Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 26, 2014 Jake Bernstein has a financial blockbuster up today at ProPublica on the secret tape recordings made inside the New York Fed and Goldman Sachs by bank examiner turned whistleblower, Carmen Segarra, who was fired by the New York Fed after she refused to change her examination findings on Goldman Sachs. Segarra is one gutsy bank examiner and lawyer: according to the article, she went to the Spy Store, bought a tiny microphone, and proceeded to tape record two of the most powerful financial institutions in the world — 46 hours worth of tapes. Read our past coverage of the Carmen Segarra story and the deeply conflicted New York Fed at these links: Blowing the Whistle on the New York Fed and Goldman Sachs The Carmen Segarra Case: Welcome to New York, Wall Street and McJustice A Mangled Case of Justice on Wall Street … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 25, 2014 Imagine historians 25 years from now looking back on one of the worst economic periods since the Great Depression and finding that the Wall Street Journal was calling this a “Goldilocks Economy” – “not too hot, not too cold.” (They can’t actually bring themselves to say “just right” to stay on script with the fairy tale.) On September 7, 2014 the Wall Street Journal went with this headline: “The Upside of August’s Jobs Report: A Goldilocks Economy.” The next day, in a blog post, this appeared: “Stocks rallied Friday following the disappointing jobs report as those hoping for a Goldilocks economy (not too hot, not too cold) cheered.” During the Great Depression, headline writers were admonished not to use the phrase “Great Depression” but to go with the more benign “hard times.” The theory behind the use of the phrase “Goldilocks … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 23, 2014 In addition to hundreds of Federal bank examiners permanently stationed at Wall Street’s biggest banks by the Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in an effort to eradicate a serial crime spree, an unknown number of Justice Department moles are now roaming about the mahogany corridors of power, chatting up potential criminals around the water cooler and hoping to make it out alive before being detected. Avoiding detection as a mole becomes so much more challenging when the highest law enforcement officer in the land, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, comes to New York to address Wall Street’s lawyers and tells them, flat out, that he’s got moles stationed inside his Wall Street targets. (There were likely 100,000 text messages flying about Wall Street before Holder got to the next paragraph of his speech.) The revelation by … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 18, 2014 Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican from Utah, is not the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. That post is held by Democrat Ron Wyden – whose party currently holds the majority of seats in the Senate. But this Tuesday, in a hearing that he was not even chairing, Senator Hatch appeared to be attempting to censor the speech of the witnesses before they testified by admonishing them not to use a list of specific words and phrases. The hearing was convened to take testimony on the retirement crisis facing millions of Americans because of the disappearance of corporate funded pensions and the inability of most Americans to build up a sufficient nest egg on their own because of stagnant wages and 401(k) fees imposed by Wall Street eating up their savings. Hatch, with a stern face, told the panelists: “What I hope … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 12, 2014 Sometimes we have to pinch ourselves to make sure we are not sleepwalking in a Dickensian dream. Earlier this week we heard Senator Elizabeth Warren tell a Senate Banking session how JPMorgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, got a $8.5 million raise after craftily negotiating away all of the bank’s crimes with the payment of billions in shareholders’ money. (Two of those crimes, by the way, were felony counts for aiding and abetting Bernie Madoff in his Ponzi scheme – also craftily settled under a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department, which effectively puts the bank on probation for two years.) Last night, the Wall Street Journal informed the public that, apparently, none of this criminal activity at JPMorgan has dulled President Obama’s fondness for its CEO Jamie Dimon, who has recently been undergoing treatments for throat cancer.  The Journal reported: “During … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 20, 2014 According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word cartel can mean either businesses that seek to restrict competition or a coalition “intended to promote a mutual interest.” Under at least the second definition, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a key regulator of the biggest Wall Street banks’ holding companies, has been sponsoring (yes, sponsoring) a cartel for decades. To grasp the sheer insanity of what the New York Fed is doing, imagine going to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s web site (another Wall Street regulator) and finding that it has loaned out its web site and its imprimatur to multiple Wall Street cartels writing their own rules of conduct. It sounds Orwellian doesn’t it. And yet this is the web site address for the New York Fed-sponsored Foreign Exchange Committee: http://www.newyorkfed.org/fxc/ which has been operating for the past 36 years … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 19, 2014 Two weeks ago, Paul Krugman used some expensive media real estate to write a propaganda piece on the unsupportable proposition that the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation passed in 2010 is “a success story” and that its bank wind-down program known as Ordinary Liquidation Authority has put an end to “bailing out the bankers.” Wall Street On Parade took Krugman to task over this fanciful ode to accomplishments by the President the day after his piece ran in the New York Times’ opinion pages and suggested he do proper research on this subject before opining in the future. That was the morning of August 5. By late in the afternoon of August 5, Krugman had a reality smack-down on his Dodd-Frank success fairy tale by two Federal regulators. Every major media outlet was running with the news that eleven of the biggest … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 18, 2014 On May 5, 2014, Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee in charge of finding and distributing Madoff’s swindled funds to investors released this statement in a press release announcing the fourth interim distribution of funds to victims: “…1,129 accounts will be fully satisfied following the fourth interim distribution. All allowed claims totaling $925,000 or less will be fully satisfied after the distribution.” Just eight days later, Richard Breeden, the Special Master that’s working on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice to distribute a separate pool of funds to Madoff’s victims reported that more than 36,000 claimants have filed documents with his office indicating that they haven’t yet received a dime of restitution. Yes, 36,000 people from all over the globe. That’s bad enough but the story goes downhill from there. Almost six years from the date that Bernard Madoff turned himself in as the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 7, 2014 The U.S. Senate has been holding hearings since June which show a clear rethinking on what type of legislation it must enact going forward to achieve meaningful reforms of Wall Street and protect the economy from its excesses. The 849-page Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, enacted four years ago in 2010, mandated 398 new rules; just 208 of those rules, or 52 percent, have been enacted and none of them seem to be reining in excesses on Wall Street. To understand why Dodd-Frank has been such a failure in reforming Wall Street conduct, one need only read the following sentence and think about it for a moment: Public Law 73-66, 73d Congress, H.R. 5661: An Act to provide for the safer and more effective use of the assets of banks, to regulate interbank control, to prevent the undue diversion of funds into … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 6, 2014 Getting what should already be public domain information from Wall Street’s regulators using the public records law known as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has become next to impossible; and it’s fueling contempt for the Obama administration. Yesterday, a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that a majority of Americans, 54 percent, now believe the President is unable to “lead the country and get the job done.” That poll follows another one from NBC and the Wall Street Journal that was released on September 13 of last year which found that only 14 percent of Americans held a favorable view of Wall Street. Another Gallup poll released in May found that stock ownership among U.S. adults is at a 16-year low, reflecting a growing distrust of a level playing field on Wall Street after bestselling author of “Flash Boys,” Michael … Continue reading →