Search Results for: is the new york fed too conflicted

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 30, 2015 The problem with Wall Street is not just that individual participants serially disrespect the law. The bigger problem is that Wall Street as an industry has structured itself as an ingrained law-avoidance system. There’s simply no other industry in America where you could start the sentence – “Wall Street is the only industry in America where…” – and find endless ways to finish that thought. Jamil Nazarali, the head of Citadel Execution Services, the trading arm of a hedge fund and dark pool operator, gave the above sentence a trial run on October 27 at a Securities and Exchange Commission meeting on market structure. Nazarali said: “This industry is the only one that I am aware of where a for-profit public company regulates its customers and competitors. And I understand that you guys think that that’s important but what is it … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 28, 2014 If you missed our coverage in 2012 of the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center where Wall Street sleuths from those serially charged firms like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan dunk donuts alongside New York’s finest in a $150 million spy center, keeping tabs on the comings and goings of their own Wall Street employees as well as innocent pedestrians, then you may not fully appreciate why Carmen Segarra has been celebrated all weekend for her temerity in taping her boss and colleagues at the New York Fed, as well as employees inside the cloistered bowels of Goldman Sachs. While Wall Street was spying on everyone else in lower Manhattan in a high tech center funded by the taxpayer, Segarra strolled over to a Spy Store, plunked down a modest sum and walked out with a tiny tape recorder. She then proceeded to capture the essence … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 30, 2014 A man with a long history of keeping big bank secrets safe from the public’s prying eyes has denied the appeal filed by Wall Street On Parade to obtain specifics about the worker deaths upon which JPMorgan Chase pockets the life insurance money each year. According to its financial filings, as of December 31, 2013, JPMorgan held $17.9 billion in Bank-Owned Life Insurance (BOLI) assets, a dark corner of the insurance market that allows banks to take out life insurance policies on their workers, secretly pocket the death benefits, and receive generous tax perks subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer. According to experts, JPMorgan could potentially hold upwards of $179 billion of life insurance in force on its current and former workers, based on the size of its BOLI assets. The man who denied Wall Street On Parade’s appeal is Daniel P. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 12, 2014 Mark Carney, the head of the Bank of England, and other officials from the BOE were put through a five hour marathon of questioning yesterday by Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee covering everything from how long the BOE plans to continue Quantitative Easing (QE), to the potential for Scotland to vote for its independence, to what it knew and when it knew it about the rigging of the Foreign Exchange market by colluding global banks. The bombshell of the day, however, did not occur during the session on the Foreign Exchange scandal, which is stacking up to be a more serious matter than the rigging of the Libor interest rate benchmark which occurred under the nose of the Bank of England and the British Bankers Association. (London now seems to be in competition with itself for the prize of the century for overseeing the rigging … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: January 16, 2014 There was a distinct chill in the air yesterday as questioning got underway in the U.S. Senate’s hearing on whether the Wall Street mega banks that caused the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression from 2008 through 2010 should be allowed to effectively control the price of aluminum and other metals by owning metal warehouses and creating bottlenecks in delivery; or allowed to own oil pipelines, terminals and tankers while trading trillions of dollars a year in oil futures – potentially rigging that market against the consumer. It’s not that there’s limited evidence that these firms will rig markets. These are the same firms that are serially charged and pay enormous fines for fraud and cartel-like behavior. Traders even refer to themselves as “The Cartel” and “The Bandits’ Club” in chat rooms. The hearing was called by Senator Sherrod Brown, Chair of the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 7, 2014 Before Timothy Geithner became the 75th Secretary of the U.S. Treasury in 2009, he served as the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for five years. The New York Fed is one of Wall Street’s primary regulators. But after leaving his post at the New York Fed, Geithner testified before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Financial Services on March 26, 2009 that he was not regulating Wall Street as he earned his $400,000 a year with car, driver and private dining room. At the 2009 hearing, in response to a question from Congressman Ron Paul, Geithner said: “That was a very thoughtful set of questions. I just want to correct one thing. I have never been a regulator, for better or worse. And I think you are right to say that we have to be very … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: October 28, 2013 Last week the business press reported that the U.S. Department of Justice may assert charges against JPMorgan Chase for its role in perpetuating the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme which defrauded investors out of $17 billion in actual funds and $64 billion in paper losses based on the falsified values shown on client statements. Unnamed sources said the Justice Department may agree to a deferred prosecution agreement in exchange for an outside monitor or, in the alternative, charge JPMorgan’s banking division with violations of the Bank Secrecy Act for failing to report its Madoff suspicions to Federal authorities. Interestingly, JPMorgan did report its suspicions to a government regulator – in the United Kingdom, not in the U.S. Such a development would also raise serious new questions about how the Board of Trustees of NYU handles conflicts of interest. The Board is already under withering criticism … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 17, 2013 Since last evening, corporate media has been in a fierce competition to spin another toothless settlement on Wall Street as a win for the new tough cop on the beat, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair, Mary Jo White. It takes quite the creative imagination to frame this as anything more than the continuance of Wall Street’s business model of looting billions and paying back millions. Crime is still the best profit center Wall Street has going for it — having thoroughly dissuaded its customers against trusting its advice on investments. According to leaks, the settlement tab to JPMorgan Chase to make most of its civil regulatory problems disappear regarding the London Whale trades will be $700 to $800 million. (There still may be open criminal probes by the U.S. Justice Department and FBI. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission may bring its own civil enforcement action.) … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 19, 2013  On January 16 of this year, Richard Fisher, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, delivered a speech on the continuing threat to the U.S. economy posed by the too-big-to-fail banks. Fisher said: “I submit that these institutions, as a result of their privileged status, exact an unfair tax upon the American people. Moreover, they interfere with the transmission of monetary policy and inhibit the advancement of our nation’s economic prosperity.”  As part of his talk, Fisher presented a chart showing the Frankenbank nature of the five largest banks in the U.S. – JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley. Cumulatively, these five banks are the parent to 19,654 subsidiaries or affiliates while their nondeposit liabilities total over $4.1 trillion – a figure equal to 26.3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country.  On July 23, 2013, the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 10, 2013  President Obama adds to the rising stench of his nominations to the U.S. Treasury and Securities and Exchange Commission with the nomination of the billionaire Hilton Hotel heiress, Penny Pritzker, to be the next U.S. Commerce Secretary.  With the confirmed nominations of Mary Jo White as Chair of the SEC, Jack Lew as Treasury Secretary and now the nomination of Pritzker to lead Commerce, the President is sending the chilling message to the Nation’s young people that it’s legal if you can get away with it; and if you get away with enough and get rich enough, the President of the United States admires that and you can join the power elite. Building a career through honesty and hard work is for suckers.  Jack Lew, the President’s pick for Treasury, was paid millions as Chief Operating Officer for the very division of Citigroup that collapsed … Continue reading →