Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens: August 20, 2012 Given the growing public perception that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is unwilling to prosecute the worst miscreants on Wall Street, one would think his former Wall Street powerhouse law firm would be laying low.  On the contrary, Covington and Burling, where Attorney General Holder previously served as partner and former lobbyist for Global Crossing, is bragging about the competitive advantages its close ties to the Justice Department offer its clients.  The company writes as follows under the subheading, “Our Competitive Advantages.”  “Covington is one of the few firms in the world with lawyers who recently held senior positions in both the US Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and UK Serious Fraud Office (“SFO”). Both Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney General, and Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division (which has principal responsibility in DOJ for enforcing the FCPA [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 18, 2012 Yesterday, at 1:29 p.m., the following headline appeared at the on-line Wall Street Journal: “Morgan Stanley Distributes Facebook IPO Profits.”  The headline was curious, because at 11 a.m. Facebook was trading at 19 bucks a share, exactly half its initial public offering (IPO) price in May. (The stock closed at $19.05, a nickel beyond half its IPO price of $38.)  The article was written by Lynn Cowan, an outstanding veteran Wall Street reporter.  Cowan writes the “IPO Outlook” column for the Wall Street Journal, graduated magna cum laude from Montclair State University and received a Master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.   If Cowan says Morgan Stanley had profits to distribute, she must be on to something.  As it turns out, the profits, according to Cowan, were a whopping $100 million or thereabouts and were not fees or commissions from the IPO underwriting but … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 17, 2012  Keeping with the decades long practice of dumping news that might be unsettling to the public during the late days of summer, when more of the populace is on vacation or generally not paying attention, we’ve learned recently that Goldman Sachs will not be prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department for its CDO deals and, most likely, neither will Jon Corzine for misplacing $1.6 billion dollars of MF Global’s money. Add those to the lack of prosecutions of top dogs at AIG, Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and a practice and pattern emerges.  These firms, after all, were simply engaging in the time-honored pastime of honing their skills as Masters of the Universe.  That pastime is very much respected by the law firm of Covington and Burling, which has such an active revolving door to the U.S. Justice Department that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 16, 2012  According to news reports yesterday, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been cranking out the subpoenas to Wall Street’s largest banks over allegations of an international bank cartel rigging Libor interest rates.  Libor is the benchmark rate used to set many consumer loans, like credit card, student loans, and adjustable rate mortgages.  It is also the primary rate used by Wall Street banks in setting rates on interest rate swaps. Both New York State and New York City have a boatload of those deals that are bleeding red ink. (Read how other municipalities around the country are being drained by these deals.)  According to a December 2011 report by Michael Stewart of United NY, JPMorgan Chase is the counterparty to most of the interest rate swaps for New York City; the MTA currently has sixteen active swap agreements with JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup/Citibank, UBS, AIG, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 15, 2012 According to Simon Chesterman, who has written extensively on surveillance, over the past four decades  the number of Americans killed by international terrorists was about the same as the number killed by lightning strikes or allergic reactions to peanuts.  But that has not deterred the U.S. government from marshalling the resources of 16 agencies and an annual budget of $75 billion to “protect” us. In 2009, as reported in the Washington Post, Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, blurted out the scale of the program during a morning conference call with reporters.  According to Blair: “This morning, we’re talking about the very important business of a blueprint to run this 200,000-person, $75 billion national enterprise in intelligence.” No where is this surveillance juggernaut more noticeable than in the streets of Manhattan where thousands of both public and private CCTV cameras capture the comings and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 14, 2012 We learned a little more about the policies of Mayor Michael (“just call me ‘Mike’ ”) Bloomberg last week. Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly held yet another press conference at the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center on Broadway in the Wall Street area.  As we first reported on October 18, 2011, this Center was built with at least $150 million of taxpayers’ money but its “partners” in spying on the people of New York City, with their very own staffed computer workstations in the Center, are some of the most notorious Wall Street firms: for example, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase, as well as the regulator that’s got their back, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  Exactly what is the logic of going into partnership to battle crime with the very firms which the U.S. Department of Justice and regulators worldwide … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 13, 2012 To see what Sandy Weill was really up to on July 25 of this year when he went on CNBC to recommend that we separate insured deposit banks from investment banking, I went to CNBC.com and reviewed the video.  As it turns out, Weill was asked to be a guest host for two hours on Squawk Box, a program co-hosted by Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times and Rebecca (Becky) Quick.  Sorkin is the author who has written, in an article that the New York Times refuses to correct, that Glass-Steagall wouldn’t have prevented the 2008 crash because Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and AIG had nothing to do with insured deposit banking – except for the fact that Sorkin missed that they actually owned insured deposit banks only because of the repeal of Glass-Steagall.  Quick is best summed up as Warren Buffet’s personal interviewer.  Being … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 11, 2012  There is growing evidence that Wall Street and other corporate money is finding its way into the pockets of business reporters today, just as evidence surfaced in 1932 of bribes to reporters at the New York Daily News, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Post and others.  Yesterday, Yasha Levine and Mark Ames of ExiledOnLine.com published a stunning investigative report of a deeply compromised Adam Davidson, host of NPR’s Planet Money.  On September 12, 2011, we reported that CNBC’s Larry Kudlow had pocketed $332,500 from the Koch funded Mercatus Center without disclosing it to viewers of his program.   On July 2 of this year, we reported that Andrew Ross Sorkin, of the New York Times and CNBC, attempted to downplay the need for restoring the Glass-Steagall Act by reporting that Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and AIG had … Continue reading →

Mark Ames and Yasha Levine have been breaking story after story at ExiledOnLine.com showing that the U.S. is looking more and more like the Russian oligarchy. Listen to what happened when they broke the story at Playboy of the Koch funded front groups.

By Pam Martens: August 10, 2012  According to an SEC filing made by JPMorgan Chase yesterday, the firm is being sued by its retirees, its customers, its shareholders, the City of Baltimore, Jefferson County Alabama, the City of Milan, the trustee for Madoff’s assets, MF Global’s customers and securities holders,  the creditors of Lehman Brothers, an Enron investor and counterparty, traders in Libor and Euribor financial instruments, and on and on.  JPMorgan’s own employees attempted to sue the firm over losses in their 401(k) plan related to Enron but according to the filing it has been dismissed: “A purported class action filed on behalf of JPMorgan Chase employees who participated in the Firm’s 401(k) plan asserting claims under ERISA for alleged breaches of fiduciary duties by JPMorgan Chase, its directors and named officers was dismissed, and the dismissal was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second … Continue reading →