Category Archives: Uncategorized

May 1, 2012 At approximately 10:28 p.m., after a large presence of New York City Police broke up a general assembly of Occupy Wall Street protestors in lower Manhattan, announcing by megaphone that protestors would be arrested if they didn’t disperse, the police began to indiscriminately arrest peaceful participants.   After forcing protestors out of Battery Park and onto the street, a wall of police surrounded the protestors, preventing their movement, while simultaneously telling protestors they would be arrested if they didn’t disperse.  There were multiple reports of police brutality.  At 11:00 p.m., about 200 occupiers had reassembled in Zuccotti Park, birthplace of the movement.  There were reports of violent confrontations between police and occupiers in Seattle and Oakland. Photos of police action between 10:30 p.m.  and 11:00 p.m. in New York City.   

May 1, 2012 As video and photos from citizen journalists showed the largest May Day turnout since the inception of Occupy Wall Street in New York City, the international news wire, Reuters, ran the following headline: “Occupy Wall Street Resurgence a Dud.”  The headline was accompanied with the following text: “Occupy Wall Street was planning to make a big comeback, taking aim at old targets like Bank of America and headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. empire. But the demonstration lacked the crowds of the protest’s early days, leading many to question if the movement has any movement left.” First, using the word “movement” twice within a span of five words is, well, bad journalism.  Failing to peek out a window in Manhattan is just plain dumb.

May 1, 2012 Members of the New York City Council and participants in the Occupy Wall Street protests filed a lawsuit in Federal Court on April 29, chronicling an out of control New York City Police Department that is systematically crushing civil rights and quashing dissent through brutal force, lies, cover-ups and attempting to block both mainstream media and citizen journalists from covering the illegal acts. A stunning video reminiscent of brutal dictator regimes that documents the police brutality and crackdown on peaceful protestors was included in the exhibits provided to the court.  The video can be viewed here: The lawsuit charges the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, and Police Commissioner, Raymond Kelly, with conspiring with private corporations to suppress the constitutional rights of citizens.  JPMorgan Chase is named as a defendant in the lawsuit and one of the co-conspirators for illegally blocking access to a public plaza. Despite the lawsuit, the NYPD was … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: April 27, 2012  Jon Corzine, former CEO of MF Global, the financial firm that collapsed with a $1.6 billion hole in customer accounts, has wealth, a top criminal attorney, and political clout in Washington.  But there’s another lesser known John in the MF Global story who is proving himself to be a tenacious thorn in the side of the former U.S. Senator and Governor from New Jersey.   John Roe has what Jon Corzine should fear most: he’s an industry executive and former insider at the predecessor firm of MF Global — Refco, Inc. — and understands how its accounting technology works.  He’s not buying the “official” story that $1.6 billion of customer money just innocently fell into the wrong hands during the last week of the firm’s existence.  Since MF Global filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on October 31, 2011, Roe has led a whirlwind assault on … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: April 21, 2012 MF Global’s Regulators Take the Oath Before Congress; They Have Yet to Explain What Happened to $1.6 Billion of Customer Funds The U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs will hold a hearing on Tuesday, April 24, to seek answers on how a brokerage firm teetering toward bankruptcy misplaced $1.6 billion of customer funds – funds that by law must be held in accounts that are segregated from the firm’s own money. Thus far, since December, Congress has held five hearings with no clarity emerging on precisely where the money is or who is responsible for dipping in to customer funds.  The firm is MF Global, whose Chairman, CEO and Debt Trader in Chief, was Jon Corzine.  Corzine took the helm at MF Global in March 2010 and blew it up just 19 months later with a spectacularly ill-conceived bet on $8.1 billion … Continue reading →

April 16, 2012 An event honoring Judy Mione, Wall Street veteran and activist for women’s equality in the male dominated field of securities trading will be hosted by her daughter, Lynn Mione, on April 23 on Long Island, New York.  Judy Mione, who died last year following a long battle with breast cancer, was a lead plaintiff in the high profile Federal lawsuit against the New York Stock Exchange, National Association of Securities Dealers and the retail brokerage firm, Smith Barney.  The suit forced out of the shadows Wall Street’s private justice system known as mandatory arbitration and its pivotal role in keeping Wall Street’s misdeeds hidden from public view in open courtrooms.  (Both the New York Stock Exchange and the National Association of Securities Dealers were successful in removing themselves as parties to the suit.)  The lawsuit became infamously known as the “Boom Boom Room” case following media saturation … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 19, 2012 The muppets are in revolt against their masters.  No, I don’t mean customers of Wall Street’s big firms.  I’m speaking of corporate media muppets.  Greg Smith lit a match and now there are smoldering embers dangerously burning at Bloomberg Views and Forbes. Smith is the 33-year old derivatives executive at Goldman, Sachs & Co. who published his blistering resignation letter on the OpEd page of the New York Times.  According to Smith, managing directors at Goldman call their clients muppets and openly speak about “ripping their clients off.”  Smith said the environment at the firm is “as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.” The OpEd was published on Wednesday, March 14, and went viral on the internet.  Next came a mesmerizing look at the underbelly of crony capitalism.  The Mayor of the city that sent its police in the dead of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 12, 2012 The oil billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch, are adept at planning ahead.  In 1984, the Kochs formed Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation with Richard Fink and Jay Humphreys.  After CSE received too much publicity suggesting it was just a front for corporate interests,  the Koch brothers changed the foundation’s name to Americans for Prosperity in 2004.  By 2009, planning ahead for the midterm elections in 2010,  Koch money, through Americans for Prosperity, was sluicing through the  “grassroots” campaign called the Tea Party. Watch the video as David Koch stands before a crowd of Tea Party leaders (reporting to him on their progress) and explains how he and his brother, Charles, provided the start up funds and are so proud of the results. Now, in an effort to make good on their promise of launching the  “mother of all wars” to take the White House in the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 27, 2012 Tomorrow, St. Martin’s Press releases the new book by Wall Street writer, Gary Weiss: Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America’s Soul.    This book is critical to understanding the dangerous nexus of corporate financing of radical capitalism (deregulation and privatization) and nonprofit front groups.  It’s not an exaggeration to say that the fate of this country hangs in the balance.  Consider this excerpt from the book, quoting Yaron Brook, the head of the corporate financed Ayn Rand Institute. (The Associate General Counsel of Goldman, Sachs & Co., Arline Mann,  co-chairs the Institute.)  “I think in fifteen years, Ayn Rand will be everywhere…She’ll be taught, her standards, in many universities. She’ll be in a significant proportion of high school English classes. Her ideas will be debated on television, in classrooms, and in the public forums. It will be hard to escape, not so much … Continue reading →