Search Results for: koch

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 12, 2020 ~  So far this year, the mega Wall Street bank, Citigroup, has lost 37 percent of its market value – outpacing peer banks like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. (See chart below.) Then there was the fat finger in August in the back office of Citigroup that wired $900 million by mistake to pay off the entire principal balance of a Revlon bond instead of making just the payment of interest on the bond. Citigroup is now embroiled in lawsuits with the Revlon lenders, attempting to get them to return the money. According to Institutional Investor, “a total of $526.4 million has yet to be returned” as of August 27. The lenders are refusing to return the funds to Citigroup on the basis that Revlon owed them the money anyway because Revlon had improperly changed the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 21, 2020 ~ One of the key right-wing architects of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Stephen K. (Steve) Bannon, was arrested early yesterday morning while cruising in the Long Island Sound on a 150-foot yacht owned by the fugitive Chinese billionaire, Guo Wengui, according to law enforcement officials. Bannon had served as CEO of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and as senior counselor and chief strategist to the president for the first seven months of his term. Bannon, along with three others, were charged with defrauding donors in a $25 million fundraising scheme called “We Build the Wall.” The plan was originally described as money to support President Trump’s efforts to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico but was later changed to a privately-funded project to build a wall. Some of the money did actually build a segment of wall. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 20, 2020 ~ We have a marketing suggestion for the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors if it is nutty enough to accept JPMorgan Chase’s overture to place its ATM machines on the premises of U.S. post offices. The marketing idea goes like this: place a big red, white and blue sign over each JPMorgan Chase ATM machine that reads: “From the wonderful folks who were Bernie Madoff’s bankers.” Business media was abuzz yesterday with the news that JPMorgan Chase has had conversations with the U.S. Postal Service regarding placing the bank’s ATM machines in post office branches. CNBC quoted Trish Wexler, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan Chase, confirming the talks and making the following statement: “We had very preliminary conversations with the U.S. Postal Service several months ago about what it might look like to lease a small number of spaces to place … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 22, 2020 ~ If you feel like you’re waking up every day to a country that’s reenacting a page from the Dr. Seuss children’s classic, “Wacky Wednesday,” you’ll be comforted to know you’re not alone. Today is Wednesday. It was wackier than usual. First there was the story by Brentin Mock of Bloomberg News about how the District Attorney of Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, had said this about the potential for Trump’s paramilitary coming into his city and hauling people away in unmarked cars: “Anyone, including federal law enforcement, who unlawfully assaults and kidnaps people will face criminal charges from my office.” That Wacky Wednesday statement was made because federal “law enforcement” is actually assaulting and kidnapping peaceful protestors on the streets of Portland, Oregon on orders from Donald Trump, the President of the United States. The Attorney General of Oregon, Ellen Rosenblum, has … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 17, 2020 ~ Donald Trump is the man that the libertarian billionaire Charles Koch reluctantly accepted to play Hank Rearden in the Oval Office. Rearden was the fictional character in Ayn Rand’s novel, Atlas Shrugged. The libertarian story line of the novel is that a federal government that grows too big with too many regulations is anathema to the corporate geniuses that should be running the country. According to Nicholas Confessore, writing for the New York Times in January 2015, the Koch Brothers (Charles and David) and their billionaire minions that meet secretly twice a year at tony resorts to strategize on running the country, agreed to spend upwards of $900 million “to shape a presidential election that is already on track to be the most expensive in history.” This, writes Confessore, would allow the Koch machine to “operate at the same financial … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 28, 2020 ~ Taxpayers’ money under the CARES Act is going up in smoke — literally. As of today, there are more than 32,000 people in the United States hospitalized with COVID-19, with thousands struggling to breathe from a virus that attacks the respiratory system as well as other parts of the body. So what has the Federal Reserve decided to do to help out during this national health crisis? It’s propping up the prices of the bonds issued by fossil fuel corporations and Big Tobacco – two serial polluters of the air we breathe. The Fed decided to release its first list of individual corporate bond purchases in its Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility today – on Sunday – when folks are out taking a walk with face masks in an effort to avoid dangerous particles in the air. The same Fed … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 17, 2020 ~ Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is used to getting his way. After serving two terms as New York City’s Mayor as a Republican, he used his own vast stash of cash to repeal term limits and give himself another four-year term, running as an Independent. Now he has promised to do the unprecedented: spend $1 billion of his own money to install himself as President of the United States, running on the Democratic ticket. Bloomberg’s campaign increasingly resembles an octopus with money gushing out of its tentacles into anything and everything that will inject Michael Bloomberg into the presidential dialogue on the local, national or social media stage. And there is an unusually dark curtain being drawn around the early days of that spending. While there has been much media ado about the first Federal Election Commission filing that Bloomberg made in … 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: September 26, 2019 ~ Editor’s Note: We have a news flash for our reporting colleagues at mainstream media – you are missing high drama and great quotes by failing to cover the Wall Street-related hearings being held regularly by the House Financial Services Committee. This Committee is dead serious about holding Federal regulators and Wall Street banks’ collective feet to the fire. After more than 30 years of watching congressional hearings covering Wall Street, we have to commend the Chair of this Committee, Maxine Waters, and the individual Congressmen and Congresswomen who serve on this Committee for their outstanding knowledge of how Wall Street has erected an elaborate and highly efficient wealth transfer system from the poor and middle class of America to the pockets of the one percent. ~~~ On Tuesday, September 24, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee, chaired … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 4, 2019 ~  On July 29, those savvy market watchers at Themis Trading posted a report on their blog about how a Republican Senator from Louisiana (about 1400 miles from Wall Street) had taken a peculiar interest in the long-delayed system that would shine a bright light on who might be rigging stock trading on any particular day. The system is called the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) and the Securities and Exchange Commission has been stalling its creation for the entire 85 years the SEC has existed and been charged with investor protection. The idea of the CAT is to spot illegal and manipulative trading and pinpoint exactly what firms and individuals are placing the trades by looking at real-time data. A stock market without a CAT is nothing more than a thinly disguised wealth transfer system for the one percent and, apparently, … Continue reading →