Category Archives: Uncategorized

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 3, 2021 ~ The new, 34-year old Democratic Senator from Georgia, Jon Ossoff, let a very big cat out of the bag at yesterday’s Senate Banking hearing. For at least a year, from September 17, 2019 through at least September 30, 2020, the New York Fed, acting as an agent for the Federal Reserve, doled out a cumulative $9 trillion or more in repo loans. The Fed would say only that the money was going to some of its 24 Primary Dealers on Wall Street, without naming any specific bank receiving the money. In June of 2020, the New York Fed abruptly stopped reporting the dollar amounts it was pumping out each day. (See Watchdog Report: Fed’s Billions in Emergency Repo Loans to Wall Street Didn’t Go Away in June; They Just Went Dark.) The emergency repo loans by the Fed began months before there … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 2, 2021 ~ The Senate Banking Committee will convene today to conduct confirmation hearings for President Joe Biden’s nominees to fill two key Wall Street watchdog posts: Gary Gensler to Chair the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Rohit Chopra as Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As a result of Democrats taking control of the Senate, Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, is the new Chair of the Senate Banking Committee. Curiously, however, the prior Republican Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, the mild-mannered Mike Crapo of Idaho, is not the Ranking Member of the Committee. He has been replaced by a man far more likely to engage in aggressive Koch-speak, Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. (Toomey was all set to become the new Chair of the Senate Banking Committee but then things went south in Georgia and Democrats picked … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 1, 2021 ~ Beginning on September 17, 2019 – months before there was any report of a COVID-19 case anywhere in the world – the Federal Reserve turned on its money spigot to the trading houses on Wall Street. By October 23, 2019 the Fed announced that it was upping these loans to $690 billion a week – again, months before any report of COVID-19 anywhere in the world. Earlier in October 2019, the Fed had also announced that it would be buying back $60 billion a month in Treasury bills. Within a span of six months, the Fed had pumped out a cumulative $9 trillion in loans to Wall Street’s trading houses, according to its own spread sheets, with no peep as to which Wall Street firms were getting the bulk of that money. It’s more than a year later and the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 26, 2021 ~ The action in the U.S. Treasury market yesterday reminded us of the classic “I Love Lucy” episode at the chocolate factory. As the conveyor belt churns out chocolate balls faster than Lucy and Ethel can handle them, they resort to stuffing them in their mouths, their hats, and their shirts. Lucy remarks: “I think we’re fighting a losing game.” (See video clip below.) That was the scene in the Treasury market yesterday – too much supply and no where to stuff it, causing a sharp spike in yields which set off a stock market selloff that left the Dow down 559.8 points or 1.75 percent on the day, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq fared far worse, losing 478.5 points or 3.52 percent. That the Treasury market is now projectile vomiting T-notes should come as a surprise to no one. As the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 25, 2021 ~ It’s not just the nation’s Capitol that saw a lawless attempted coup this year. There’s an ongoing lawless coup taking place on Wall Street among stock manipulators who seem to be sending the message to the Biden administration, “we dare you to catch us.” We continue to write about GameStop because it stands at the intersection of everything that is corrupt and broken in U.S. markets: from payment-for-order flow, to high frequency trading, to front-running, to Dark Pools, to hedge funds masquerading as market makers and lack of an audit trail at the Securities and Exchange Commission to shed daylight on the whole corrupt mess. Just six days after some of the major players in the wild trading action of GameStop were hauled before the House Financial Services Committee and put under oath, the stock more than doubled in price … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 24, 2021 ~ Every Thursday, at approximately 4:30 p.m., the Federal Reserve provides a report on its balance sheet as of the prior day. It’s known as the H.4.1 report or the Wednesday Level report. On Thursday, September 4, 2008, the Fed’s H.4.1 report showed a $935 billion balance sheet as of Wednesday, September 3, 2008. That was 12 days before iconic financial institutions on Wall Street began to blow up in what became the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. As of last Wednesday, February 17, 2021, the Fed’s balance sheet stood at $7.6 trillion – an increase of 712.83 percent in less than 13 years. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 and such a staggering growth in its balance sheet has not occurred at any other period in U.S. history — not during the Great Depression, not even during … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 23, 2021 ~ At the end of last Thursday’s 4-hour long hearing on the forces behind the wild trading in shares of New York Stock Exchange-listed GameStop, Congressman Jesus (Chuy) Garcia of Illinois asked Citadel hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin how much money was managed by his hedge fund. Griffin replied: “We manage approximately $35 billion dollars of assets.” Garcia than suggested that Citadel was systemically important. Since this might be construed to mean that Citadel should be under heightened regulatory oversight, Griffin quickly responded with this: “I believe that our hedge fund would not be in the category as systemically important. With $30-some billion of equity it is simply not at the scale or magnitude of a JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo.” To make a proper assessment as to whether Citadel is a little minnow swimming peacefully with the Dolphins or … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 22, 2021 ~ Better Markets and Public Citizen, two of the most informed Wall Street watchdogs, provided written testimony for last Thursday’s hearing before the House Financial Services Committee on the structure of Wall Street. And, to put it mildly, their assessment of the state of affairs on Wall Street does not align with what hedge fund titan Ken Griffin of Citadel told lawmakers at the same hearing. Griffin testified, under oath mind you, that: “The U.S. capital markets are the envy of the world. Our nation’s ability to allocate capital to its best and highest use cr­­­­­eates jobs, drives innovation and fuels our economy.” In reality, foreign regulators have repeatedly filed enforcement actions against the largest banks on Wall Street for engaging in fraud and rigging markets. As for allocating capital “to its best and highest use,” Better Markets describes the prospects … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 19, 2021 ~ The most striking revelations in yesterday’s House Financial Services Committee hearing on the wild trading action in New York Stock Exchange-listed shares of GameStop came when Congresswoman Cindy Axne of Iowa questioned Vlad Tenev, the CEO of Robinhood, the trading app being increasingly used by young people to trade stocks and options on their mobile phones. GameStop is the brick-and-mortar video game retailer whose stock soared from $18.84 on December 31 of last year to an intraday high of $483 on January 28 – an unprecedented run of 2,465 percent in four weeks by a struggling retail outlet. Following the spectacular run, GameStop’s share price then quickly plunged back to earth, making its stock chart look like something you would see from a boiler room operation rather than a New York Stock Exchange-listed stock. GameStop’s closing price yesterday was $40.69. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 18, 2021 ~ The billionaire hedge fund titan of Citadel LLC and its market-making/trade execution arm, Citadel Securities, delivered a load of horse pukky in his written testimony to the House Financial Services Committee. Griffin is slated to appear as one of six witnesses at the hearing scheduled at noon today to examine the trading in shares of GameStop in January. GameStop is the brick-and-mortar video game retailer whose stock soared from $18.84 on December 31 of last year to an intraday high of $483 on January 28 – an unprecedented run of 2,465 percent in four weeks by a struggling retail outlet. The stock price then quickly plunged back to earth. It closed yesterday at $45.94. GameStop is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Its shares are not supposed to trade like a penny stock operated out of a boiler room. … Continue reading →