Search Results for: Jamie Dimon

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 7, 2024 ~ Robert B. Reich, the former U.S. Labor Secretary under President Bill Clinton, a bestselling author and Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley, penned an essay in May on why billionaires should not exist. Reich declares that there are only five ways someone can become a billionaire.  (Reich narrates his essay in the video below, complete with cool graphics.) Reich lists the following five methods of becoming a billionaire: (1) exploit a monopoly; (2) exploit inside information; (3) buy off politicians; (4) defraud investors; (5) get money from rich relatives. You are likely thinking that there is nothing wrong with inheriting wealth from a rich relative. But if the money is inherited from a billionaire relative, it means that he or she likely got that wealth through one of the first four methods. Thus, dirty money is simply moving from generation to generation. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 29, 2024 ~ The New York Fed, which has bank examiners engaged in supervising JPMorgan Chase, has also repeatedly provided bailout funds to JPMorgan Chase; was supervising JPMorgan Chase when it lost $6.2 billion of deposits from its federally-insured bank by gambling in derivatives on its London trading desk; allowed JPMorgan Chase’s Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, to previously sit on the New York Fed’s Board of Directors, even as he faced the $6.2 billion derivatives trading scandal; and the New York Fed has exclusively used JPMorgan Chase to hold, as custodian, more than $2.3 trillion of the Federal Reserve’s Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) for the past 15-1/2 years – despite JPMorgan Chase admitting to five felony counts brought by the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice during that time. If there was an admitted felon in your neighborhood, would that be your … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 24, 2024 ~ Since the financial crash of 2008 and the Fed’s multi-trillion dollar bank bailouts that followed, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has been waving a giant red flag every quarter in its “Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities” reports. For sixteen years the OCC has been reporting that just four megabanks are responsible for more than 80 percent of the trillions of dollars in bank derivatives. As the chart above shows, as of December 31, 2023, Goldman Sachs Bank USA, JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., Citigroup’s Citibank and Bank of America held a staggering total of $168.26 trillion in derivatives out of a total of $192.46 trillion at all U.S. banks, savings associations and trust companies. That’s four banks holding 87 percent of all derivatives at all 4,587 federally-insured institutions in the U.S. that existed as of December 31, 2023. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 12, 2024 ~ Yesterday, The Hill published an OpEd by the man who, literally, wrote the book on the megabanks: Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr., Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University Law School. Wilmarth raised critical points on why these megabanks continue to pose unacceptable levels of risk to U.S. financial stability and need to dramatically boost their equity capital – notwithstanding their fierce lobbying and propaganda battle to overturn the proposed new capital rules by bank regulators. The forces of the universe seemed to align with Wilmarth’s gutsy OpEd yesterday. In a display of just how dangerously interconnected with derivatives these megabanks remain, their share prices tanked in tandem yesterday despite the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes each setting a new record high. The contagion among the megabanks spread after French President Emmanuel Macron called snap parliamentary elections for June 30 and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 3, 2024 ~ Last Wednesday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) released its quarterly banking profile for the quarter ending March 31, 2024. A key piece of data released at that time was the net income (net profits) for all 4,568 FDIC-insured banks in the United States. That tally came in at $64.2 billion. We decided to see just how concentrated those profits have become at a handful of behemoth banks on Wall Street – which also dangerously operate as trading casinos. We had no problem knowing where to start. We picked the largest and riskiest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase. The publicly-traded JPMorgan Chase & Co., which includes its sprawling trading operations around the globe as well as the FDIC-insured bank, had previously reported net income for the first quarter of $13.4 billion. A handy page at the FDIC, using the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 30, 2024 ~ On January 18, 2019 the Cambridge University Press published a stunning research paper from the Journal of Institutional Economics. The paper provides the hard numbers to support the thesis that federal banking and securities regulators have arrived at a deep understanding and acceptance that the more connections they acquire while working in government and the more prominent their position becomes – the fatter their future paycheck will be once they make the leap to a megabank on Wall Street. The authors call what the “public servants” are selling to their prospective Wall Street employers “bureaucratic capital.” The authors then provide the hard data in the chart below, showing that Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Citigroup are light years ahead of their peers in monetizing public service to fatten their own bottom lines and create an influence network. (The structure of that influence … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 28, 2024 ~ How does a Wall Street trading firm gain competitive advantage to entice spoofers and high-frequency trading firms to use its trading platforms instead of those of its competitors? How about having its trading compliance personnel wear a blindfold as billions of trades occur over the span of 8 or 9 years? That is essentially what three of JPMorgan Chase’s federal regulators have suggested is behind the $448 million in fines they’ve leveled against three separate units of the largest bank in the United States. When JPMorgan Chase filed its quarterly report with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 1, it sheepishly admitted that the $348 million it had already paid out to two of its regulators for trading violations was not the end of this saga. It said that it “expects to enter into a resolution with a third U.S. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 21, 2024 ~ Yesterday, at 10:08 a.m., Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio and the Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, sent out a shocking emailed statement to the press indicating that Brown was “calling on the President to immediately nominate a new Chair who can lead the FDIC at this challenging time and for the Senate to act on that nomination without delay.” By 6:27 p.m. the Associated Press was reporting that Martin Gruenberg would step down as Chair of the FDIC and President Joe Biden would announce his nomination to replace him “soon.” The Brown statement was a gut punch to every engaged American and journalist who actually understands what’s at stake here. It was not only a back stab to Gruenberg, it was a back stab to Brown’s highly-respected colleague on the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 16, 2024 ~ Foreign central banks and sovereign wealth funds are required under U.S. law to report their publicly-traded U.S. stock positions no later than 45 days after the end of each calendar quarter, if those stock holdings reach $100 million or more. This is done on Form 13F, which is filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Sophisticated traders, algorithms at the big trading houses on Wall Street, and giant hedge funds mine that data to spot bullish or bearish signals they might be able to trade on. Unfortunately, for reasons we haven’t been able to unleash from the tight grip of the SEC over many years, some of the central banks and sovereign wealth funds with massive holdings in U.S. stocks do not report their holdings, or, the SEC is granting them confidentiality. One sovereign wealth fund that has been reliably … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 14, 2024 ~ In 2020, Netflix released a documentary series titled “Filthy Rich,” based on the book by the same name. The series examined how sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was able to continue to enjoy his wealth and power even after Palm Beach, Florida police had built a case that he had sexually-assaulted more than a dozen young girls – many from public schools in middle-class areas surrounding the mansions of Palm Beach. A sweetheart deal between the Florida State Attorney and the U.S. Department of Justice allowed Epstein to serve just 13 months in jail from June 2008 to July 2009, most of it in a work release program in which he was driven to an office daily by his chauffeured limousine. Epstein was allowed to be on the loose for another decade until the Department of Justice was embarrassed into arresting Epstein … Continue reading →