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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
Quietly, JPMorgan Chase Has Been Battling Another Felony Charge – This Time for Tax Fraud in France. Its Defense Is Its “Human Rights” Have Been Violated.
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 1, 2021 ~ JPMorgan Chase is the bank that gambled with the bank deposits of moms and pops across America in 2012 by trading exotic derivatives in London and losing $6.2 billion in the process. It’s also the bank that admitted to two felony counts in 2014 for its role in facilitating Bernie Madoff ripping off the life savings of thousands of more moms and pops across America. Its rap sheet of ripping off the little guy reads like that of an entrenched crime family. But when the bank was indicted in France on April 16, 2015 for being complicit in tax fraud, it had the temerity to appeal the charges on the basis that its “human rights” had been violated, along with various codes of criminal procedure. Its argument boiled down to this: it hadn’t been advised that it had the right to … Continue reading
The U.S. Has 6.3 Times More COVID-19 Cases Per 100,000 than Canada. What Went Wrong?
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 30, 2021 ~ As of this past Friday, August 27, the U.S. had 330 COVID-19 infections per 100,000 over the last 7 days, according to the Reuters COVID-19 tracker. Canada had 6.3 times fewer cases, reporting only 52 per 100,000 over the past 7 days. The U.S. stood at 62 percent of its prior peak of cases on Friday while Canada stood at 32 percent of its prior peak. The U.S. and Canada confirmed their first cases of the virus within a week of each other in January of 2020. Both countries began vaccinating their population at roughly the same time, in December of 2020. The majority of shots in both countries came from the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which require two doses to be considered fully vaccinated. But the U.S. fell dramatically behind Canada in the early days of testing for the virus. … Continue reading
248 Chinese Companies with Off-Limit Audits and a Market Cap of Over $2.1 Trillion Are Listed on U.S. Exchanges – Now Congress Demands Action from the SEC
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 27, 2021 ~ For the past 19 years, China has been stonewalling U.S. regulators over access to the work papers of auditors of publicly traded companies that are based in China but listed on U.S. stock exchanges. China takes the position that these audit work papers hold state secrets and it prohibits audit firms from releasing the documents directly to U.S. regulators, effectively gutting U.S. law. Finally, last December, Congress addressed the long brewing problem. Both houses of Congress unanimously passed legislation called the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act. The legislation requires that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) identify companies that are listed in the U.S. which the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) cannot “inspect or investigate completely because of a position taken by an authority in the foreign jurisdiction.” The legislation also requires the listed companies to provide documentation showing that … Continue reading
The SEC Is Allowing 5-Count Felon JPMorgan Chase to Trade Its Own Bank Stock in its Own Dark Pools
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 26, 2021 ~ JPMorgan Chase is unique among the mega banks on Wall Street – and not in a good way. It owns the largest federally-insured bank in the United States despite a rap sheet that would make the Gambino crime family jealous. It has been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with five felony counts since 2014, admitting to all of them. Its Board of Directors has left the same man, Jamie Dimon, at the helm of the bank as Chairman and CEO, throughout those five felony counts. JPMorgan Chase is also the only American bank to ever be fined for using depositors’ money to gamble in derivatives in London and lose $6.2 billion of that money. (Jamie Dimon was Chairman and CEO at the bank then as well.) JPMorgan Chase is the only federally-insured bank in the United States to be … Continue reading
Two Hedge Fund Billionaires Hedge their Bets on Regeneron as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Opens Regeneron Treatment Centers for COVID-19 Across Florida
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 25, 2021 ~ Billionaire hedge fund titan Ken Griffin’s Citadel Advisors has had a stake in the biotech company, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, since at least December 31, 2011 – a decade ago. The same is true for billionaire Jeffrey Yass’ giant hedge fund, Susquehanna International Group. Both stakes have grown in size in recent years. As of the most recent 13F SEC filing for Citadel Advisors for the quarter ending June 30, 2021, it and its related entities held a stake in Regeneron of long call options and common stock with a value of $189.7 million versus a short position of puts with a value of $188.5 million. As of its filing with the SEC for the quarter ending June 30, 2021, Susquehanna International Group reported a long position of common shares and calls of 1,116,127 shares valued at $623.4 million versus a short position … Continue reading
The Congressional Budget Office Is Forecasting U.S. Debt Levels Not Seen Since World War II as GDP Forecasts Dim
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 24, 2021 ~ The most recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecast is projecting government debt levels in the U.S. not seen since World War II. According to a CBO report released on July 21: “After all the government’s borrowing needs are accounted for, debt held by the public rises from $21.0 trillion at the end of 2020 to $35.8 trillion at the end of 2031 in CBO’s baseline projections. As a percentage of GDP, debt at the end of 2031 stands at 106 percent, about 6 percentage points higher than it was at the end of 2020 and nearly two and a half times its average over the past 50 years.” As for the federal budget deficit as a share of GDP, things aren’t looking good there either according to CBO forecasts: “CBO projects a federal budget deficit of $3.0 trillion in 2021 as the economic disruption caused by the 2020–2021 coronavirus pandemic and … Continue reading
Three of the Fed’s Wall Street Bailout Programs Vanish from Its Monthly Reports to Congress
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 23, 2021 ~ Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Fed Vice Chairman for Supervision, Randal Quarles, would desperately like to make three of the Fed’s emergency bailout programs to Wall Street disappear from further scrutiny by Congress or the American people. That’s because the specific details of those programs do not comport with the testimony that Powell and Quarles have provided at Congressional hearings throughout the pandemic. Both Powell and Quarles have told Congress that the mega banks were a source of strength during the pandemic. (The chart above shows what was really happening.) The three emergency lending programs that the Fed would like to make vanish are the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF); the Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF); and the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (MMLF). These are not only the most opaque of the Fed’s “official” bailout programs but they … Continue reading
This is How Hundreds of Thousands of Americans Spent the Summer of 2021 — During the Worst Pandemic Since 1918
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 19, 2021 ~ The Lollapalooza Music Festival was held at Chicago’s Grant Park from Thursday, July 29 through Sunday, August 1. An estimated 100,000 people crowded into the event on each of its four days. A large segment of those attending were not wearing masks and social distancing averaged about 6 inches to zero. The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally took place in Sturgis, South Dakota on August 6 through August 15. The South Dakota Department of Transportation reported that a total of 525,768 vehicles entered the rally, using nine locations, for the combined 10 days of the event. The majority of the attendees did not wear masks. Social distancing was not practiced on the streets, in bars or in restaurants. Even the former President of the United States, Barack Obama, threw himself a big birthday bash on Saturday evening, August 7, at his $12 million … Continue reading
Meet the Two Congressmen Who Facilitated Today’s Derivatives Nightmare at Wall Street’s Mega Banks
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 19, 2021 ~ When high risk derivatives start blowing up again at Wall Street’s mega banks and tanking the U.S. economy, be sure to send your thoughts along to these two men: former Congressman Randy Hultgren (R-IL) and former Congressman Kevin Yoder (R-KS). You can reach Hultgren at the Illinois Bankers Association where he now sits as President and CEO after losing his seat in Congress in the 2018 election. Yoder…wait for it…is a registered lobbyist at Hobart Hallaway & Quayle Ventures after also losing his seat in the general election of 2018. These two men were effectively the handmaidens of Wall Street in getting a critical derivatives provision in the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation repealed in 2014. We’ll get to the specifics of the role the two men played in a moment, but first some background. According to the official analysis and report … Continue reading
The New York Fed Is Not the Only Place Obsessed with Market Intelligence Gathering; the U.S. Treasury Does the Same Thing in a Secure “Markets Room”
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 18, 2021 ~ Before daybreak on any business day in lower Manhattan, the glow of lights from Bloomberg terminals illuminate windows at 33 Liberty Street, home of the New York Fed. The New York Fed not only has its own trading floor with speed dials to the Wall Street trading houses, but it also has its own global markets intelligence gathering group, called simply the Markets Group. According to a previously released educational video featuring Karin Kimbrough, then the Director of Financial Stability Market Monitoring at the New York Fed – a position she held until November of 2014 — the traders at the New York Fed take turns coming in at 4:30 a.m. in order to get a jump on market intelligence by calling their contacts in London, Frankfurt and Japan. (See video below.) Kimbrough explains what kind of intelligence the traders and … Continue reading