By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 6, 2020 ~ Yesterday, Bloomberg News reporters Tom Schoenberg and Liam Vaughan broke the story that JPMorgan Chase is under a criminal probe by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) over charges of rigging gold, silver and other precious metals markets. Six traders who worked on the precious metals desk at JPMorgan Chase have been indicted thus far but this is the first report that the bank itself is also under a criminal investigation. This marks the fourth criminal probe of the bank in the past 8 years by the U.S. Department of Justice with the bank pleading guilty to three felony counts in two of the prior criminal investigations. Throughout this serial crime wave, the Board of Directors of JPMorgan Chase has kept Jamie Dimon in his seat as Chairman and CEO. Despite knowing that three of the bank’s traders had been … Continue reading →

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” — Frédéric Bastiat, French Economist By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 5, 2020 ~ The real breaking news headline out of the Iowa Caucuses that had to be doled out over multiple days in measured bites of data is that Senator Bernie Sanders, who has promised to stop Wall Street’s plunder of the nation’s wealth, is leading the popular vote in the state. Despite mainstream media and cable news’ efforts to spin the long-delayed Iowa vote data as a big win for 38-year old Pete Buttigieg, whose name most Americans can’t spell or pronounce, the real too hot to handle news is that folks in the Heartland of America have rejected the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 4, 2020 ~ If you stayed up late into the night waiting for the Iowa Caucuses to report on the winner in the Democratic bid for President, you are likely in a foul mood this morning. As of 6:30 a.m. this morning, vote tallies had not been officially released for any of the more than 1600 precincts. That stands in contrast to prior Iowa Caucuses when 25 percent of the votes were reported by 10 p.m. on the same night as the caucuses and 85 percent were reported by 11 p.m. As cable news commentators vented their frustrations last night, shortly after 1 a.m. the Iowa Democratic Party said they would be manually tallying the data to make sure that the results could be reported with “full confidence.” The Iowa Democratic Party had earlier in the evening held a meeting with campaign representatives … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 3, 2020 ~  The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome (Jay) Powell, regularly states at his press conferences that the Federal Reserve is there to serve the interests of the American people. But his actions regularly undermine the credibility of that statement in a manner not all that dissimilar to Alan Greenspan, whose Fed chairmanship oversaw the gutting of Wall Street banking regulations and ended just before the greatest Wall Street collapse since the Great Depression. Powell goes out of his way to present himself at his press conferences as the quintessential public servant whose only mission is to perform the mandate set out by the elected representatives in Congress while his actions strongly suggest he is a wily rogue agent for Wall Street’s cartel of bank trading houses. Congress set out its mandate for the Federal Reserve and its fellow regulators to … Continue reading →

  By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 30, 2020 ~ The typically calm and unruffled Fed Chairman Jerome (Jay) Powell had a furrowed brow yesterday as he walked to the podium at his press conference at 2:30 p.m. It was clear from the outset that Powell had been put on a short leash as to what he could and could not say about the underpriced repo loans that the Fed has authorized the New York Fed to shower on the trading houses of Wall Street to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per week since last September 17. This is an unprecedented action by the Fed when there is no known financial crisis occurring. As we reported on Monday, the New York Fed has pumped a cumulative $6.6 trillion into those Wall Street trading houses in just the past four months – a third of the amount … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 29, 2020 ~ Yesterday, the nonprofit Wall Street watchdog, Better Markets, released an in-depth and scathing analysis of the past 20 years at Goldman Sachs. A bold headline summed it up as follows: “$874 Billion in Bailouts, 36 Major Legal Actions, $9.8 Billion in Fines and Settlements with Billions More Coming.” One key takeaway from this crime spree, write the authors, is this: “Goldman Sachs has amassed a RAP sheet showing that the financial crash of 2008 did little if anything to slow the pace of illegal activity that was well underway in the years leading up to the crash. Goldman Sachs was heavily engaged in illegal activity before the crash; they reached new heights of lawlessness in connection with the crash; and they continued to violate the law in the post-crash era….” Senator Bernie Sanders has repeatedly stated that the business model … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 28, 2020 ~ On October 11 of last year, in a bland press release that drew little mainstream media attention, the Federal regulator of national banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, announced that Citibank had agreed to pay a $30 million fine over charges that it held homes on which it had foreclosed off the market for more than the statutory holding period of five years. Citibank is the federally-insured, deposit-taking bank that is part of the serially-miscreant Wall Street mega bank, Citigroup. The action comes at a time when rents are rising dramatically across the U.S. as a result of a shortage of affordable homes to purchase. What is extremely troublesome about the OCC’s action, and which continues a trend among federal bank regulators in the Trump administration, is just how little the regulators are willing to share with … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 27, 2020 ~ According to the data made available on the public website of the New York Fed, since September 17, 2019 it has funneled a cumulative total of $6.6 trillion to some of  the 24 trading houses on Wall Street that are known as its “primary dealers.” The giant sum has been sluiced to Wall Street in the form of repurchase agreement (repo) loans without any details being provided to the elected representatives in Congress as to which firms are getting the money or what it’s being ultimately used for. But since the stock market has set repeated new highs since the program launched, some veteran market watchers believe the Fed is fueling a Ponzi-like rally in stocks. When the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, the General Accountability Office (GAO), tallied up the cumulative total that the Federal Reserve had secretly sluiced … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 24, 2020 ~  Yesterday, Transparency International released its annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). The CPI ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of government corruption, using 13 expert assessments and surveys of business executives. The most corrupt countries rank lower on the scale while a score of 100 represents the least corrupt. This year the United States ranked below Uruguay on the corruption gauge. The report found this about the U.S.:  “With a score of 69, the United States drops two points since last year to earn its lowest score on the CPI in eight years. This comes at a time when Americans’ trust in government is at an historic low of 17 percent according to the Pew Research Center.” The least corrupt nations are Denmark, New Zealand and Finland. Patricia Moreira, Managing Director of Transparency International, said this about the report’s … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 23, 2020 ~ The head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (Robert S. Kaplan), the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (Neel Kashkari), the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury (Steve Mnuchin), the President of the European Central Bank (Mario Draghi) and the head of the Bank of England (Mark Carney) all have two things in common: they sit atop vast amounts of money and they are all alums of Goldman Sachs. In addition, the immediate past President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, William Dudley, which secretly sluiced over $29 trillion to bail out Wall Street banks during the financial crisis and has now opened its money spigot for trillions of dollars more, worked at Goldman Sachs for more than two decades, rising to the rank of partner and U.S. Chief Economist. Goldman Sachs has been variously depicted … Continue reading →