By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 6, 2018 ~ Approximately two-thirds of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) derives from the consumer. Without financially healthy consumers, the economy cannot prosper. In a July 30 interview on the cable news channel, CNBC, Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the U.S., said that “the consumer’s in good shape; their balance sheet’s in good shape.” On May 17 the Center for Microeconomic Data at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit which raised some notable questions as to whether Jamie Dimon actually has his finger on the pulse of the U.S. consumer. According to the report, “aggregate household debt balances increased in the first quarter of 2018, for the 15th consecutive quarter. As of March 31, 2018, total household indebtedness stood at $13.21 trillion,” which is $536 billion … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 3, 2018 ~ The Trump administration seems hellbent on turning every Federal regulator into a snake oil salesman.  The latest scandal du jour comes yesterday from Politico’s Ben Lefebvre who reports that the Inspector General of the Interior Department is investigating whether the Interior’s head honcho, Ryan Zinke, colluded with the head of Halliburton to build him his dream brewery in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana. Against that backdrop, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced on Tuesday that financial technology companies, known as fintech, which provide various types of banking activities other than accepting insured deposits, will now be allowed to apply for a special purpose national bank charter and operate across state lines. The OCC announcement promptly followed a report from the U.S. Treasury which recommended that the OCC make the charter available. The immediate impact of gaining such a charter would … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 2, 2018 A few minutes before midnight last night, CBS News announced that the Board of its parent corporation, CBS Corp., was putting two outside law firms in charge of investigating the sexual harassment allegations against its Chairman and CEO, Leslie (Les) Moonves and other executives in its CBS News division. Those two law firms are Covington & Burling and Debevoise & Plimpton.  According to the statement from CBS, the investigation at Covington & Burling “will be led by Nancy Kestenbaum and at Debevoise & Plimpton it will be led by Mary Jo White.” The selection of Mary Jo White is not likely to instill confidence among institutional holders of CBS stock who are familiar with her tenure as Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during the Obama administration. The sexual allegations were revealed in an in-depth article by Ronan Farrow … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 1, 2018 ~ It only took one day for the so-called tiff between President Donald Trump and billionaire puppet-master, Charles Koch, to land on the front page of the New York Times after being widely reported on cable news last evening. In a tweet yesterday, Trump called Charles Koch and his brother, David, “a total joke” and said he had “beaten them at every turn.” Charles Koch is the Chairman and CEO of one of the largest private companies in the world, Koch Industries, a fossil fuels and chemicals conglomerate that has been a serial polluter of the air and water for decades. He and his brother, David, each have an estimated net worth of $51 billion according to Forbes, owing to their majority ownership of Koch Industries. In June, David stepped down from all management functions at Koch Industries as well as … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 31, 2018 ~ Less than seven months after a unit of JPMorgan Chase settled with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for $410 million in penalties and disgorgement over allegations that it had manipulated electricity markets in California and the Midwest, one of its employees, Shawn Wesley Alexander, submitted a really creepy patent request to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on February 10, 2014. The patent might not be creepy for the owner of a video game arcade but JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in America – with a global footprint and an unprecedented three Federal felony counts to which it has pleaded guilty in the past four years. The first two counts came in 2014 for looking the other way at Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme as the bank watched hundreds of billions of dollars come and go through his business … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 30, 2018 ~  Wall Street On Parade has previously reported that despite the majority of contributions from the Jones Day law firm’s partners flowing to the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign during 2015-2016, an unprecedented 12 of its lawyers headed to important posts in the Trump administration in one fell swoop on January 20, 2017 – Trump’s inauguration day. Equally disturbing, in May of last year, the National Law Journal reported that the former Jones Day lawyers, now firmly entrenched in the corridors of power in the Federal government, had “received a blanket waiver clearing them of ethical conflicts,” and allowing them “to take up some matters they may have worked on in prior jobs.” That might come in handy for White House Counsel Don McGahn and his Chief of Staff, Ann Donaldson, both of whom hail from Jones Day. They previously represented Freedom … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 27, 2018 ~ The much anticipated Gross Domestic Product (GDP) number for the second quarter of 2018 was released at 8:30 a.m. this morning. President Trump had played advance man for the number during a rally yesterday saying some were predicting it could be over 5 percent but he would be happy if it had a 4 in front of the number. The number came in at 4.1 percent with the first quarter GDP being revised up to 2.2 percent. While the President would like to see this as a lasting trend owing to the brilliance of his economic policies, experts say the U.S. is far more likely to revert back to the trend of growth in the 2 percent range. The Federal Reserve is projecting a GDP rate of 2.8 percent for all of 2018; 2.4 percent in 2019; and back to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 26, 2018 ~ Remember the late 90s when the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street were bringing to market anything that smelled of technology or had a dot com after its name. That all ended  badly with the Nasdaq stock index losing 78 percent of its value from 2000 to 2002. This is how Ron Chernow correctly described what was happening for New York Times’ readers on March 15, 2001: “Let us be clear about the magnitude of the Nasdaq collapse. The tumble has been so steep and so bloody — close to $4 trillion in market value erased in one year —  that it amounts to nearly four times the carnage recorded in the October 1987 crash.” Chernow characterized the Nasdaq stock market as a “lunatic control tower that directed most incoming planes to a bustling, congested airport known as the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 25, 2018 ~ The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has had two separate Wall Street lawyers at its helm for the past five years (under both the Wall Street- friendly Obama administration as well as the current Trump administration), has released a 558-page document that attempts to pass itself off as reforming Wall Street’s Dark Pools. Instead, it simply tinkers around the meaningless edges of reform. Dark Pools are trading venues that should not exist in an efficient, transparent and honest securities market. They are effectively unregulated stock exchanges being run internally by some of the biggest Wall Street banks on Wall Street: The same banks (like Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch) that have been serially charged with abusing their customers. Instead of sending their stock trades to the New York Stock Exchange or another independent stock exchange, the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 24, 2018 ~ The New York Times published a 1300-word shallow dive into the byzantine, globally-interconnected world of financial derivatives in its print edition yesterday. After years of ignoring this seismic problem since it last blew up the U.S. financial system in 2008, what accounts for the New York Times’ newfound interest? We can sum up its 1300 word article using only three letters – CYA. What frightened the Times into this foray into the dark web of financial derivatives held by the biggest Wall Street banks was a frightening, 111-page deep dive into the subject by Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland’s Carey School of Law. Greenberger knows a thing or two about derivatives, having previously served from 1997 to 1999 as the Director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) … Continue reading →