By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 26, 2020 ~ The U.S. Senate voted 96-0 late yesterday on a massive bailout of Wall Street banks versus a short-term survival plan for American workers thrown out of their jobs – and potentially their homes. The text of the final bill was breathtaking in the breadth of new powers it bestowed on the Federal Reserve, including the Fed’s ability to conduct secret meetings with no minutes provided to the American people. The House of Representatives has yet to vote on the bill. The bill provides specific sums that can be made as loans or loan guarantees to passenger airlines ($25 billion), cargo airlines ($4 billion), and loans and loan guarantees to businesses necessary to national security ($17 billion). But when it comes to the money going to the Federal Reserve and then out the door to Wall Street, the legislation says only … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 25, 2020 ~ Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and New York State Senator and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer trotted out to the Senate floor after midnight last night to announce that they had reached a deal on the government stimulus package – the text of which the American public has not seen and only snippets of which have been seen by the members of Congress. Neither the Senate nor the House of Representatives have yet to vote on the bill. Americans got their first whiff that this was going to be another massive giveaway to Wall Street banks, just as happened from 2007 to 2010, when White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow appeared at the White House briefing yesterday evening. Kudlow revealed that the stimulus plan is actually a $6 trillion package — $2 trillion to struggling Americans and $4 trillion to dispense … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 24, 2020 ~ The chart that tells you how all of today’s economic troubles are going to end is not the bar graph of new deaths from coronavirus in Italy versus deaths in the U.S. It’s the chart that shows the number of potential deaths among the banks and insurance companies that have gorged themselves on risky derivatives and serve as counterparties to each other in a daisy chain of financial contagion. The chart above is why the Federal Reserve is throwing unprecedented sums of money in all directions on Wall Street. Because despite being a primary regulator to these massive bank holding companies, the Fed has no idea who is actually in trouble on derivative trades, other than looking at a chart like the one above. The chart above also justifies the Democrats refusing to sign off on the fiscal stimulus legislation … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 23, 2020 ~ For want of a mask the largest economy in the world has been gutted, with Goldman Sachs now projecting that U.S. GDP could contract by as much as 24 percent in the second quarter. New York City, a major contributor to U.S. GDP, is now the epicenter of coronavirus cases in the U.S. We saw this as a likely outcome from the moment that we learned that droplets could be spread from person to person through the air. According to the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan, “the average population density of the U.S. is 87 people per square mile.” But in New York City, “the population density is 27,012 people per square mile,” far greater than any other major city in America. Let that sink in for a moment. The population density in New York City … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 23, 2020 ~ Without one vote by an elected official, the Federal Reserve just became a brand new national legislative body. It will, without any oversight in Congress, decide what corporations and businesses to save and which to let fail. While the corporations and small businesses will receive “billions,” Wall Street’s mega banks and trading houses will, once again, have trillions of dollars of toxic securities removed from their balance sheets, including plunging stocks through the Fed’s Primary Dealer Credit Facility. The Fed also announced that its purchases of Treasury and Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) will now be limitless, rather than capped at a total of $500 billion. The reason for that change is that the Fed blew through $272 billion in Treasury purchases and $68 billion in MBS purchases just last week alone, already using up $340 billion of its $500 billion allotment … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 22, 2020 ~ According to the most recent report from the regulator of national banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), JPMorgan Chase has exposure to $1.2 trillion in Credit Default Swaps while Citibank has exposure to $1.76 trillion for a combined total of $2.96 trillion as of September 30, 2019. According to the same report, the total exposure to Credit Default Swaps among all national banks in the U.S. is $3.7 trillion – meaning that just these two banks are responsible for 80 percent of that exposure. As of this past Friday, JPMorgan Chase had lost 39.3 percent of its common equity capital in the past five weeks while Citigroup, parent of Citibank, had lost 51.7 percent. That left JPMorgan Chase with just $256.68 billion in market cap versus Citigroup’s meager $79.86 billion. One of our readers emailed us … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 21, 2020 ~ Above is the chart that has the Federal Reserve and its Wall Street money funnel (a/k/a New York Fed) chewing on their worry beads and rapidly rolling out their alphabet soup of Wall Street bailout programs in a replay of their playbook during the 2007-2010 Wall Street collapse. While Fed and Treasury officials have been repeatedly assuring Americans that these Wall Street behemoth banks have plenty of capital, they’ve actually been bleeding their common equity capital faster than a snow cone in July. In just the past five weeks, from the close of trading on Friday, February 14 through the close of trading on Friday, March 20, five of the largest Wall Street banks have lost an average of 45 percent of their common equity capital. Adding to the embarrassment for the Federal Reserve, Citigroup, the bank it propped up … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 19, 2020 ~ The Fed’s H.4.1 report was released at 4:30 p.m. today and it shows that the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet has skyrocketed to $4.7 trillion. It also shows that as of yesterday, its repo loans to the trading houses on Wall Street had soared to a total of $441.9 billion outstanding while borrowings from its Discount Window added another $28.2 billion, bringing the combined total to over $470 billion in loans outstanding. Wall Street has been receiving hundreds of billions of dollars a week in assistance from the Fed since September 17, 2019 while struggling Americans have yet to see a dime of assistance to help offset job losses from the coronavirus outbreak. The Fed doesn’t have to wait for a vote in Congress to funnel $9 trillion in cumulative loans to Wall Street. It can create an unlimited amount of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 19, 2020 ~ U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Wall Street pundits are all over cable news, repeating the mantra that “this is nothing like the last financial crisis,” while seeking to lay the blame for all of the newly-announced bailout measures for Wall Street at the feet of the coronavirus. But in terms of Wall Street privatizing profits and socializing losses, this is exactly like the last financial crisis. Wall Street’s crisis has a specific launch date: September 17, 2019. That’s when the Fed, for the first time since the last financial crisis, began dumping hundreds of billions of dollars a week into Wall Street’s trading houses. That program, called “repo loans,” now tallies up to more than $9 trillion in cumulative loans made to Wall Street at super-cheap borrowing rates. The first article we wrote on that Fed program was dated … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 18, 2020 ~ The Federal Reserve Board of Governors announced at 6 P.M. last evening that it is following the direction of Steve Mnuchin, the former foreclosure king who now serves as U.S. Treasury Secretary, and authorizing the reinstatement of a hideously operated, multi-trillion dollar bailout program for Wall Street’s trading houses known as the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF). Veterans on Wall Street think of it as the cash-for-trash facility, where Wall Street’s toxic waste from a decade of irresponsible trading and lending, will be purged from the balance sheets of the Wall Street firms and handed over to the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve – just as it was during the last financial crisis on Wall Street. The Fed fought for years in court to keep the details of the PDCF and its sibling Wall Street bailout programs a secret … Continue reading →