Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens: September 19, 2012  The Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center on Broadway, built with more than $150 million of taxpayers’ dollars, is spy-central for keeping tabs on the Occupy Wall Street protesters.  Currently sitting around spy-central at taxpayer-funded computer workstations are representatives from the following Wall Street institutions: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  (A Freedom of Information Law request filed by the author with the New York Police Department 11 months ago to obtain the full list of occupants has yet to be answered, despite New York law mandating a response in 5 to 20 business days.)  Sharing the space with the Wall Street crowd in spy-central are at least four formal police groups: the New York City Police Department, the Transit Police, the Port Authority Police, and the newly exposed, privately employed, Federal Reserve … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 17, 2012 By mid morning today, as Occupy Wall Street protesters marched around the perimeter of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, all signs that an FRPD (Federal Reserve Police Department) existed had disappeared.  The FRPD patrol cars and law enforcement officers had been replaced by NYPD patrol cars and officers.   That decision may have been made to keep from drawing attention to a mushrooming new domestic police force that most Americans do not know exists. Quietly, without fanfare or Congressional hearings, the USA Patriot Act in 2001 bestowed on the 12 privately owned Federal Reserve Banks, domestic policing powers. Section 364 of the Act, “Uniform Protection Authority for Federal Reserve,” reads: “Law enforcement officers designated or authorized by the Board or a reserve bank under paragraph (1) or (2) are authorized while on duty to carry firearms and make arrests without warrants for any offense against the … Continue reading →

We are mindful that the preservation of liberty depends in part upon the maintenance of social order. But the First Amendment recognizes, wisely we think, that a certain amount of expressive disorder not only is inevitable in a society committed to individual freedom, but must itself be protected if that freedom would survive. — U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, Jr., City of Houston v. Hill (1987) By Pam Martens: September 17, 2012 With chants of “Police everywhere; justice nowhere,” protesters marching through the streets of lower Manhattan this past weekend to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, ably summed up the situation in New York City.  At times, as captured on video footage, law enforcement looked like the unruly mob, grabbing peaceful protesters and arresting people for no apparent reason. In 1987, in the City of Houston v. Hill, the Nation’s highest court made the law … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 11, 2012 Will someone please wake up the Wall Street Scrooge crowd with the news that while they may still be munching on their Golden Osetra caviar and sipping Billinis, tens of thousands of fellow citizens of their city are experiencing the worst downturn since the Great Depression – and, for God’s sake, that includes innocent children who can’t be blamed by even the most Ayn Randian of cold hearts for their circumstances. According to New York City data and a report in the New York Daily News on Sunday, the number of homeless children sleeping in New York City shelters reached 19,000 last week.  That’s on a par with the data for the Great Depression. The numbers are rising dramatically year after year and yet Wall Street’s response last year to a core charity easing the suffering of homeless children in its own city  was … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 4, 2012  The reality of what is happening in New York City has eclipsed the human capacity to absorb it. Four years after crippling the U.S. economy, Wall Street is still settling new cases of fraud each week by paying a fine and moving along to the next fraud and the next fine.  Citigroup settled three cases just last week.  This is the culture that landed the U.S. within a hairsbreadth of the second Great Depression and yet, incomprehensively, the coddling of the crime denizens continues while the media who attempt to cover protests against that culture are battered and jailed along with the protesters.  Exhibit A on the list of New York City insanity is the spy center created by the NYPD to cohabitate with Wall Street using $150 million of taxpayer funds – the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center.  Firms like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 20, 2012 Given the growing public perception that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is unwilling to prosecute the worst miscreants on Wall Street, one would think his former Wall Street powerhouse law firm would be laying low.  On the contrary, Covington and Burling, where Attorney General Holder previously served as partner and former lobbyist for Global Crossing, is bragging about the competitive advantages its close ties to the Justice Department offer its clients.  The company writes as follows under the subheading, “Our Competitive Advantages.”  “Covington is one of the few firms in the world with lawyers who recently held senior positions in both the US Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and UK Serious Fraud Office (“SFO”). Both Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney General, and Lanny Breuer, the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division (which has principal responsibility in DOJ for enforcing the FCPA [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 16, 2012  According to news reports yesterday, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been cranking out the subpoenas to Wall Street’s largest banks over allegations of an international bank cartel rigging Libor interest rates.  Libor is the benchmark rate used to set many consumer loans, like credit card, student loans, and adjustable rate mortgages.  It is also the primary rate used by Wall Street banks in setting rates on interest rate swaps. Both New York State and New York City have a boatload of those deals that are bleeding red ink. (Read how other municipalities around the country are being drained by these deals.)  According to a December 2011 report by Michael Stewart of United NY, JPMorgan Chase is the counterparty to most of the interest rate swaps for New York City; the MTA currently has sixteen active swap agreements with JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup/Citibank, UBS, AIG, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 14, 2012 We learned a little more about the policies of Mayor Michael (“just call me ‘Mike’ ”) Bloomberg last week. Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly held yet another press conference at the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center on Broadway in the Wall Street area.  As we first reported on October 18, 2011, this Center was built with at least $150 million of taxpayers’ money but its “partners” in spying on the people of New York City, with their very own staffed computer workstations in the Center, are some of the most notorious Wall Street firms: for example, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase, as well as the regulator that’s got their back, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  Exactly what is the logic of going into partnership to battle crime with the very firms which the U.S. Department of Justice and regulators worldwide … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 1, 2012  Back on July 3, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone wondered aloud on his blog: “Why is Nobody Freaking Out About the Libor Banking Scandal?”  Now we have at least a partial answer: two heavily viewed network evening news programs have yet to discover the largest banking scandal in history.  In a blog post at Media Matters for America, Ben Dimiero and Rob Savillo reported the following yesterday:  “Despite the enormous implications of the scandal, ABC’s World News and NBC’s Nightly News both ignored the story in the 16 days after news of the Barclays fine broke, as we documented earlier this month. In the 16 days following the period of our original study, the LIBOR blackout has continued on ABC and NBC’s flagship evening news programs. Those programs have gone more than a month without mentioning the controversy.”  What could possibly explain not one, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: July 27, 2012  The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIG-TARP) which provides oversight of the TARP bailout program put in place during the financial crisis of 2008, released a report this week on AIG.  The report indicated that AIG still has no Federal regulator and that “PricewaterhouseCoopers has been AIG’s auditor for decades and continues to serve in that role.” To appreciate the significance of the above sentence, a little background is in order.  In May 2005, AIG restated five years of financial statements, shaving $3.9 billion off its previously reported profit for those years and reducing its book value by $2.7 billion. AIG had a derivatives unit called AIG Financial Products which, by 2008, had issued $400 billion in credit default swaps, mostly to Wall Street banks, which it did not have the financial wherewithal to cover.  In 2008, first through the … Continue reading →