Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 12, 2020 ~  For years we’ve been trying to figure out why JPMorgan’s Board of Directors hasn’t sacked its Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, as the bank racked up two felony counts in 2014 for its failure to alert U.S. regulators to glaring red flags in the bank account it held for Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme; one felony count in 2015 for rigging foreign exchange markets; and two more felony counts just last month for rigging the precious metals and U.S. Treasury market. (The bank admitted to all five counts.) In addition, the bank came under another criminal investigation in 2012 and 2013 when it lost $6 billion of its bank depositors’ money gambling in credit derivatives in London (the London Whale scandal). Turns out Jamie Dimon has been taking very good care of the Directors on his Board and they have been … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 29, 2020 ~ As the attention of Americans is focused on surviving the pandemic and the pivotal presidential debate tonight, William Barr’s Justice Department decided to quietly hand an early Christmas present to a notorious Wall Street bank. Under the richly compensated leadership of Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, has admitted to an unprecedented five criminal felony counts since 2014 and put on criminal probation three times. Dimon notched two of those felony counts in his belt today. (That’s five felonies more than the bank pleaded guilty to in its prior 100 years of existence. Translation: this is not normal even on Wall Street.) The bank has agreed today to pay criminal fines and admit to two felony counts of wire fraud for manipulating (spoofing) trading in the precious metals and U.S. Treasury markets. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 29, 2020 ~ On December 6 of last year, Bloomberg News reported that Goldman Sachs and the Justice Department were in discussions to settle criminal charges related to the 1MDB Malaysia sovereign wealth fund bribery and kickback scheme for possibly $1.5 to $2 billion. Bloomberg reporters wrote that “a settlement could be announced as soon as next month.” It’s 10 months later and there has been no such settlement with the Justice Department. So you might want to factor that into your reading of the latest reporting at Bloomberg News predicting an imminent settlement between the Justice Department and JPMorgan Chase over the bank’s role in rigging precious metals markets. (Although JPMorgan might, indeed, be eager to settle the case with this Justice Department rather than gamble on a new Justice Department under a different president.) While multiple indictments have been handed down … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 23, 2020 ~ Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, can no longer hide his political leanings. We’ve got his Federal election records and they’re not pretty. Tens of thousands of Dimon’s employees are now going to have to come to grips with the fact that Dimon and their bank’s Political Action Committee (PAC) are supporting Mitch McConnell’s reelection, a man many would rather see pummeled in the public square than return to the U.S. Senate. According to Morning Consult, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is the second most unpopular member of the U.S. Senate, just behind Susan Collins of Maine. John Harris, the founding Editor of Politico, has a column up this morning where he calls McConnell “a skilled practitioner of the politics of decline” and refers to McConnell’s mind as “ruthless rationality.” Harris goes on to offer this … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 21, 2020 ~ The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has once again managed to do what federal bank regulators refuse to do in the United States – come clean with the American people about our dirty Wall Street banks. ICIJ dropped a bombshell investigative report yesterday about money laundering for criminals at some of the biggest banks on Wall Street, but you won’t find a peep about it on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal or New York Times’ print editions. In fact, the New York Times, as of 6:44 a.m. this morning, hasn’t reported the story at all. The Wall Street Journal carries an innocuous headline, “HSBC Stock Hits 25-Year Low,” putting the focus on the British bank, HSBC, when its focus should be on the largest bank in the U.S., JPMorgan Chase, a serial felon. JPMorgan Chase has … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 8, 2020 ~ Last week there was a big buzz among financial media outlets regarding the Japanese conglomerate, SoftBank. According to unnamed sources who spoke to the Financial Times, over the past few months SoftBank has paid about $4 billion in premiums, buying call options on individual U.S. technology stocks. The Financial Times called SoftBank the Nasdaq Whale and said its call buying had “stoked the fevered rally in big tech stocks before a sharp pullback” at the end of last week. A call option on an individual stock is a derivative that gives the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to purchase the actual stock at a specified price (strike price) over a specified time period. According to the Financial Times, the call options purchased by SoftBank gave it exposure to approximately $30 billion in the stock of big tech companies. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 26, 2020 ~ At his press conference on June 10 of this year, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said this about the U.S. banking system, which includes a little more than 5,000 federally insured banks but is dangerously concentrated in the hands of just five mega banks on Wall Street. “You have a banking system that is so much better capitalized, so much stronger, better aware of its risks, better at managing its risks, more highly liquid. You have all of those things and they’ve been lending, they’ve been taking in deposits, they’ve been a source of strength in this situation.” Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, is apparently not buying the story that Powell is attempting to sell to the public. According to Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the quarter ending June 30, 2020, Buffett … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 20, 2020 ~ We have a marketing suggestion for the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors if it is nutty enough to accept JPMorgan Chase’s overture to place its ATM machines on the premises of U.S. post offices. The marketing idea goes like this: place a big red, white and blue sign over each JPMorgan Chase ATM machine that reads: “From the wonderful folks who were Bernie Madoff’s bankers.” Business media was abuzz yesterday with the news that JPMorgan Chase has had conversations with the U.S. Postal Service regarding placing the bank’s ATM machines in post office branches. CNBC quoted Trish Wexler, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan Chase, confirming the talks and making the following statement: “We had very preliminary conversations with the U.S. Postal Service several months ago about what it might look like to lease a small number of spaces to place … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 20, 2020 ~ Quietly, on July 13, the New York Fed published a list of asset-backed loans that it had approved for eligibility in one of its emergency lending  programs, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, otherwise known as TALF. The New York Fed stuck a smattering of small business loans and one student loan product on the list. Everything else was securitized pools of mortgages on commercial real estate, much of it issued by JPMorgan and Citigroup. TALF was supposed to help the consumer by keeping interest rates down on consumer loans. It’s pretty tough to find a connection between the consumer and commercial real estate mortgages on hotels, shopping malls and office buildings. One thing notable about the New York Fed’s approved list is that the securitizations of these commercial mortgages by JPMorgan had occurred as far back as 2013 and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 13, 2020 ~ Imagine if every bank customer was greeted this week with a big sign just inside their Chase Bank branch that said this: “Dear Customers: We lost $3.2 billion trading stocks and credit derivatives in the first quarter. We did that using your bank deposits. But don’t worry, that pales in comparison to the $6 billion we lost in 2012 in the London Whale mess.” JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States. Each and every week, millions of Americans write out a check on their account at one of the more than 5,000 branches of Chase Bank; or drop into a branch to open a savings account for a grandchild; or to put money into their own retirement account; or to seek financial advice. Everything looks very crisp, clean, consumer friendly and professional inside that individual bank branch. … Continue reading →