By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 19, 2018 ~  If you get your business news from the Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg News or the New York Times or Reuters or the Financial Times or CNBC, chances are you did not hear about a critically important symposium that was held on Monday on the dangers that Wall Street’s biggest banks continue to pose to the U.S. economy and, in particular, to communities of color. Adding to the mystery of how every major business news outlet could simultaneously decide to skip the event is that it was headlined by two famous players in the banking debate, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Neel Kashkari, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. The symposium on “Too Big to Fail” was hosted by Howard University’s Department of Economics and held at the campus which is located in Washington, DC – where there is … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 16, 2018 Donald Trump has been struggling for weeks to add fire power to his legal team. Then, somehow, last Wednesday, Trump was able to hire a woman considered by Wall Street to be a legal dynamo. The hire came just a few days after Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, saw his home, office, hotel room, safety deposit box and electronic devices raided by the FBI under the direction of the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) – Wall Street’s official stomping ground. The case was referred to the SDNY by Special Counsel Robert Mueller according to court documents filed in the matter. Trump has intervened in the Cohen court case in the SDNY via his new lawyer, Joanna Hendon, herself a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the SDNY. According to her LinkedIn profile, Hendon served there from … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 13, 2018 The Republican National Committee (RNC), the organization that provides leadership and funding for the official Republican Party of the United States, has put its reputation on the line along with every Republican that’s running for public office in November by setting up an official RNC website calling former FBI Director James Comey “Lyin’ Comey.” It has been the longstanding position of President Donald Trump that Comey is a liar. Trump fired Comey in the midst of the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election and has disparaged him ever since. Comey is highly respected by the rank and file of the FBI, the most esteemed law enforcement agency in the United States. The RNC has apparently taken Trump’s personal loyalty pledge – the one Comey says he refused to take when asked by the President. But there’s no … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 12, 2018 Facebook wants Congress, shareholders and Wall Street analysts to think of it as a sexy, high-growth-potential technology company, not a media company, but after 10 hours of Congressional probing this week, Facebook has been revealed to be a media company that is simply using advanced technology and deceptive practices to gain an unfair advertising advantage over other media companies. (Another reason Facebook does not want to admit to being a media company is that it would then have to take responsibility for the fake news and propaganda it is spreading through Russian bots and trolls of every stripe.) As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg conceded this week in the Congressional hearings, Facebook’s business model revolves around the company’s ability to provide advertisers with granular data on its users so that advertisers can more effectively target them for a specific product or service. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 11, 2018 As Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg fingered his cheat sheet of canned answers to a barrage of questions from Senators yesterday on how Facebook had allowed a Trump-backed political operation to harvest personal data from 87 million of its users, Zuckerberg attempted to channel motherhood, apple pie, dorm room entrepreneurism and an altruistic desire to connect people around the world in one harmonious melding of human spirit. Unfortunately, the facts just kept getting in the way. There was the questioning from Senator Richard Blumenthal pointing out that Facebook had been caught red-handed in 2011 by the Federal Trade Commission in egregious abuses of its users’ personal data. Blumenthal said current activities at Facebook showed that Facebook was in “violation of the FTC consent decree.” Another uncomfortable moment came when Senator Patrick Leahy asked if Special Counsel Robert Mueller had issued subpoenas to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 10, 2018 As the news broke yesterday that the office, home and hotel room of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, had been raided yesterday by the FBI, CNN was ferociously soliciting opinions from a myriad of folks on why Special Counsel Robert Mueller had not overseen the raid but had simply made a referral to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) which oversaw the raid. No one had any concrete answers for CNN. For years, Wall Street On Parade has been documenting and reporting on how the Federal courts and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York function as a protection racket for Wall Street. For decades, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the SDNY has been populating itself through a gold-plated revolving door to Wall Street’s biggest and coziest law firms. This … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 9, 2018 Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, will testify before a joint session of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee tomorrow afternoon. He’ll head to the Hill again on Wednesday morning to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Zuckerberg’s testimony comes as a result of the stunning testimony that Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, gave to the British Parliament on March 27 of this year on how tens of millions of Facebook users had their private information obtained without their permission by Cambridge Analytica, a company deeply involved in the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Zuckerberg conceded in a public statement on April 4 that the privacy breach by Cambridge Analytica could have affected as many as 87 million Facebook users. Zuckerberg also acknowledged that “most” of its 2 billion worldwide users may have had their profiles scraped … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 6, 2018 If you have ever watched the past Chairs of the Federal Reserve give their semi-annual testimony before the U.S. House and Senate, you are aware of how carefully they parse their words to avoid rattling the stock or bond markets. That’s how people in high places in government with insider information behave. But now we have Rambo in the Oval Office, randomly throwing grenades into already wildly fluctuating markets. This leads foreign investors as well as U.S. investors to question if they want their life savings to be invested in this carnival barker-like circus. Bloomberg News underscores this reality with an article today about a $60 billion money manager who is considering selling all of his U.S. assets because of the political risk. At around 8:40 p.m. last eve, we settled in to watch the news. We learned that President Trump … Continue reading →