romney’s campaign are all Wall Street firms. The PACs, employees and their immediate family members have given the following to the Romney campaign: Goldman Sachs – $891,140; Bank of America (which owns Merrill Lynch) — $668,139; JPMorgan Chase — $663,219; Morgan Stanley — $649,847; Credit Suisse Group — $554,066. No Wall Street firm is among the top five donors to the Obama campaign. This level of support suggests two things: Wall Street has been assured by the Romney/Ryan campaign that they will repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation and they will privatize Social Security. … Continue reading
Nathan Sproul: Shut Down In Three States, He Emerges in Five Others, This Time Advertising for Job Applicants “Committed to the Republican Party”
By Pam Martens: October 11, 2012 If you thought the Republican Party had shut down the operations of Nathan Sproul, the man under investigation for running companies engaging in voter registration fraud in 11 counties in Florida and other states, you would be wrong. A new batch of entities using Sproul’s office address and phone number have sprung up in at least five states and they are heavily advertising on the internet for “political canvassers.” I called the number in one of the help wanted ads. When a man returned my call, I did not mislead or say that I was seeking a job. I simply asked for the name of the company offering the job. His answer was: “We’re a non-partisan organization.” I said but I’d like to know the actual name of the company. I got another marketing pitch. When I asked the question for the third time, … Continue reading