Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 24, 2015 By any measure, the taxpayer bailouts and Federal Reserve loans of more than $13 trillion infused into the banking system during and after the 2008 financial collapse eclipse any other period in U.S. history. A growing body of research now suggests that these bailouts have set us up for ever greater episodes of moral hazard. Kartik B. Athreya, writing for the Richmond Fed, has described moral hazard this way: “As for implicit guarantees as a source of systemic risk, the idea is this: Any belief among financial market participants especially creditors, that they will be made whole by the public in the event of the failure of the assets they finance (i.e., that they will be ‘bailed out’) will lead them, all else equal, to (i) take greater risks, even if that means becoming ever more opaque or interconnected, and (ii) … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 23, 2015 Yesterday, Rajlakshmi De and Hamid Mehran, two researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, posted an interesting treatise on what it takes to climb into the ranks of the largest banks in the U.S. The duo inform us that as of 2007, prior to the financial crisis, just 0.4 percent of all U.S. banks held $50 billion or more in assets. The six largest U.S. banks in 2007, with assets ranging from $2.1 trillion to $238 billion, had one unique quality in common – they were all more than a century old, except for Wachovia which was one year short of a century. Wachovia was teetering in 2008 during the financial crisis and was merged into Wells Fargo. The authors do not mention this or that another of the six banks, Citigroup, became insolvent in 2008 but was illegally … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 19, 2015 Yesterday, Mary Jo White was in London to address the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). While there, she commented on the U.K.’s new plan to hold senior managers in the finance industry responsible for fraud in their departments. Each senior manager will have a specific delegated responsibility and if fraud occurs in their area, he or she can be terminated and banned for life from the industry if the senior manager had knowledge of the fraud. White called the idea “intriguing.” While White was chatting with her fellow securities regulators in London on this novel idea of actually holding crooked Wall Street bosses accountable, Thomas Hayes was on trial in another section of London over charges that he rigged the benchmark interest rate, Libor, on which interest rates on loans and financial instruments are set around the world. Yesterday, Hayes produced … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 8, 2015 The chickens are coming home to roost in the campaign of the quintessential Wall Street Democrat, Hillary Clinton. The mountains of cash sluiced into the Clinton pockets and their Foundation together with Hillary’s destruction of emails from her stint as Secretary of State caught up with her last week in two devastating polls showing that a majority of Americans don’t think she is trustworthy. As cynical as we’ve become as a nation, surely a requirement to occupy the highest office in the land should include the belief by your fellow Americans that one is trustworthy. On June 2, a CNN/ORC poll was released showing that 57 percent of those polled, up from 49 percent in March, say Hillary is not honest and trustworthy. The same day, the Washington Post published the findings from a poll conducted by itself and ABC, summarizing … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 4, 2015 Maybe we’re thinking about today’s stock market all wrong. As the largest corporations in America take on more and more debt to buy back their own shares and boost dividends to dress up their earnings and attract more investors, the stock market is looking more and more like a bond market in drag as equity. Bonds are backed by debt of the company; common stock represents equity in the business operations. But the business operations are now taking a backseat to the binge of stock buybacks. Jody Lurie, a credit analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott was quoted at Bloomberg News this week with this observation on the buyback phenomenon: “Companies have said, ‘We don’t have an ability to grow organically, so we can distract shareholders instead. When they buy back shares, all it does is optically make earnings per share look … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 2, 2015 Last Thursday, 29-year old Thomas J. Hughes, later described by his brother as “one of the happiest people I know,” allegedly took his life by jumping from a luxury apartment building at 1 West Street in Manhattan. Before any serious investigation had taken place, the New York tabloids had dismissed the matter as a suicide. Hughes was an investment banker on Wall Street. In any serious investigation, law enforcement is required to look at any potential motive for foul play. But when it comes to serial deaths among Wall Street bankers and technology personnel, occurring repeatedly over the last 18 months in highly unusual circumstances, the deaths are almost instantaneously labeled non-suspicious by the police. But there are two glaring motives for foul-play in almost all of these deaths involving Wall Street or global banks. First, major Wall Street banks hold … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 27, 2015 Senator Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts is a household name in America. Kara Stein is not. But both of these women are having a seismic impact on entrenched Wall Street group-think in Washington. Stein is one of the five Commissioners of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), appointed by President Obama and sworn in just 22 months ago. Stein brought a unique set of qualifications to the SEC: from 2009 to 2013, Stein served as Staff Director of the Securities, Insurance, and Investment Subcommittee of the Senate Banking Committee. She is credited with playing a key role in drafting significant portions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. What Warren and Stein have in common are values of right and wrong that resonate deeply with the American people and the willingness to speak common sense truths that challenge the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 22, 2015 When the U.S. Department of Justice held its press conference on Wednesday to announce that five mega banks were each pleading guilty to a felony charge, paying big fines and being put on probation for three years, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Leslie Caldwell specifically took a battering ram to the reputation of Swiss bank, UBS. Four banks — Citicorp, a unit of Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays — pleaded guilty to an antitrust charge of conspiring to rig foreign currency trading while UBS pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud for its earlier involvement in rigging the interest rate benchmark, Libor. In explaining why the Justice Department was ripping up the non-prosecution agreement it had negotiated with UBS in December 2012 over its involvement in the Libor fraud and now charging it with a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 20, 2015 The U.S. Department of Justice held a press conference in Washington, D.C. this morning at 10 a.m. to announce that two of the largest banks in the United States, Citicorp, a unit of Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase & Co., would plead guilty to felony charges in connection with the rigging of foreign currency trading. Two foreign banks, Barclays PLC and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), also pleaded guilty to felony charges in the same matter. A fifth bank, UBS, pled guilty to rigging the interest rate benchmark known as Libor. Today’s felony charges fall just short of the 19th anniversary of the U.S. Justice Department charging almost every major firm on Wall Street, including JPMorgan, the predecessors of Citigroup, and UBS with fixing prices on the Nasdaq stock market. No criminal charges were brought. That now looks like a serious … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 14, 2015 According to high priced media real estate, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup are set to plead guilty as soon as next week to criminal charges brought by the U.S. Justice Department for colluding with other banks in the trading of foreign currencies, known on Wall Street as Forex. Guilty pleas are also expected by Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays, while UBS, which cooperated early on in the probe, may receive a different charge. What has not garnered any media attention, however, is the unseemly role that the perpetually blindfolded regulator, the New York Fed, has played behind the scenes as two of the nation’s largest Wall Street banks head toward becoming admitted felons. Since January of 2014, the head of Foreign Exchange Trading at JPMorgan Chase, Troy Rohrbaugh, has served as the Chair of the Foreign Exchange Committee – a group … Continue reading →