Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 11, 2016 There’s something big and scary going on behind the scenes but, as usual, the public isn’t reading about it on the front pages of the newspapers. Yesterday, the broad stock market, as measured by the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index, declined a modest 0.29 percent while big Wall Street banks like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase fell by triple that amount. Bank of America, which bought the big retail brokerage firm, Merrill Lynch, in the midst of the 2008 crash, fell by 8.6 times the rate of the decline in the S&P to give up 2.50 percent. Equally noteworthy, two major insurers, MetLife and Prudential Financial, saw percentage market losses far in excess of the S&P. MetLife declined by 2.74 percent while Prudential Financial lost 1.68 percent. Prudential Financial has been named a Systemically Important Financial Institution (SIFI) by the Financial Stability … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 10, 2016 Michael Bloomberg served three terms as the Mayor of New York City from January 2002 to January 2014. The last term was made possible by the Mayor spending an estimated $60-$90 million of his own money repealing the two-term limits – an act that outraged many New Yorkers. According to Forbes, during Michael Bloomberg’s 12-year stint as Mayor, his wealth exploded more than ten-fold, from $3 billion to $31 billion. The bulk of Bloomberg’s wealth has derived from leasing his Bloomberg data and news terminals at a cost of approximately $24,000 per terminal per year to tens of thousands of Wall Street trading desks and global banks around the world. The Mayor’s wealth and where it comes from is a reality that poses an inherent conflict of interest for any news outlet but it is especially so for a news organization … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 4, 2016 Having closely observed how Citigroup collapsed under the weight of its own corruption and risk-taking hubris in 2008 and spread its contagion across Wall Street, a headline we never dreamed we would see in our lifetime is shown above from Risk Magazine’s web site. The article under the heart-stopping headline is dated January 27, 2016 and informs readers that Citigroup is now viewed by clients as one of the top-three market makers in single name Credit Default Swaps in both North America and Europe.  Credit Default Swaps are the instruments that blew up the giant insurance company, AIG, in 2008, requiring the U.S. government to bail out the company to the tune of $185 billion. The bailout money went in the front door of AIG and was then funneled out the backdoor to the big Wall Street banks that had used … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 22, 2016 A mere three months after JPMorgan Chase and three of its competitors (Citicorp, Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland) pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to rig foreign currency trading and paid criminal fines totaling over $2.5 billion, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, began meeting in secret with his competitors in the asset management field. On February 1 of this year, the Financial Times reported that “secret summits” had been held beginning in August 2015 between “asset management bosses” including Jamie Dimon, Abby Johnson of Fidelity, Larry Fink of BlackRock, and Tim Armour of Capital Group. The article went on to report that Dimon and Warren Buffett had convened the sessions at JPMorgan’s headquarters in New York to discuss “a statement of best practice on corporate governance.” Secret meetings between competitors, regardless of what they are … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 21, 2016 On July 14, when America’s biggest bank by assets reported its second quarter earnings, this headline ran at the New York Times: “JPMorgan Chase Has Strong Quarter as Earnings Top Estimates.” CNBC, a unit of NBCUniversal, used the same criteria in its headlines to report the earnings of Citigroup, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley — putting a positive spin in the headline because the earnings had topped what analysts were expecting – rather than the far more meaningful, and traditional, measure of whether earnings had beaten the same quarter a year earlier. CNBC’s headlines read: Citigroup earnings handily top Wall Street expectations: CNBC-July 15, 2016 Bank of America earnings top expectations: CNBC-July 18, 2016 Morgan Stanley solidly beats earnings expectations: CNBC-July 20, 2016 This is hubris of the highest order. Publicly traded companies simply guide research analysts toward lowered expectations on their upcoming quarterly earnings so that the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 19, 2016 Breaking up the dangerous banks on Wall Street that are gambling with their taxpayer-backstopped insured deposits by restoring the Glass-Steagall Act is now a part of the newly adopted platforms of both the Democrat and Republican parties. Under a restored Glass-Steagall Act, banks holding insured deposits would not be allowed to affiliate with Wall Street investment banks and brokerage firms that regularly underwrite risky securities and engage in trillions of dollars of derivative gambles. It would effectively put an end to the idea that these complex banks are too-big-to-fail because the life savings of small savers holding insured deposits in the bank would be at risk. Bernie Sanders’ supporters pushed the Democratic Party to include the provision in its platform. Today’s media spin is that Trump & Company added it in hopes of picking up some Sanders’ supporters who have vowed … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 15, 2016 The problem with stereotyping Republicans is that when they are screaming from the rooftops about a legitimate fraud, Democrats don’t believe them — even when the evidence is overpowering that they are right. For years now, Republicans have been screaming that the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that was signed into law in 2010 by President Obama is a fraud on the public. Few have examined Dodd-Frank’s failed promises as carefully as Wall Street On Parade. The legislation promised to rein in derivatives – it didn’t. It promised to end the future need for taxpayer bailouts of too-big-to-fail banks. It didn’t. It promised to institute the Volcker Rule to prevent banks from gambling with insured deposits. It didn’t. It promised to reform the practices of the ratings agencies that played a pivotal role in the 2008 collapse. It … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 14, 2016 According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), as of March 31, 2016, there were 6,122 FDIC insured financial institutions in the United States. Of those 6,122 commercial banks and savings associations, 4,701 did not hold any derivatives. To put that another way, 77 percent of all U.S. banks found zero reason to engage in high-risk derivative trading. Citigroup, however, the bank that spectacularly blew itself up with toxic derivatives and subprime debt in 2008, became a 99-cent stock during the crisis, and received the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. financial history despite being insolvent at the time, today holds more derivatives than 4,701 other banks combined which are backstopped by the taxpayer. The total notional amount of derivatives sitting at Citigroup’s bank holding company is $55.6 trillion according to the March 31, 2016 report from the Office of the Comptroller … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 13, 2016  The two greatest periods of wealth inequality in the United States (the 1920s and today) have one critical element in common – there was no Glass-Steagall Act. The absence of the Glass-Steagall Act allows Wall Street banks to use the savings of small depositors across the United States to fuel risky speculation on Wall Street and create the super rich. After the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression, the Glass-Steagall Act became law and put an end to this institutionalized wealth transfer system from the legislation’s enactment in 1933 until its repeal in 1999 under the Presidency of Bill Clinton. Today’s banking system is a perfect reflection of U.S. society. Just six banks (one-tenth of one percent of the 6,000 insured-depository banks in the U.S.) control the bulk of total assets while, as Senator Bernie … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 11, 2016 If it’s any comfort, and it likely won’t be, markets are now even more bizarre than the situation of the two presumptive candidates for the President of the United States: one is escaping indictment for treating above Top Secret material with the seriousness of a drunken frat boy at an all-night party while the other is hurling adolescent insults on his Twitter page. This in a country where the Commander in Chief will oversee more than 7,000 nuclear warheads. On Friday, the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index traded intraday at a new high of 2131.71, beating its prior closing high of 2130.82. It closed a tad lower at 2129.9 but still up 1.53 percent on the day. A rally in the stock market would normally drain money from U.S. Treasury notes, since a stock rally means confidence in a growing economy … Continue reading →