Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens: April 2, 2013  In addition to collecting her $250,000 for sitting on the Board of General Electric, former SEC Chair Mary Schapiro, who left the SEC post in December, will be hanging her shingle at Promontory Financial Group LLC as a managing director. The firm has not disclosed the amount of her compensation.  Promontory’s founder, Eugene Ludwig, was formerly the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) from 1993 to 1998. The OCC is the primary regulator of national banks. Before becoming head of the OCC, Ludwig was a partner at the corporate law firm, Covington & Burling, the firm where former head of the criminal division of the Justice Department, Lanny  Breuer, returned earlier this year. The Justice Department has been heavily criticized for failing to prosecute Wall Street banks or their top executives.  The U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, also hails from … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 26, 2013 The only entity less deserving of an Investor Relations award is the magazine that just gave one to JPMorgan’s Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, last Thursday evening. Six days before the awards event hosted by IR Magazine (that stands for Investor Relations Magazine but could also stand for Insane Rationale Magazine) which went unattended by Dimon (likely out of fear he might trip over the people rolling on the floor at his award) the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 307 page report and 98 exhibits proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Dimon and his CFO at the time, Douglas Braunstein, either lied through their teeth to investors and investment analysts or were in the dark about what was going on within their own company when the Chief Investment Office churned $6.2 billion of bank deposits into pocket change. At … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 21, 2013 Despite all the corporate media headlines that Mary Jo White would sail through her confirmation vote before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday, what actually happened stands in stark contrast to the prognostications. White was not approved for a full four-year term at the SEC. She was confirmed simply to finish out the remaining 14-month term of former SEC Chair Mary Schapiro’s term. President Obama sent the following nomination language to the Senate: “Mary Jo White, of New York, to be a Member of the Securities and Exchange Commission for the remainder of the term expiring June 5, 2014, vice Mary L. Schapiro, resigned. Mary Jo White, of New York, to be a Member of the Securities and Exchange Commission for a term expiring June 5, 2019.” But when the Senate Banking Committee met in Executive Session on Tuesday, March 19, 2013, there was no … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 13, 2013 Americans learned for the first time on March 6 of this year that the highest law enforcement agent in our country, Attorney General Eric Holder, weighs economic interests when deciding whether to enforce our Nation’s laws against criminal wrongdoers like the too-big-to-fail banks. The spectacle of warped law enforcement grew worse today during the Senate Banking confirmation hearing of Mary Jo White to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. Under questioning by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), White admitted that even the economy of a foreign country – like Japan – is taken into consideration before bringing a criminal indictment in the U.S.  Even worse, White was forced to admit that while working for the U.S. Department of Justice as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (from 1993 to 2002), she considered it appropriate to speak with Larry Summers (a Treasury Secretary … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 8, 2013  For years I’ve used the phrase “Frankenbanks” in my articles – those global banking behemoths created as a result of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 that allow the co-mingling of FDIC insured mom and pop savings accounts with investment banking activities that blow up things using the mom and pop savings accounts leveraged to the hilt. Now the U.S. Senate is making my case for me on the use of Frankenbanks as an appropriate soubriquet.  If we date the run up to the financial crisis as beginning in the summer of 2007, which the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency does, it is more than five years since Congress has been studying why Wall Street is very adept at blowing up things but adept at not much else – like its main job of fairly allocating capital to new companies that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 5, 2013  Just when one thinks the winks and nods between Washington and Wall Street couldn’t get any worse, there is growing evidence that the U.S. Justice Department knows that 20 banks engaged in the rigging of Libor but is intentionally delaying bringing charges against U.S. banks JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.  Evidence is also stacking up that while the largest banks in the world were under intensive investigation for rigging Libor, they continued to rig it, while regulators remain dumbfounded about what to do.  And, in an Alice in Wonderland type of development, despite trillions of dollars of financial products resetting based on the Libor index, a key regulator says it’s become a fictional benchmark because the loans between banks that it’s based on have all but disappeared.  Libor is an acronym for London Interbank Offered Rate. It is supposed to be a reliable reflection of the rate at … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 4, 2013  Last November, one of Europe’s largest publications, the German news magazine Der Spiegel, splashed a terminally ill Uncle Sam on its front cover. Inside we are told that “Many developing countries are now looking to China instead of the US as a role model on how to structure a country. They are no longer seeking the light of the American beacon on the horizon.”  One of the reasons cited by the article for America’s decline is that our best and brightest no longer focus their talents and energies on enriching America’s future, but rush to Wall Street to line their own pockets: “About a third of the students in every graduating class at Harvard University accepts jobs in investment banking and consulting, or with hedge funds — that is, industries that produce one thing above all: fast money…” reads the article.  Last week, Wall Street’s … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 28, 2013  In several respects, Occupy Wall Street reminds me of the feminist movement. Corporate funded media has declared the women’s rights movement dead ad nauseam for four decades — and yet it thrives and reinvents itself. Similarly, corporate funded media has eulogized Occupy Wall Street from almost the moment of its nascent birth in the Fall of 2011.  If there is a common thread connecting these movements and the dire media prognostications of their demise, it is likely that when either one advances, entrenched power — and its iron grip on the wealth of a nation — loses.  Now, similar to the early court battles for women’s rights, Occupy Wall Street has tossed aside its encampments and bullhorns and donned its legal garb and pro hac vices. Occupy Wall Street’s brain trust, Occupy the SEC, just filed a Federal lawsuit that encapsulates the crony capitalist … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 13, 2013  President Obama delivered an uplifting State of the Union address to the Nation last evening, promising “to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class.” He said it was the country’s “unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country – the idea that if you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead.” He said it was his job “to make sure that this government works on behalf of the many, and not just the few.”  Unfortunately, the President’s speechwriter is not in charge of nominating candidates who could turn those lofty goals into realities. One must wonder exactly who is in charge of nominating candidates. When it comes to the most important posts that oversee Wall Street, the one industry in America that does more than any other to prevent hardworking Americans from getting ahead, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 8, 2013  President Obama might as well drape the White House with a giant banner declaring in bold red type: “Drop Dead 99 Percent.”  A pattern is emerging in the nominations coming out of the Oval Office. If you’ve played a role in collapsing a major bank, the President has a top slot for you. But only millionaires and billionaires need apply. Union busting scores extra points.  Jack Lew was paid millions as Chief Operating Officer for the very division of Citigroup that collapsed the bank in 2008 and Jack Lew is nominated by the President for U.S. Treasury Secretary. Before that, Lew played a key role in busting a grad students union at New York University.  Billionaire Penny Pritzker was involved in the collapse of the Superior Bank of Illinois, a Chicago savings and loan that went belly up in 2001 and now, according to … Continue reading →