By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 15, 2019 ~ As we’ve previously reported, five mega banks on Wall Street hold the fate of the entire financial system of the United States in their crony, frequently soiled hands. Yesterday’s trading action clearly showed the ugly warts between those banks and their derivative counterparties in the insurance industry. And even though their crony regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, allows the banks to trade their own stocks in darkness in their own internal Dark Pools, someone else clearly got the upper hand yesterday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost a whopping 800 points or 3.05 percent but each of the five mega banks outpaced the Dow’s losses on a percentage basis. That’s not a good thing when Congress has left the fate of a nation in such perilous hands – especially when those very same banks caused the greatest financial crash … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 14, 2019 ~ If you are long stocks, this is one of those mornings when you may be tempted to pull the covers over your head and take a mental health day away from financial news. As of 8:44 a.m. this morning, Dow futures were registering a plunge of 394 points; the big Wall Street bank stocks were down about 3 percent in pre-market trading; news was out in the Eurozone that its largest economy, Germany, had contracted by 0.1 percent in the second quarter. Eurostat further dampened the outlook with a report that “in June 2019 compared with May 2019, seasonally adjusted industrial production fell by 1.6% in the euro area (EA19) and by 1.5% in the EU28.” The drumbeat of bad economic news led to a flight to safety into U.S. Treasuries, with the 30-year Treasury Bond reaching an all-time low … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 13, 2019 ~ Where did the U.S. stock market actually close yesterday? It’s pretty much an open question. To give you an idea of just how bad the so-called “glitch” was yesterday, Bill Griffeth, the co-anchor of the CNBC show, the Nightly Business Report, had to deliver this warning to his viewers before reporting the prices of the closing stock market indexes yesterday. “By the way, toward the close, there was a technical issue with trading computers. It’s not clear if all of the volume was reported or if some of the prices of the indexes were affected. You might see different numbers elsewhere but these were the numbers we had of the close today.” (See video below of the program.) Griffeth’s quaint phrase “technical issue with trading computers,” is not accurate. It was not a problem with trading computers but rather the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 12, 2019 ~ Jeffrey Epstein, the accused pedophile and sex trafficker of underage women to powerful men around the world according to allegations in court documents, was found dead in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan on Saturday morning. The Justice Department is reporting the death as a suicide, despite the fact that Epstein should have been monitored by police around the clock because of an earlier attack or attempted suicide just weeks before in his jail cell. Epstein had close ties to JPMorgan Chase. He now joins a dizzying roster of suspicious deaths connected to JPMorgan Chase – particularly among its technology executives, who allegedly jumped to their death from JPMorgan buildings; died in two separate cases of murder-suicides in seven months; died of alcohol poisoning or, in the most recent case of Doug Carucci in March of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 9, 2019 ~ When it comes to serial and systemic frauds perpetrated by big banks on Wall Street, the U.S. Department of Justice typically punts. It will either not charge the bank itself or it will issue a felony charge along with a non-prosecution agreement that lets the bank settle the charges without a trial. These tactics by the Justice Department are why Wall Street crimes remain serial and systemic in nature. This morning, the Attorney General in Malaysia stunned Goldman Sachs with an indictment of 17 of its former and current executives. That came on the heels of criminal charges filed last December by Malaysian authorities in the same matter against three Goldman Sachs subsidiaries and two former Goldman employees, Tim Leissner and Roger Ng. Indictments announced this morning included charges against Richard J. Gnodde, Goldman’s top international banker in London and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 8, 2019 ~ The Chairman and CEO of L Brands, Leslie (Les) Wexner, came out yesterday with a statement accusing Jeffrey Epstein of swindling “vast sums of money” from Wexner and his family. L Brands is the parent of retail chains Victoria’s Secret, Bath and Body Works, and Pink. Epstein is the accused sex trafficker and assaulter of dozens of underage girls who has mansions in multiple locations but is currently occupying an 8′ x 8′ jail cell in Manhattan while he awaits trial. Pretty much anyone who was closely connected to Epstein is under some form of investigation, including his sex trafficking co-conspirators who solicited underage girls for him; the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office that allowed his private limo and driver to pick him up six days a week from his jail cell for a so-called daily 12-hour “work release” program … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 7, 2019 ~ On July 30, 2019, the day before the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, cut interest rates by one-quarter of one percent, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note closed the day at 2.06 percent. Early this morning, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury stood at 1.65 percent, a stunning decline of 41 basis points in 8 days. A yield evaporation on U.S. sovereign debt that resembles a snow cone in July is not consistent with a strong economy. It is consistent with a seriously sputtering economy and a stock market out over its skis in terms of valuation. In addition to the collapsing yield in the benchmark 10-year, we now have a seriously inverted yield curve with the 3-month T-bill yielding 2.01 percent this morning versus the 10-year T-note yielding 1.65 – a difference of 36 basis … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 6, 2019 ~ By the closing bell of yesterday’s broad stock market selloff, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which had been down over 900 points in the afternoon, closed with a loss of 767 points or 2.90 percent. The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index closed even deeper in the red with a loss of 2.98 percent. But those losses looked mild compared to what happened to four of the biggest banks on Wall Street yesterday. Bank of America, parent of the giant retail brokerage chain, Merrill Lynch, closed with a loss of 4.42 percent. Morgan Stanley, which had been pummeled in the big bank selloff in December, lost 3.87 percent while Goldman Sachs was not far behind with a loss of 3.67 percent. The bank with the most foreign exposure and a monster bailout in 2008, Citigroup, which in a fair and efficient … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 5, 2019 ~ Maxine Waters, the Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, has announced a roster of hearings coming this September. Two of the hearing topics particularly caught our eye as both timely and critical. On Tuesday, September 24, the Committee will hold a hearing titled: “Oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission: Wall Street’s Cop on the Beat.” If Chair Waters wants to really open eyes as to what the SEC has become – Wall Street’s bad cop on the beat – she will invite the following individuals to give testimony that day: James Kidney, Darcy Flynn, Gary Aguirre, and Harry Markopolos. Testimony from these individuals will show that while the SEC has, throughout its history, had dedicated and honest career attorneys who want to stop the crimes and corruption on Wall Street, there always seems to be a roadblock thrown … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 2, 2019 ~ On April 3, 2008 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Tim Geithner, appeared on a panel of witnesses before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. The subject of the hearing was the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented actions the prior month to bail out the collapsing investment bank, Bear Stearns, and facilitate its purchase by JPMorgan Chase. Putting Bear Stearns into the hands of JPMorgan Chase, now a three-count felon, was like returning a garden snake to a pet store and walking out with a python. The New York Fed had crafted a deal where $30 billion of toxic assets were going to be purchased from Bear Stearns to prevent JPMorgan from bearing the risk of sizeable losses when it took over the firm. The New York Fed put up $28.82 billion in … Continue reading →