Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens: July 31, 2013  After packing his administration with 1 percenters or people earning a lucrative living off the 1 percenters, President Obama has decided, seemingly out of the blue, to hit the stump on behalf of the plight of the struggling middle class while railing against the income inequality that plagues the U.S.  Could the President’s new focus have anything to do with a new probe of Wall Street practices opened by Carl Levin and the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations? The Subcommittee is delving into the hoarding of physical commodities by the largest firms on Wall Street.  Whether the President is cognizant of the fact or not, the two issues are indelibly linked. Hoarding physical commodities pushes up prices on everything from the cost of food and beverage packaging to the price of a tank of gas to get to work or heating oil to stay warm … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: July 30, 2013  The financial crimes you can’t see are the ones that can really hurt you.  When Congress, the media, the financial experts talk about transparency on Wall Street, it is always in abstract terms: we should have more transparency; we should know more details about the kinds of risks Wall Street is taking with other people’s money; we should be able to see the nature of derivatives trading being conducted in private agreements between Wall Street firms; we should make the big banks hold more capital to offset all the risks we know they’ll never let us see until it’s too late.  Unfortunately, we can’t fix Wall Street’s problems by discussing them in the abstract. We need to be comprehensively cognizant of what Wall Street has become, peel away the artifices layer by layer, and put in legislative fixes that get quickly to the problem – … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: July 24, 2013  It’s time to grab a copy of the 1914 book by Louis D. Brandeis, Other People’s Money And How The Bankers Use It, to understand how Wall Street continues to engage in the greatest heist of the last two centuries. Yesterday’s Senate hearing on the Wall Street cartel that controls the London Metal Exchange drove home that point. Brandeis was an expert on the so-called “Money Trust” of that era. Today, we call it either Banksters or, simply, Wall Street. The Pujo Committee hearings in the House of Representatives between 1912 and 1913 revealed how the financial cartel of that era had gained control of large segments of industrial output in the United States; manufacturing, railroads, mining, communications and financial markets. And, of course, JPMorgan sat at the helm of the cartel. Twenty years later, in the early 1930s, along comes the Pecora Senate hearings to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: July 23, 2013  If you think Wall Street’s rigging of foreclosures to struggling homeowners, or rigging interest rate swaps sold to municipalities, or rigging the Libor interest rate benchmark is the extent of its cartel activities, think again. Today, in U.S. Senate chambers, expert witnesses will make the case that the London Metal Exchange (LME) has become little more than a rigged Wall Street game to benefit a handful of powerful Wall Street firms while costing consumers and the economy greatly.  The Senate Banking Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection, chaired by Senator Sherrod Brown, will hold a hearing titled: “Examining Financial Holding Companies: Should Banks Control Power Plants, Warehouses, and Oil Refineries?”  Timothy Weiner, Global Risk Manager of the giant beer brewer, MillerCoors LLC, has told the Senate in his written statement that his company’s concerns about the London Metal Exchange are shared by many other companies, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: July 22, 2013 Barbara Hagenbaugh, a former economics reporter for USA Today, now spokesperson for the Federal Reserve, sent an Arctic chill through the sweltering heat of Wall Street on Friday with this one liner:  “The Federal Reserve regularly monitors the commodity activities of supervised firms and is reviewing the 2003 determination that certain commodity activities are complementary to financial activities and thus permissible for bank holding companies.” The unexpected statement from the Fed came just two business days before Senator Sherrod Brown will drop a few more bombshells in the direction of Broad and Wall. Brown chairs the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection, which will hold a hearing tomorrow titled: “Examining Financial Holding Companies: Should Banks Control Power Plants, Warehouses, and Oil Refineries?” Does that question even have to be asked given the 2008 to 2010 taxpayer bailout of these banks? Don’t feel … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: July 12, 2013  Wall Street regulators hauled before the Senate Banking panel yesterday were likely expecting compliments for their agreement on forcing big banks to boost capital. Instead, Senator Elizabeth Warren dropped a bombshell: she and three other Senators later yesterday were introducing legislation to restore the depression era Glass-Steagall Act. (The Senate co-sponsors were John McCain, Republican from Arizona, Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, and Angus King, an Independent from Maine.)  As regulators from the Treasury, FDIC, Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency stared back in silence, Senator Warren mapped out why the legislation was being introduced:  “…the four largest banks are now 30 percent larger than they were just five years ago and they have continued to engage in dangerous, high-risk practices. So, later today Mr. Chairman, Senators McCain, Cantwell, King and I will introduce a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act. For half a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: July 9, 2013 According to a report out of London this morning, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE/Euronext) has been selected from a number of bidders to take over administration of Libor, the now discredited, rigged interest rate benchmark that had been previously overseen by the British Bankers Association, a lobbying organization for banks. The idea that turning over the administration of Libor to the NYSE, whose major shareholders include some of the Wall Street firms currently under investigation for rigging Libor, would restore confidence in using Libor as an interest rate benchmark is…well…typical of Wall Street’s irrational thinking. According to a March 31, 2013 report from Morningstar, the following Wall Street firms are among the major shareholders of NYSE/Euronext: Citigroup,  6.5 million shares; Morgan Stanley, 5.9 million shares; JPMorgan Asset Management (UK) Ltd., 4.9 million shares; Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., 4.2 million shares; Deutsche Bank … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: July 8, 2013  Senator Charles (Chuck) Schumer of New York is writing letters and pounding the table to try to stop sweeping new regulation of derivatives from being put into effect by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) four days from now on July 12.  Schumer is leading an assault against Gary Gensler, Chair of the CFTC, who wants to impose cross-border rules which would prevent firms like JPMorgan Chase from simply moving its derivative trades to London or another foreign trading venue to escape U.S. rules – the situation that allowed JPMorgan to lose $6.2 billion of deposits in its infamous London Whale derivatives episode.  Schumer’s actions and those of other Senate Democrats who joined with him in a letter to Jack Lew, Treasury Secretary, brought a sharp rebuke last week from the editorial board of the New York Times:  “In the letter to Mr. Lew, the senators … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: June 28, 2013  The day after the U.S. House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee held a hearing on why their seminal financial reform legislation, Dodd-Frank, is a bureaucratic boondoggle that will not prevent another taxpayer bailout of Wall Street in the event of a systemic collapse, we learn just how vulnerable the system is to powerful men allowed to play with other people’s money.  Yesterday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) brought charges in Federal Court against MF Global, its former CEO, Jon Corzine, and its former Assistant Treasurer, Edith O’Brien. Corzine is a former U.S. Senator and Governor of New Jersey. The two are charged with the unlawful allocation of customer money at the commodities trading firm. The company has agreed to settle the charges against the firm for $100 million. The claims remain outstanding against the individuals.  MFGlobal collapsed in October 2011. Corzine had directed the … Continue reading →