Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 6, 2021 ~ When it comes to the top watchdog of trading on Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), that dog can’t hunt. It’s not that the career professionals at the SEC haven’t tried to hunt, it’s that when they get too close to ensnarling some powerful person on Wall Street, they are told to stand down. Having a Wall Street defense lawyer at the helm of the SEC under both Presidents Obama and Trump certainly hasn’t helped the matter. (See here and here.) The jury is still out on President Biden’s SEC Chair, Gary Gensler, who just took office on April 17. (It should be noted, however, that the case described below was settled by the SEC after he took office.) With that as a backdrop, consider the press release and order that the SEC released on June 29 against Neovest … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 23, 2021 ~ The unthinkable is happening with alarming regularity at the Frankenbank JPMorgan Chase. Over the last seven years, with Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon at the helm, JPMorgan Chase has managed to do what no other federally-insured American bank has managed to do in the history of banking in the United States. The bank has admitted to five separate felony counts brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, while regulators took no action to remove the Board of Directors or Jamie Dimon. Now, once again, the outrageous hubris of this Board is on display. Just last fall the bank forked over $920 million of shareholders money to settle its fourth and fifth felony counts brought by the Department of Justice, this time for rigging the precious metals and U.S. Treasury market. Now, in the dog days of summer, rarely a time for … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 15, 2021 ~ According to the Merger and Acquisition database at PitchBook, entities tied to JPMorgan Asset Management have been buying up energy and infrastructure assets around the world including solar power plants, wind farms,  airports, water companies and the 120-year old El Paso Electric which provides electricity to approximately 437,000 retail and wholesale customers in west Texas and southern New Mexico. The acquisitions can be traced back to an entity called the Infrastructure Investments Fund (IIF). When IIF is seeking regulatory approval, as in the case of buying El Paso Electric, it contends it is not controlled by JPMorgan. But when JPMorgan is pitching the fund to institutional investors around the globe, the bank points out that 50 of the bank’s employees are actively engaged in the fund – along with “70 independent portfolio company directors.” The brochures (flipbooks) for IIF are marked … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 6, 2021 ~ After reading the documents released by the Justice Department in January 2014 in connection with JPMorgan Chase’s settlement over its role in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, the Los Angeles Times asked this question: “Bernie Madoff: Was he part of the JPMorgan ring, or was JPMorgan part of his ring?” Given the facts of the case, the question was more than fair. In January of 2014 JPMorgan Chase paid $2.6 billion in fines and restitution, signed a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department and walked away from further criminal charges over its 22-year involvement with Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. The Madoff Ponzi scheme was the largest in U.S. history with fictitious investment account statements showing his clients held $64.8 billion in securities with his firm. (Madoff never actually bought any stocks or other securities for his investment clients.) The Madoff … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 28, 2021 ~ Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has found a new magic hat trick: how to shrink and grow at the same time. Between March 31, 2009 and December 31, 2020, the assets at JPMorgan Chase’s bank holding company grew by an astonishing $1.3 trillion or 62.9 percent according to data archived at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). That stands in striking contrast to the next largest bank holding company in the U.S., Bank of America, whose assets grew by just $496.2 billion or 21 percent over the same period. The first thought that might come to your mind is that perhaps this staggering growth in assets came as a result of the Federal Reserve allowing JPMorgan Chase to purchase Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual during the 2008 Wall Street crash. That can’t be the reason, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 28, 2021 ~ According to the 10-K (Annual Report) forms that JPMorgan Chase has filed with the SEC for years 2017, 2018, and 2019, it has bought back a total of $59.5 billion of its own common stock, thus inflating its share price by that sum of money. In 2019 the bank bought back a whopping 212,975,185 shares for $24.12 billion; 181,504,483 shares in 2018 for a total of $19.98 billion; and 166,557,198 shares in 2017 for $15.4 billion. Notice that the growth in the dollar amount of the buybacks grew by 56.6 percent from 2017 to 2019. Who benefitted tremendously from this boosting of the share price? Insiders. According to the proxy JPMorgan Chase filed with the SEC on April 7, Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, owns 9,385,141 shares of the bank’s common stock – the bulk of which … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 18, 2021 ~ How embarrassing it must be for Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, that three of the largest banks in the U.S. that are supervised by the Fed, have been deemed not trustworthy enough by the European Commission that they were banned from participating in this week’s historic European Union bond offering. It is also egg on the face of the U.S. Department of Justice, which has been handing out deferred prosecution agreements to these same banks for felony counts like it’s a meter maid doling out parking tickets. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America were banned along with seven non-U.S. banks from participating in this week’s European Union bond offering. The syndicated offering is part of what will grow over the next five years to be a $969 billion COVID-19 recovery fund for the European Union, part of the plan … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 20, 2021 ~ Donald Turnbull, a former Global Head of Precious Metals Trading at JPMorgan Chase, has filed a doozy of a federal lawsuit against the bank. Turnbull worked on the same JPMorgan Chase precious metals desk that was deemed to be a racketeering enterprise by the U.S. Department of Justice when it handed down indictments in 2019. This was the first time that veterans on Wall Street could recall employees of a major Wall Street bank being charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO statute, which is typically reserved for organized crime. JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, has the further unprecedented distinction for a U.S. bank of being charged with five felony counts by the Department of Justice in a six-year span of time, running from 2014 to 2020. The bank admitted to all of … Continue reading →

“This raises the serious question as to whether the Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committees should be investigating the gamification of markets or the monetization of the stock market via Wall Street’s ownership of federally insured deposits.” By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 5, 2021 ~ In late March, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released its quarterly report on “Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities.” Graph 15 of the report shows that using data submitted by banks on their form RC-R of their call reports, JPMorgan Chase’s federally insured bank had exposure to $2.65 trillion in notional equity (stock) derivatives as of December 31, 2020. (Notional means face amount.) That’s a stunning figure for the largest federally-insured bank in the United States to have in exposure to the stock market. But more stunning is the fact that according to the OCC, JPMorgan Chase’s equity derivative contracts … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 25, 2021 ~ Yesterday, during a Senate Banking hearing with witnesses Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Senator Elizabeth Warren grilled Yellen on why BlackRock wasn’t being investigated for posing a systemic risk to the U.S. financial system. Warren stated: “BlackRock is the world’s largest asset management firm, overseeing nearly $9 trillion in assets. That’s more than double where it was 10 years ago. It also holds a stake in just about every company listed on the S&P 500. To put that in perspective, Blackrock manages more assets than the entire GDP of Japan, or Germany, or Great Britain or any other nation in the world, except the United States and China.” BlackRock may, indeed, pose a systemic risk to the U.S. financial system but it’s not because it holds a stake in just about every company listed on the S&P … Continue reading →