Search Results for: rap sheet

The New York Fed Has Contracted JPMorgan to Hold Over $1.7 Trillion of its QE Bonds Despite Two Felony Counts and Serial Charges of Crimes

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 3, 2014 The Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., which functions as the central bank of the United States, has farmed out much of its Quantitative Easing (QE) programs to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since the financial crisis of 2008. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has, in turn, contractually farmed out a hefty chunk of the logistics of that work to JPMorgan Chase in the last six years. Sitting quietly on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s web site is a vendor agreement and other documents indicating that JPMorgan Chase holds all of the Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) that the New York Fed has purchased under its various Quantitative Easing programs. As of last Wednesday, that figure was $1.7 trillion dollars. (The New York Fed has confirmed that JPMorgan is custodian for these assets.) In … Continue reading →

Lawsuit Stunner: Half of Futures Trades in Chicago Are Illegal Wash Trades

By Pam Martens: July 24, 2014 Since March 30 of this year when bestselling author, Michael Lewis, appeared on 60 Minutes to explain the findings of his latest book, Flash Boys, as “stock market’s rigged,” America has been learning some very uncomfortable truths about the tilted playing field against the public stock investor. Throughout this time, no one has been more adamant than Terrence (Terry) Duffy, the Executive Chairman and President of the CME Group, which operates the largest futures exchange in the world in Chicago, that the charges made by Lewis about the stock market have nothing to do with his market. The futures markets are pristine, according to testimony Duffy gave before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on May 13. On Tuesday of this week, Duffy’s credibility and the honesty of the futures exchanges he runs came into serious question when lawyers for three traders filed a Second Amended … Continue reading →

A Third Death at JPMorgan and Another Press Lockout on Information

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 19, 2014 Since January 28 of this year, one tragic death per week has occurred at JPMorgan among men in their 30s, the latest occurring yesterday — a statistically improbable random occurrence. Each JPMorgan employee worked at a headquarters’ building in a key financial market for JPMorgan – London, New York, and Hong Kong. And in each and every case, the press has been blocked from obtaining vital information to properly do its job. The deaths started on January 28 when Gabriel Magee, a 39-year old technology Vice President, was found dead on the 9th level rooftop of JPMorgan’s European headquarters at 25 Bank Street in the Canary Wharf section of London. After much prodding by Wall Street On Parade, the Metropolitan Police in London could not confirm that one eyewitness to the fall existed despite London newspapers widely circulating the story that … Continue reading →

The Untold Story of Citibank’s Student Loan Deals at NYU

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 16, 2013 An institutionalized wealth transfer system is playing out at New York University, a nonprofit organization subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer. Forgivable mortgage loans for multi-million dollar luxury homes have been doled out by NYU to an inner circle of administrators and elite faculty. The University’s President, John Sexton, has received an interest rate of less than one-quarter of one percent from NYU to finance a multi-million dollar beach residence on Fire Island. All this while NYU students carry the greatest burden of debt of any nonprofit university in the country – a figure placed at $659 million in 2010 by the Department of Education and now estimated to be well over $1 billion due to a poorly understood debt compounding trick called “capitalized interest.” While the unconscionable mortgage loans at NYU have received significant press attention and a Congressional probe by … Continue reading →

It has been the contention of Wall Street On Parade for more than a decade that today’s so-called “universal banks,” also variously known as megabanks or Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs), are a banking model from hell that was thoroughly discredited in the tens of thousands of transcripts and documents released by the U.S. Senate following its multi-year investigation of that structure in the early 1930s. Now the seminal book proving that theory has been published. Written by Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr. and titled Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act, the book brilliantly takes the reader through a riveting guided tour covering the past century and the resurrection of this same disastrous U.S. banking model in 1999. Oxford University Press is the publisher of Wilmarth’s book. We can envision it becoming one of the most important works of this century in providing the impetus for Congress … Continue reading →

Who Benefits Alongside Elon Musk If He Succeeds in Killing the CFPB: the Megabanks on Wall Street that Underwrite His Tesla Stock Offerings

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 28, 2025 ~ On June 29, 2010 when the electric vehicle company, Tesla, launched its Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq Stock Market, its underwriters were trading powerhouses on Wall Street: Goldman, Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Deutsche Bank Securities. Over the next dozen years, Tesla would utilize these investment banks and others to raise billions more in secondary stock offerings of Tesla shares. It was a very happy marriage. The Wall Street megabanks made big fees on the underwritings and Musk was able to cash out tens of billions of dollars for himself in Tesla stock sales. That happy, mutually beneficial relationship turned sour when Musk borrowed $13 billion from a consortium of the megabanks to help fund his purchase of the social medium platform, Twitter, in 2022. (Musk has since renamed Twitter as “X.”) The banks got stuck with these … Continue reading →

With Trump and Melania’s Crypto Coins Likely to Raise Legal Challenges, Why Didn’t Trump Fire the SEC’s Inspector General in His Purge of IGs?

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 28, 2025 ~ Last Friday night, when federal employees thought they could escape to a weekend of relief from Donald Trump’s rewriting of the Constitution by Executive Edict, emails went out to at least 16 Inspectors General – the fraud and abuse watchdogs of Federal agencies – informing them that they were terminated “immediately,” without citing any grounds for dismissal, a legal requirement since 2022. What is particularly strange about the mass firings is that many of these IGs were appointed by Trump himself in his first term as President, raising the suspicion that Trump’s current demands for personal loyalty have taken an even darker turn in Trump 2.0. Mark Lee Greenblatt, the IG of the Interior Department (which Trump now seems eager to sacrifice to the fossil fuel industry) took to LinkedIn on Saturday to express his reaction to being fired as a government … Continue reading →

The Fed Rings a Warning Bell: Hedge Funds and Life Insurers Are Reporting Historic Leverage

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 3, 2024 ~ The semi-annual Financial Stability Report released recently by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors rang a loud warning bell about high levels of leverage at hedge funds and life insurers. Wall Street watchers will no doubt recall that in 2008, during the worst Wall Street collapse since the Great Depression, Bear Stearns went under after it blew up two internal hedge funds the prior year and the giant life insurer, American International Group (AIG), blew itself up by acting as a counterparty to Wall Street’s derivative schemes and had to be taken into receivership by the U.S. government. On the matter of leverage at hedge funds, the Fed wrote this in its most recent Financial Stability Report: “Comprehensive data collected through SEC Form PF indicated that measures of leverage averaged across all hedge funds were at or near the highest level observed … Continue reading →

After JPMorgan Threatens to Sue, the Fed Cuts Its Capital Requirement on the 5-Count Felon from a Planned 25 Percent Hike to Less than 8 Percent

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 4, 2024 ~ It appears that Senator Elizabeth Warren was spot on in her assessment of the lack of a backbone for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell when it comes to raising capital requirements on the powerful megabanks on Wall Street. At a March 7 Senate Banking Committee hearing in which Powell was appearing as a witness, Warren said this: “Despite all you said last year when the banks failed [in the spring banking crisis of 2023] about supporting Vice Chair Barr’s recommendations to strengthen rules for big banks, public reporting now says that you are driving efforts inside the Fed to weaken the capital rule. You even told the House Financial Services Committee representatives yesterday that you think it’s ‘very plausible’ that you withdraw the rule.” The capital rule that Senator Warren is referring to was proposed more than a year ago by … Continue reading →

Trump’s Sit-Down with Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago Will Cost U.S. Taxpayers Millions While Profiting Trump’s Business

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 24, 2024 ~ Eleven days after an assassination attempt was made on a presidential candidate’s life at a mass gathering in Pennsylvania, the U.S. Secret Service will face added strains and risks by the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come to Washington, D.C. and address a joint session of Congress today. (Numerous seats at the session will be empty as a number of progressives have indicated that they will boycott the event over Netanyahu’s conduct of Israel’s war in Gaza which has resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe.) Netanyahu arrived in D.C. on Monday. One day later, protests were occurring outside his hotel and a building that houses Congressional offices, according to the Associated Press. A mass protest attracting thousands is expected during his speech to the joint session of Congress today. In addition to protecting … Continue reading →