Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 29, 2016  Today, at 4:30 p.m., the Federal Reserve is scheduled to release the second leg of its annual stress tests of 33 banks holding $50 billion or more in total consolidated assets. The first leg of the tests was released last Thursday with all 33 banks getting a passing grade in terms of meeting the minimum capital cushion required. Today’s final round, called the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR), will determine whether the banks are allowed to continue or increase dividend payments, conduct share buybacks or issue secondary stock offerings. This is the sixth annual round of stress tests conducted by the Fed since the financial crash in 2008. In addition to the regular stress tests, eight large banks with significant trading and/or clearing operations are required to show losses if a major counterparty defaulted. Those banks are: Bank of America, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 27, 2016 Wall Street On Parade has reported on multiple occasions that the Federal Reserve has no idea what it’s doing with its stress testing of the largest banks on Wall Street. Last Friday’s market action, following the Brexit vote in the U.K. to leave the European Union, proved just how feeble the Fed is when it comes to assessing systemic risk and capital vaporization at the deeply interconnected Wall Street mega banks. While the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 3.39 percent at the close on Friday, Morgan Stanley lost a stunning 10.15 percent of its market capital in a 6-1/2 hour trading session. At that speed, Morgan Stanley’s equity market capital could be wiped out in 10 trading sessions were this Brexit panic to continue. Citigroup, which became a basket case during the 2008 financial crisis, ending up as a penny stock … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 24, 2016  The anti-establishment trend has picked up its pace this morning, showing no signs of abating. Around 2:30 a.m. New York time, Wall Street traders were stunned by the news that U.K. voters had backed leaving the European Union by 51.9 percent versus a remain vote of 48.1 percent in the anxiously anticipated Brexit referendum held yesterday. The outcome slammed markets – leaving many wondering if big banks and hedge funds were going to take heavy losses this morning for placing wrong way trades. Futures markets were doing little to reassure that this wasn’t the case with futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average showing a loss of over 553 points before the market opened and major Wall Street banks like Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase off by 6 to 7 percent in premarket trading. In times of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 22, 2016  Talk about bad timing. Tomorrow, while the Brexit vote takes place in the U.K. and is guaranteed to whipsaw markets through the Friday morning open when the results of the vote are expected, the Federal Reserve plans to add to market jitters on Thursday by announcing the results of its stress tests on the biggest banks — while withholding the final leg of the results until the following Wednesday. The stress tests are an annual Fed exercise which are meant to reassure the public and Congress that the mega banks are holding adequate capital for even an extreme economic downturn; in other words, that another epic taxpayer bailout of insolvent banks won’t sneak up on the Fed like it did in 2008. Unfortunately, according to the Federal agency established under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation to provide ongoing research on potential … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 17, 2016 The U.S. stock market was mired in red ink yesterday morning with every major Wall Street bank trading down on news that multiple polls in Britain were showing that a majority of citizens were in favor of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union (EU). A referendum vote on the issue is to be held next Thursday. Then, at 12:17 p.m. New York time yesterday, Bloomberg News printed the following headline: “U.K. Lawmaker Jo Cox Is Murdered, Silencing Brexit Debate.” Cox was a Member of Parliament from the Labour Party who was an advocate for the U.K. remaining in the EU. Cox, a mother of two children, was shot and stabbed by a man said to be in favor of Brexit, the term for a British exit from the EU. On the news of her death, which fueled the market … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 16, 2016  If you think that a referendum vote on June 23 by UK citizens on whether to withdraw from the European Union (called Brexit, short for British Exit), is simply a proxy on whether the UK should dislodge itself from the edicts of Brussels, think again. It’s morphed into a much broader debate on whether citizens worldwide should surrender their right to a participatory democracy in order to further the interests of multinational corporations, secret trade agreements packed with secret court tribunals, global banking hegemony and central banks attempting to keep all these balls in the air for their one percent overlords. One particular central bank is sure to come under fire today. Members of the British Parliament have been warning Mark Carney, head of the Bank of England (BOE), to not engage in political lobbying on the issue of Brexit, which … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 14, 2016  The UK’s largest newspaper, The Sun, with a daily print run of 1.7 million, has delivered a harsh indictment on its front cover today on continuing to allow European central planners and global bankers to run the UK by edict. UK citizens will vote on June 23 on whether to leave the European Union, a vote called Brexit, short for British Exit. The UK’s Guardian newspaper is reporting that two ICM polls, one conducted online and one by telephone, showed 53 percent support for leaving versus 47 percent for remaining in the EU. The message should serve as a sharp warning to Americans, who have allowed their central bank, the Federal Reserve, to march to the beat of the Wall Street bankers’ edicts while achieving catastrophic results for the country and its citizens. Since the Wall Street crash of 2008, enabled … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 10, 2016  A little noticed 2008 email from former Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, raises serious questions about his official narrative on the collapse of Lehman Brothers. We’ll get to the email in detail, but first some necessary background.  A lot of eyes rolled on Wall Street last October when Ben Bernanke, who chaired the Federal Reserve in the lead up to and during the financial collapse in 2008, released his memoir of the financial crisis with the title: “The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and its Aftermath.” Many Wall Street observers felt the title would have more correctly captured the facts on the ground had it read: “The Lack of Fed Courage to Supervise Mega Banks Led to an Epic Collapse.” (In the leadup to the crisis, the Fed allowed Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill and JPMorgan Chase CEO, Jamie … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 3, 2016  JPMorgan Chase’s perpetually controversial Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, was in Bournemouth, Dorset on the south coast of England this morning to reassure his workers that he wasn’t there to tell them how to vote in the upcoming June 23 referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union (the so-called “Brexit” or British Exit vote). He then proceeded to tell the sober-faced workers that if they voted for Brexit, he might axe upwards of 4,000 jobs across their country. Dimon first stated to the crowd of workers:  “I cannot and will not tell the British people how they should vote in this….” A few minutes later, he qualified that by telling the workers how many jobs he might have to cut if Brexit happened: “I don’t know if it means 1,000 jobs, 2,000 jobs, it could be as many as … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 31, 2016  Zurich Insurance Group has a terse statement on its web site today indicating that Martin Senn, its CEO who stepped down just five months ago, took his life last Friday. Senn was 59 years old. According to foreign news reports, Senn shot himself at the family’s vacation home in Klosters. Senn’s death comes less than three years after the sitting CFO of the same company, Pierre Wauthier, reportedly hung himself at his home near Lake Zug, Switzerland. Wauthier’s wife and two children were out of the country at the time and Wautheir was alone in the home, according to media reports. In the case of Wauthier’s death, police reported that he had left a typed suicide note, not a typical form of communication for one taking their life. On July 23, 2013, just five weeks before Wauthier is said to have … Continue reading →