By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 16, 2019 ~ Is Jeffrey Epstein, the accused sex trafficker and sexual assaulter of dozens of underage girls potentially guilty of financial crimes as well? His criminal profile suggests that may well be worth investigating. Bernie Madoff knew he was no genius and could never compete with the physics and math geniuses employed by the major trading firms on Wall Street. So he simply generated fake investment statements to reassure his thousands of clients of his trading prowess and didn’t buy one stock for their portfolios over the decades he was looting their assets, according to prosecutors. But the criminal profile that emerges for Jeffrey Epstein is that of a man so arrogant and confident of his genius that he felt he could beat anybody – by hook or by crook, or by hiring ruthless lawyers to intimidate and compromise Federal prosecutors. Armed … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 15, 2019 ~ Jeffrey Epstein is variously called a “billionaire,” a “hedge fund manager,” or a “financier” in the hundreds of articles that have appeared in print this month. But no one can say with any certainty how Epstein obtained his wealth or exactly how much wealth he actually has. We’ve located a highly interesting ledger from one of his nonprofit tax filings which shows he was able to get his hands on highly preferential hot IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) and flipped them on their first day of trading. We’ll explore that in detail shortly, but first some background. Jeffrey Epstein is due in Federal Court in Manhattan this morning to argue his case for being allowed to serve his time until trial under house arrest in his opulent $77 million mansion on the upper East Side rather than the drab confinements of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 12, 2019 ~ What we need today is a real life character like Vinny Gambini in the movie My Cousin Vinny to take over the questioning for the U.S. Senate Banking Committee – like Ferdinand Pecora did in the early 1930s to root out the systemic frauds in the stock market of that era. Gambini would haul the heads of equities trading for each of the major Wall Street banks and their Dark Pools to a hearing, put them under oath, and grill them about the highly suspicious trading activity that is going on in today’s markets. Let’s start with what happened yesterday. In the face of punk earnings forecasts for the rest of this year and a growing global economic slowdown, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a historic milestone, closing above 27,000 for the first time. But the rising tide didn’t … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 11, 2019 ~ Shhh! Don’t wake the Wall Street bank regulators from their decade-long slumber to whisper in their ear that the same critical signs they ignored in 2007 and early 2008 are rearing their ugly heads again. Let’s take a look at the clear warning signs that began in July 2007 and then contrast them against what is happening today. On July 17, 2007 Bear Stearns announced that two of its hedge funds, which had held about $1.5 billion in investor capital in the first quarter of the year, were now mostly worthless. On August 9, 2007 BNP Paribas, France’s largest publicly traded bank, announced it was freezing customer withdrawals from three of its funds, effectively preventing customers from accessing $2.2 billion. It cited “evaporation of liquidity,” and the inability “to value certain assets,” as a reason. Fast forward to today: On … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 10, 2019 ~ Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of the Wall Street mega bank, JPMorgan Chase, has weathered one scandal after another during his tenure, including the bank pleading guilty to an unprecedented three criminal felony counts in the past five years. Now the bank is back in the news for owning a massive container ship which was seized last week in the Philadelphia seaport by U.S. Customs and Border Protection following the discovery of 20 tons of cocaine located in containers on the ship on June 17. The cocaine is estimated to have a street value of $1.3 billion. The container vessel is the MSC Gayane and was being operated by the global shipping firm, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC). The vessel is the largest ever to be seized in the 230-year history of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, according to the CBP’s … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 9, 2019 ~ As of early this morning, Deutsche Bank’s restructuring plan is looking a lot like the lifeboat plan for the Titanic. Research analysts have expressed skepticism that the plan will work and the bank’s stock performance is backing up that assessment. In overnight trading in Frankfurt, the stock had cumulatively lost 10 percent of its value in less than two days of trading since the details of its restructuring were made public. Deutsche Bank’s shares also trade on the New York Stock Exchange, which opens at 9:30 a.m. Deutsche Bank is widely known to be a major derivatives counterparty – meaning its fate could have a spillover effect on other major banks which have taken the opposite sides of its derivatives trades. Notably, every major Wall Street bank closed in the red yesterday with two, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, outpacing … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 9, 2019 ~ On October 3, 2018 the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 26,828. Yesterday, the same stock market index that is watched around the world closed at 26,806 – a loss of 22 points from where it stood nine months ago. If you’ve been invested all this time you’ve essentially gone nowhere plus you’ve had the not so rollicking fun of that brutal 4,000-point plunge from December 3 to Christmas eve 2018, which took the Dow from a close of 25,826 on December 3 to a Christmas eve close of 21,792. So the next time you read that the Dow is setting new highs, do the math and see just how many points you’ve actually gained since October 3, 2018.

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 8, 2019 ~ Yesterday, Deutsche Bank announced it would be cutting its payroll by approximately 18,000 jobs over the next three years and exiting its stock trading business, along with other restructuring moves like creating a “bad bank” to hold toxic assets. What could possibly force a global bank to shed stock trading? According to the most recent report from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator of national banks in the United States, four U.S. commercial banks made $8.79 billion in trading revenues in the first quarter of this year. Of that amount, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA represented 60 percent or $5.29 billion. (The other three banks were Citibank, Goldman Sachs Bank USA and Bank of America.) Just to be clear, this is not how much each bank made from trading in all their divisions, this is just … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 5, 2019 ~   According to press reports around the globe, there’s going to be a hot confab this Sunday by the Board of Deutsche Bank that will focus on the potential to create a so-called “bad bank” to hold some of Deutsche’s toxic assets along with discussions of cutting 15,000 to 20,000 employees from the payroll – meaning as many as one out of every five employees could get the axe. A big part of the job losses will hit Manhattan where Deutsche Bank has a heavy presence on Wall Street — which it plans to severely pare back. Here’s the short version on why the bank is contemplating these radical moves: Deutsche Bank has reported losses in three of the last four years; its share price has lost 90 percent of its value since February of 2007; as of the close … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 3, 2019 ~ According to the Center for Responsive Politics, which keeps meticulous tabs on political campaign flows, as of this morning, the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison – which has represented Citigroup through more than two decades of serial fraud charges – is the number one campaign donor to the Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator Kamala Harris. As the Center notes, the money isn’t coming from the law firm itself, but from its “PACs; their individual members, employees or owners; and those individuals’ immediate families.” The campaign ad for Harris reads like this: “Kamala Harris has spent her entire life defending our American values. From fighting to fix our broken criminal justice system to taking on the Wall Street banks for middle class homeowners, Kamala has always worked For The People.” But here we are in the early days of … Continue reading →