By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 14, 2019 ~  Mark Pittman was the Bloomberg News reporter responsible for the Bloomberg lawsuit against the Federal Reserve seeking the names of the banks and their share of the trillions of dollars that the Fed was secretly funneling to them during the financial crisis. Pittman had already shared in a Gerald Loeb award for Bloomberg’s five-part series, “Wall Street’s Faustian Bargain,” and many felt he was a lock for a Pulitzer. But one week before Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was to sit for his Senate Confirmation hearing on his reappointment to another term as Fed Chairman, Pittman died of a heart attack at age 52 on November 25, 2009. At the time of Pittman’s death, the Fed was still refusing to release the details of its secret loans, despite losing its court battle at the Federal District Court. The appellate court … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 11, 2019 ~ It’s long past the time for the U.S. Congress to ask the overarching question: is the New York Fed’s massive loan program to Wall Street firms even legal? And was it legal from 2007 to 2010 during the financial collapse on Wall Street? The Federal Reserve system was created in 1913 with a Discount Window that was to be the lender-of-last resort to deposit-taking banks to prevent panics and bank runs from bringing down the U.S. banking system. To this day, only deposit-taking institutions are allowed to borrow at the Fed’s Discount Window. The core function of deposit-taking banks throughout U.S. history has been to use those deposits to lend to worthy businesses that can help grow the U.S. economy, keep America competitive, and bring good paying jobs to the American people. Never in its history has the Federal Reserve, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 11, 2019 ~ There was an outcry in Washington yesterday over the latest move by the Federal Reserve. While the New York Fed is pumping hundreds of billions of dollars each week into Wall Street because of a liquidity crisis, the Washington, D.C. based central bank, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, just changed its rules to lessen liquidity buffers at banks and rolled back other critical safeguards. The response from Gregg Gelzinis, policy analyst for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress was swift. He released the following statement: “Today, the Federal Reserve eroded several critical banking protections put in place following the 2007-2008 financial crisis, further putting the economy at risk. The final rule threatens the safety and soundness of the banking system from multiple angles. Reducing the stringency of bank capital requirements, liquidity rules, and stress testing makes large … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 10, 2019 ~ No one can say with any certainty where the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Federal Reserve has been pumping into Wall Street since September 17 are actually ending up. The Fed is not releasing the names of which of its primary dealers (securities firms) are taking the lion’s share of the loans nor does anyone know if those borrowers are making further loans with the money (which is a core purpose of a central bank’s lender of last resort function) or simply plugging a whole in their own leaky boat. Astonishingly, Congress has yet to call a hearing to ask these critical questions. Let’s say, hypothetically, that there is a bank with a large, interconnected footprint on Wall Street that’s in trouble and on top of that there’s a big hedge fund taking on water and listing on … Continue reading →

October 9, 2019 ~ Congresswoman Maxine Waters,  Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, announced that Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg will testify before the Committee at an October 23 hearing. Zuckerberg will be the sole witness at the hearing, which is entitled, “An Examination of Facebook and Its Impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors.” In July, Chairwoman Waters and other Committee Democrats sent a letter to Facebook requesting an immediate moratorium on the implementation of Facebook’s proposed cryptocurrency, Libra, and digital wallet, Calibra. Also in July, Waters convened a hearing entitled, “Examining Facebook’s Proposed Cryptocurrency and Its Impact on Consumers, Investors, and the American Financial System,” with testimony from Calibra CEO David Marcus. At the hearing Committee Members discussed a draft bill, the “Keep Big Tech Out of Finance Act.” The draft legislation prohibits large platform utilities, like Facebook, from becoming chartered, licensed or registered as a U.S. financial institution (e.g. like taxpayer-backed banks, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 9, 2019 ~ Yesterday, at a speaking event in Denver at the National Association of Business Economists, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell acknowledged that a larger, long-term bailout of Wall Street is coming. His two key points were buried in a subterfuge of puffery but came across loud and clear: “…my colleagues and I will soon announce measures to add to the supply of reserves over time.” And this: “As we indicated in our March statement on balance sheet normalization, at some point, we will begin increasing our securities holdings to maintain an appropriate level of reserves. That time is now upon us.” Let that final statement sink in for a moment. Under the previous Federal Reserve Chair, Janet Yellen, balance sheet normalization at the Federal Reserve meant reducing the Fed’s unprecedented $4.5 trillion balance sheet to get back to something near pre-crisis levels. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 8, 2019 ~ We’re going to do today what mainstream media has failed to do for the American people so far this year — as well as prior to the onset of the 2008 financial collapse on Wall Street. We’re going to connect the dots that strongly suggest that both the U.S. and global financial system have a real problem occurring right under the fogged lenses of Congress. Dot 1 — Freezing Customers Out of their Mutual Fund. Let’s start with our reporting on July 11 of this year, titled Is There a Stealth Financial Crisis? Alarm Bells Are Ringing. In that article we pointed out that one of Britain’s high profile money managers, Neil Woodford, had frozen customer withdrawals from his flagship $4.7 billion Woodford Equity Income Fund. The latest news is that the fund is not expected to reopen until at … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 7, 2019 ~ One or more U.S. or foreign banks that are primary dealers to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is in need of longer-term loans that they are unable to get anywhere else – at least at an affordable rate of interest. That’s the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the Fed’s announcement on Friday that it is extending its money pumping program to Wall Street until at least November 4 and will be offering an additional $310 billion cumulatively in term loans (most for 14-days at a time) as well as offering at least $75 billion daily in overnight loans. The Fed’s money sluicing operation that began abruptly on September 17 is taking on the distinct appearance of its machinations during the early days of the 2008 crash – a time when it also refused to name … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 4, 2019 ~ Yesterday, the House Financial Services Committee released its hearing schedule for October. There is not a peep about holding a hearing on the unprecedented hundreds of billions of dollars that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is pumping into unnamed banks on Wall Street at a time when there is no public acknowledgement of any kind of financial crisis taking place. Congressional committees should have been instantly on top of the Fed’s actions when they first started on September 17 because the Fed had gone completely rogue from 2007 to 2010 in funneling an unfathomable $29 trillion in revolving loans to Wall Street and global banks without authority or even awareness from Congress. The Fed also fought a multi-year court battle with the media in an effort to keep its giant money funnel a secret. According to Section 1101 … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 3, 2019 ~  The Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost 838 points in the past two days of trading. On a percentage basis, its losses pale in comparison to the losses experienced over the past two days by some of the biggest global banks as well as insurance companies that are derivative counterparties to the big banks. Mega banks continue to be allowed to tie their risky trading gambles to the balance sheets of insurers that also hold life insurance policies and retirement annuities for Moms and Pops across the U.S. by using the insurers as counterparties for their derivative trades. That this is still happening illustrates just how little has changed in the way of enlightened regulation of Wall Street since the banks brought down the big insurer, AIG, in 2008. The U.S. government was forced to seize AIG and institute a … Continue reading →