Search Results for: epstein

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 24, 2021 ~ If you’ve been following our reporting of JPMorgan Chase since Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon has been at the helm, you’re aware of one striking fact: this bank has a pattern of getting into bed with unsavory characters: Bernie Madoff, check. Racketeering traders, check. A sex trafficker of children, Jeffrey Epstein, check. Money launderers, check. The guy who bragged on his resume that he knew how to game electric markets, check. Despite an unprecedented record of five felony counts from the U.S. Department of Justice since 2014, to which it admitted guilt, and the reputational damage this has done to its brand, JPMorgan Chase’s asset management unit made the unusual decision last year to form a joint venture with an SFR (Single-Family Rental company) whose tenant complaints are so eye-popping that they fill pages on the internet and have been the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 22, 2021 ~ Nine days ago we cautiously reported that Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio who holds a critical view of Wall Street’s serial bent toward fraudulent activities, was set to take the Chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee. This would endow Brown with the power to set the agenda for hearings, call witnesses and put them under oath, and issue subpoenas. We wrote this at the time: “We get the feeling that Senator Brown took the very wise and preemptive step of getting mainstream media to announce his Chairmanship yesterday because he clearly understood that Wall Street’s mega banks would be fighting behind the scenes in an effort to prevent him from advancing to Chair.” With the addition of the two new Democratic Senators from Georgia’s special runoff (Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff) and Vice President Kamala Harris as the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: December 7, 2020 ~ The New York Times columnist and two-time Pulitzer winner, Nicholas Kristof, has managed to do in one column what Canada, the U.S. Department of Justice, Visa and Mastercard have failed to do: send a strong message that profiting from the rape of children will result in dire consequences. At 7:06 a.m. on Friday, Kristof Tweeted this: “I’ve spent the last few months reporting this piece about Pornhub. What most people don’t realize is that it’s infested with rape videos. I talked to child trafficking survivors whose rape videos the company had distributed and monetized. Unconscionable.” “Unconscionable” is a peculiar word to use given the breadth of Kristof’s article. If monetizing the rape of children isn’t criminal in the U.S. and Canada, we’re living in a sicker era than any of us have imagined. (Pornhub, a video website accessible on the internet, is owned … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 22, 2020 ~ Anyone who has carefully studied the presidency of Donald Trump knows that his job is Distractor in Chief. Investigative reporters for the New York Times have spent endless hours compiling Trump’s tax evasions and unreported foreign bank account in China. The Washington Post has spent endless hours compiling more than 20,000 lies Trump has told since taking office. But the real man in charge of directing the agenda of the Trump administration, fossil fuels billionaire Charles Koch, has received far less scrutiny. Yesterday, former President Barack Obama delivered a speech at a campaign rally in Philadelphia for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. During the remarks, Obama got to the core of what Charles Koch’s political network and money machine has done to gut the safeguards for everyday Americans at the federal regulatory agencies that previously protected them. Obama didn’t mention … 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 7, 2020 ~  Outside of the Wall Street executives that did business with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, his first lieutenant, Ghislaine Maxwell, knows more about his Wall Street secrets than any other living person. Maxwell was arrested and indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (part of the U.S. Justice Department) on July 2, less than two weeks after the head of that office, Geoffrey Berman, was abruptly fired from his job by Attorney General William Barr. Berman’s former Deputy, Audrey Strauss, conducted the press conference regarding the Maxwell arrest. (See video below.) We immediately noticed a peculiarity about the indictment document provided by Strauss. It covered only a brief 4-year period, running from 1994 through 1997. One of the main accusers of Maxwell, Virginia (Roberts) Giuffre, has credibly indicated in previous court filings that Epstein … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 25, 2020 ~ Randal Quarles is the Vice Chairman for Supervision at the Federal Reserve Board. This is the most important position among Federal regulators when it comes to sniffing out and preventing the kind of systemic in-house bank frauds that collapsed much of Wall Street in 2008 and brought on the greatest U.S. economic downturn since the Great Depression. On November 26, 2018, Quarles was also appointed to a three-year term as Chairman of the Financial Stability Board, the international standard-setting body for financial stability around the globe. Financial stability at the largest global banks that Quarles oversees is looking less certain today than it has since the last financial crisis. Quarles is playing a key role in helping Fed Chairman Jerome Powell establish emergency lending facilities that are making trillions of dollars in revolving loans to Wall Street banks and trading … Continue reading →