Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens: November 4, 2012  On December 23 of this year, the Federal Reserve will be 99 years old.  And throughout that 99 years, regardless of boom, bust, recession or Great Depression, the biggest Wall Street banks have been enjoying a 6 percent, risk-free return on the capital they hold at the Fed in the form of dividends.  Have you looked at your checking or money market bank statement lately from JPMorgan Chase or Citibank? How about the statement showing the interest you’re earning on your mortgage escrow account with the big banks? While the country suffers through the lingering effects of the Great Recession caused by the biggest Wall Street banks, the public typically receives less than 1 percent on their deposits at the big banks, while the government has legislated a permanent, risk-free 6 percent guarantee to the Wall Street banks for their capital on deposit at … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: December 3, 2012 In what can only be described as an unseemly marriage of the plundering herd on Wall Street and the so-called paper of record assigned with the arduous task of delivering unbiased investigative reports to the public, the New York Times has made the deeply unwise decision to hold “The Inaugural DealBook Conference.”    The all-day conference to be held at the New York Times Center on December 12, headlines Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase – a company under serious Federal investigation on multiple fronts — and Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, a company which faces multiple lawsuits alleging investors were defrauded and which paid $550 million two years ago to settle SEC charges that it knowingly harmed its own clients. The Times’ business writer, Andrew Ross Sorkin, appears to be the official host of the conference, delivering the opening welcome alongside Arthur … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 28, 2012 Apparently news travels slowly from Gotham to Omaha. When Warren Buffett, the legendary investor and so-called Oracle of Omaha appeared on the Charlie Rose show on PBS Monday evening and praised the idea of Jamie Dimon as the next Treasury Secretary, he sounded less oracle and more out-of-touch cheerleader. Buffett was making the media rounds with Fortune’s Carol Loomis, who has written a glowing  book on Buffett, Tap Dancing to Work: Warren Buffett on Practically Everything, 1966-2012. When asked by Rose what message it would send if President Obama appointed Jamie Dimon as the next Treasury Secretary, Buffett had this to say: “I think Jamie Dimon actually would be, I think he’d be terrific, because if we did run into problems in markets, I think he would actually be the best person you could have in the job and I think the world leaders … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 27, 2012 Much of the current dysfunction and corruption on Wall Street has been laid at the feet of the repeal of the depression-era investor protection legislation known as the Glass-Steagall Act, which barred investment banks that underwrote securities from mergers with commercial banks taking insured deposits. The merger of Citicorp (parent of Citibank) with Travelers Group in 1998 forced the hand of Congress to pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which repealed the barriers imposed by the Glass-Steagall Act. Committees in both the Senate and House of Representatives have now begun to look beyond the Wall Street carnage of 2008 to the intractable problem of creating jobs in America.  There is concern that the framework of Wall Street is creating structural impediments to job creation.  Those concerns are very real. In November 2009, David Weild and Edward Kim authored a study for the accounting firm, Grant … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 16, 2012 The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) wants to teach the public financial literacy. It says “Our Financial Literacy Center serves as a credible resource for basic financial education to help people better understand and manage their personal finances.” Is the NYSE a credible source? Right off the bat, I’m not feeling confident when I read: “Only the highest quality companies can choose to list their securities on our exchanges. And once they do, NYSE Euronext plays a unique role in providing deep and liquid markets for the trading of those securities, benefiting all investors, large and small.”  Throughout the years, the NYSE has had to delist numerous companies that have turned out to be frauds or grossly mismanaged. They were not “the highest quality” companies by a long shot. Millions of Americans have lost their life savings believing that if a company trades on the NYSE, it was … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 15, 2012 Throughout the United States there are critical functions that society deems too essential to leave to the vagaries of the profit driven marketplace.  Fire and police departments, public schools, parks, libraries, roads, tunnels and bridges – all paid for with taxpayer dollars and overseen by government.  So why shouldn’t the U.S. have a parallel system of public banks with a public mandate and accountable to the people  – especially at a time of unprecedented corruption in commercial banking under the jackboot of Wall Street. Until the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, it was illegal for Wall Street firms to  own commercial banks.  Commercial banks made loans to consumers and businesses and Wall Street investment banks were assigned the job of allocating capital to worthy business enterprises by underwriting their stock and bond offerings. Today, just five Wall Street firms, JPMorgan Chase & Co., … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 12, 2012  Over the past five years, more than $150 million of taxpayer money has been dumped into a spy center in Lower Manhattan where employees of Wall Street firms and real estate behemoths sit side by side with municipal police to spy on the comings and goings of pedestrians on the streets around Wall Street.  But none of the thousands of spy cameras positioned around the city that feed into this center foresaw the storm surge that put as much as 40 feet of corrosive salt water in the basements of commercial buildings in Lower Manhattan, crippling thousands of businesses along with the lives of area residents.  With major businesses and employees dislocated indefinitely as landlords of commercial buildings deal with boilers and electrical systems destroyed by massive flooding, soggy debris that must be carted out, and in some cases extensive cleanup from toxins from … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: October 29, 2012  The current issue of Rolling Stone magazine has a one-on-one interview with President Obama.  Reading the interview, it became quickly clear how incredibly lax the New York Times was in failing to respond to repeated requests to correct a mountain of false facts that appeared in an Andrew Ross Sorkin article of May 21, 2012.  President Obama is now repeating the same utterly bogus information for even wider distribution.  This is no small matter.  Honing in on what genuinely caused the financial crash of 2008 is critical to understanding its roots and thus enabling the nation to write proper reform legislation.  This is what Andrew Ross Sorkin falsely claimed in his column in May: “Let’s look at the facts of the financial crisis in the context of Glass-Steagall. “The first domino to nearly topple over in the financial crisis was Bear Stearns, an investment bank … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: October 15, 2012 A little over a month ago, I went to the web site of the Koch Industries roster of their version of “facts,” and stumbled upon, completely by accident, the billionaire brothers’ wholesale attack on Robert Greenwald, the filmmaker who released the documentary Koch Brothers Exposed earlier this year.  For the balance of the day, wherever I went on the internet, various versions of Koch ads popped up, berating Greenwald and his film.  I felt like I was being stalked. According to a techie friend, I had picked up a cookie at the Koch Industries web site and it was using that cookie to follow me around and attempt to brainwash me against Robert Greenwald and his film.  I had to erase all my cookies to stop this stalking. If you think this is over-the-top creepy, you obviously have not yet read the article in the New … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: October 12, 2012 Watching the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates, it’s easy to get caught up in personality over substance, rhetoric over reality.  The reality check is to remind ourselves what industry is giving massive, lopsided support to the Romney/Ryan ticket: Wall Street.  According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the top five funders of Romney’s campaign are all Wall Street firms.  The PACs, employees and their immediate family members have given the following to the Romney campaign: Goldman Sachs – $891,140; Bank of America (which owns Merrill Lynch) — $668,139; JPMorgan Chase — $663,219; Morgan Stanley — $649,847; Credit Suisse Group — $554,066.  No Wall Street firm is among the top five donors to the Obama campaign. This level of support suggests two things: Wall Street has been assured by the Romney/Ryan campaign that they will repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation and they will privatize Social Security.  … Continue reading →