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Recent Posts
- 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
- Academic Study Provides Hard Numbers to the Sick, Revolving Door Culture at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Citigroup
- $244 Billion of Treasury Debt to Hit the Market Today and Tomorrow as Interest Rates Spike on Ballooning Supply
- CFTC Fines J.P. Morgan Securities — a Fed Primary Dealer — $100 Million for Failing to Surveil Potential Spoofing and High Frequency Trading for Eight Years
- Another FDIC-Insured Bank Got in Bed with Fintech; It’s Now Got a Dumpster Fire and Desperate Pleas from Customers for their Money
- Citigroup Gets Fined $79 Million Two Years After It Caused a $300 Billion Flash Crash in European Stock Markets
- After Weeks of Howling by MAGA Republicans for the Chair of the FDIC “to Resign,” a Democrat Delivers the Decisive Stab in the Back
- The Curious Money Trail Behind the Supreme Court/Clarence Thomas Decision to Rescue a Federal Agency that Wall Street Hates
- Saudi Arabia’s Wealth Fund Dumps Its JPMorgan Chase Stock; Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Did the Same in 2020
- One of Jeffrey Epstein’s Protectors at JPMorgan Chase, Mary Erdoes, Has Sold $29 Million of Her Stock in the Bank Since Just Before Epstein’s Arrest in 2019
- Delinquencies on Office Property Loans at Banks Are at 8 Percent While Office Loans the Banks Sold to Investors Show 31 Percent in Trouble
- Goldman Sachs Shines Up Its Swamp Creature Reputation by Rehiring Robert Kaplan as Vice Chairman – the Guy Who Traded Like a Hedge Fund Kingpin While President of the Dallas Fed
- Cleary Gottlieb – Outside Counsel to Wall Street’s Serially Bailed Out Megabanks – Tarnishes the FDIC Chair in its So-Called “Independent” Report
- JPMorgan Chase and Its Regulators Are Hiding Dark Trading Secrets at the Largest and Riskiest U.S. Bank
- Campus Protests Over Gaza Open a Pandora’s Box for Wall Street Megabanks that Underwrote $8 Billion of Israel’s Bonds in March
- Wall Street’s Megabanks Have Trillions of Dollars Off-Balance Sheet, in a Replay of Accounting Hubris that Led to the 2008 Wall Street Collapse
- JPMorgan Remains the Second Largest Money Market Fund Manager, Despite Needing Billions in Money Market Bailouts from the Fed in 2020
- The First Bank Failure of 2024 Leaves a 1-Cent Stock for Investors and $667 Million in Losses for the FDIC
- Catch and Kill Protection Rackets: Trump, Weinstein, Epstein and Wall Street
- Wall Street’s Judge Shopping Continues: It’s Trying to Stop the FTC’s Ban on Worker Handcuffs Known as Non-Compete Agreements
- The Fed Tallies Up a Big Threat to Financial Stability in the U.S.: “Runnables” at $21.3 Trillion
- Billionaire-Owned Media Has Gone Full Throttle to Save Fellow Billionaire, Jamie Dimon
- The Professor Who Wrote the Seminal Book on Wall Street Megabanks Calls Today’s Financial System “Dangerously Unstable”
- Gold Has Set Historic Highs this Year as the Federal Reserve Has Reported Historic Losses
- Stanford Finance Professor Anat Admati Is Making Jamie Dimon Very Nervous – Again Calling His Bank “Dangerous”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
With Crypto Bank, SoFi, the Fed Is Setting the Stage for the Same Disastrous Decision It Made with Citigroup in 1999
![Arthur Wilmarth, Jr. (Thumbnail)](https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Arthur-Wilmarth-Jr.-Thumbnail-125x150.jpg)
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 29, 2022 ~ If there is one person in America who comprehensively understands the threats to the U.S. banking system, it is Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr., author of the 2020 seminal book, Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act. Wilmarth is Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University Law School and has published more than 40 law review articles and book chapters in the fields of financial regulation and American constitutional history. Wilmarth had this to say about the way the Fed allowed a crypto outfit, SoFi, to scoop up a federally-insured bank in February of this year: “The San Francisco Fed relied on the same five-year transitional exemption in the BHC Act [Bank Holding Company Act] to allow SoFi to acquire Golden Pacific Bancorp and its national bank subsidiary despite SoFi’s nonconforming crypto trading activities. I find it astonishing and … Continue reading
Sheila Bair, Former Chair of the FDIC, Is Now an “Organizer/Director” of a Cayman Islands Crypto Company that Got a U.S. National Bank Charter Last Year
![](https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Sheila-Bair-Thumbnail.jpg)
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 28, 2022 ~ On November 17, Sheila Bair, the former Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) during the financial crisis of 2008, went on CNBC to lament the lack of controls leading to the collapse of the crypto currency exchange, FTX. During the interview, Bair used the phrase “nobody looking behind the curtain.” But Bair, herself, is listed as an “Organizer/Director” of a crypto-related company called Paxos, where nobody can genuinely look behind the curtain because its parent, Kabompo Holdings Ltd., is based in the offshore secrecy jurisdiction of the Cayman Islands. According to the bare bones filings Kabompo has made with the Securities and Exchange Commission each time it has raised money from private investors, it has used an address that is a Post Office Box at Ugland House in Grand Caymen. According to a previous report from the Government Accountability … Continue reading
Evidence Grows that Crypto and Federally-Insured Banks Are a Combustible Mixture
![Senator Sherrod Brown](https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Sherrod-Brown-i-1.jpg)
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 23, 2022 ~ The fallout from the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX and its missing billions of dollars of customer funds has, finally, galvanized some members of Congress to push back against the swarms of crypto lobbyists whose activities are clearly impacting the safety and soundness of U.S. banks. On Monday, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, along with Senators Jack Reed (D-RI), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Tina Smith (D-MN), sent a letter to federal banking regulators warning that SoFi, a federally-insured bank, potentially posed a risk to safety and soundness as a result of its digital asset trading activities. The Senators wrote as follows: “In January 2022, SoFi received approval from the Federal Reserve for the acquisition of Golden Pacific Bancorp, Inc. and a conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for the … Continue reading
U.S. Justice Department Steps into the FTX Bankruptcy Case in Delaware
![](https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Scales-of-Justice-150x123.jpg)
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 22, 2022 ~ Two attorneys from the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. have filed an appearance with the Bankruptcy Court in Delaware that is hearing the bankruptcy case filed by the disgraced crypto exchange, FTX, and its related hedge fund, Alameda Research. Both are majority-owned by the scandalized former crypto kingpin Sam Bankman-Fried. More than 100 other global tentacles of FTX are included in the bankruptcy case. The DOJ attorneys that made the notices of appearance are Seth Shapiro and Stanton McManus. The notice of appearance for both attorneys references two noteworthy statutes, 28 U.S.C. § 516 and 518, among others: 28 U.S.C. § 516 reads as follows: “Except as otherwise authorized by law, the conduct of litigation in which the United States, an agency, or officer thereof is a party, or is interested, and securing evidence therefor, is reserved to officers of … Continue reading
FTX’s Latest Casualties: Federally Insured Crypto Banks
![](https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Silvergate.jpg)
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 21, 2022 ~ On August 1 of this year, we penned this headline at Wall Street On Parade: Brace Yourself for Federally-Insured Bank Failures Caused by Crypto. Our research for that article was so stomach-churning and frightening that we emailed the article to key staff for the Senators who sit on the Senate Banking Committee. One of the banks we researched for that article was Silvergate Bank. We wrote: “FDIC-insured Silvergate Bank is part of the publicly-traded Silvergate Capital Corp., (ticker SI). Silvergate’s website says this about its hot pursuit of crypto: ‘We began pursuing digital currency customers in 2013 and have been deliberate in our approach to serving this community since then. Today, we have 1,300+ digital currency and fintech customers that are using our platform daily to grow and scale their businesses.’ “Silvergate Capital’s 10-K (annual report) for the year ending Dec 31, … Continue reading
The Latest Digital Token Scheme from Hell: New York Fed Teams Up with Citigroup and Sullivan & Cromwell
![Fed -- Oops!](https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Fed-Oops.jpg)
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 17, 2022 ~ Just two business days after the crypto exchange FTX filed for bankruptcy and headlines swirled around the world suggesting it had used its crypto token to perpetuate a massive fraud reminiscent of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the New York Fed thought this would be an ideal time to announce it was launching a digital token pilot with the serial fraudster, Citigroup. (See here for the unintelligible, jargonized version from the New York Fed; here for the decrypted translation from CoinDesk; and here for a sampling of Citigroup’s rap sheet.) If the New York Fed teaming up with Citigroup isn’t troubling enough, the New York Fed also reveals that “ Legal services are being provided by Sullivan & Cromwell LLP….” for the pilot token project. (Why does one need to hire a Big Law firm for a pilot program using a “theoretical” concept?) … Continue reading
FTX Was Creating Money Out of Thin Air Like the Fed; and Trading Its Own “Stock” Like the Wall Street Mega Banks in their Dark Pools
![Bubbles](https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Bubbles-iii.jpg)
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 16, 2022 ~ On June 10 of last year, Wall Street On Parade penned this headline: Seven Years after Michael Lewis Described on National TV How the U.S. Stock Market Is Rigged, SEC Chair Gensler Says He’s Going to Tackle Market Structure. Unfortunately for confidence in U.S. markets, that’s yet to happen. And it’s not just the fault of Gensler. The Senate Banking Committee and House Financial Services Committee that should be holding in-depth hearings on the most corrupted market structure since 1929 have opted instead to hold superficial hearings each time something blows up as a result of that corrupted market structure, but never actually get around to tackling the corrupt market structure itself. So here we are today with another abject failure of market structure causing a week of sensational headlines around the globe that make U.S. markets look unhinged. If one … Continue reading
This Is Where Bankrupt FTX’s Money Went: $74 Million for Caribbean Real Estate; $59 Million to Politicians; Tens of Millions to Big Law, Celebrity Endorsements…
![Ryan Salame, Co-CEO, FTX Digital Markets](https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Ryan-Salame.jpg)
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 15, 2022 ~ The executives running the bankrupt crypto exchange, FTX, may have broken speed records for how fast they could spend other people’s money. They just weren’t any good at managing it on behalf of their investors or safeguarding it for their crypto exchange customers. Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, lived in a 12,000 square foot, five-bedroom luxury penthouse overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in a prestigious resort in the Bahamas, which was put up for sale for $39.5 million the same day FTX filed for bankruptcy, according to reporting at the U.K. news outlet, The Guardian. The Block reports that an FTX-related entity called FTX Property Holdings “spent $74,230,193 on property in the Bahamas over 2022. The bulk of that money, $67,440,193.99, went to entities surrounding Albany Bahamas, a luxury condo resort in New Providence.” According to data at the Federal Election Commission, Bankman-Fried … Continue reading
Big Law Firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, Did Significant Legal Work for Bankrupt Crypto Exchange, FTX
![](https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Ryne-Miller-Thumbnail.jpg)
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 13, 2022 ~ According to Reuters, Sullivan & Cromwell has been named as one of the advising law firms to the disgraced crypto exchange, FTX, in its bankruptcy proceedings. Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder and CEO of FTX, vaporized the high-profile crypto firm from a $32 billion valuation to smoldering ashes last week. Reuters reported that Bankman-Fried had moved as much as $10 billion of FTX customers’ money to his separate hedge fund, Alameda Research, through a “backdoor” in its software. Alameda had lost much of the money on wild bets while $1 billion to $2 billion had just “disappeared,” according to Reuters. The Financial Times reported that FTX held just $900 million “in easily sellable assets” against $9 billion “of liabilities the day before it collapsed into bankruptcy.” The FTX news grew even more bizarre over the weekend with the New York Times reporting … Continue reading
FTX, Second Largest Crypto Exchange, Halts Withdrawals as Bankruptcy Nears and Justice Department Circles
![Sam Bankman-Fried](https://wallstreetonparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Sam-Bankman-Fried-150x150.jpg)
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 10, 2022 ~ FTX, the second largest crypto exchange, is teetering near bankruptcy this morning; has shuttered withdrawals of money and crypto by its customers; and is dealing with investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice. At least one of those investigations is focusing on the potential misuse of customer funds between FTX and Alameda Research, a trading firm created by FTX founder and CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. The Wall Street Journal reports that FTX has a “shortfall of up to $8 billion.” A deal by the largest crypto exchange, Binance, to buy out FTX as it faltered, was scrapped yesterday after due diligence lawyers for Binance didn’t like what they saw. As recently as January, FTX had a valuation of $32 billion. Its sophisticated investors include Sequoia Capital, BlackRock, Tiger Global Management, SoftBank, … Continue reading