By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 19, 2018 ~ If Russia was the only major outside player to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election, why are so many of the spoils going to Charles Koch and his network of political operatives? Koch is a mega billionaire (worth $51 billion according to Forbes) and sits atop one of the largest private corporations in the world — Koch Industries – with interests in fossil fuels, chemicals, paper products and commodities trading. For the past forty years, Koch has been at the helm of a stealthy network of front groups seeking to gut Federal regulations, downsize the government and give the wealthy and corporations more sway in deciding political races. Much of that work has been accomplished through dark money, where a donor can give tens of millions of dollars in just one year to a tax exempt front group and remain … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 18, 2018 ~ The Trump administration has been the gift that keeps on giving to billionaire Charles Koch’s vast network of political front groups known as the Kochtopus. Its democracy-smothering tentacles have wrapped themselves around everything from the U.S. judicial system, to elections, to climate change, higher ed, news dissemination, and how laws are made in Washington and at the state level. (See related articles below.) Charles Koch’s wealth, and that of his brother, David, derives from their majority ownership of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the world with major interests in fossil fuels, chemicals, paper products, and commodities trading. Forbes puts their net worth at $51 billion each. The Trump administration, now packed full of Koctopus operatives, has been rapidly running a playbook for the Koch machine: withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord – check. Tax cuts for corporations and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 17, 2018 ~ With all the front page headlines on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election to put Donald Trump in the White House, there needs to be some reflection on what’s happening today. Trump’s poll numbers are not collapsing today because the U.S. stock market appears to like Donald Trump. And since tens of millions of Americans’ 401(k) plans and future retirement prospects are tied to the stock market, self interest is playing a role in propping up the President’s approval ratings. But to an ever growing degree, the U.S. stock market is being propped up by hedge fund algorithms, corporations taking on debt to buy back their own stock, big Wall Street banks’ dark pools trading in darkness and foreign central banks and foreign sovereign wealth funds gobbling up U.S. stocks. Now it seems that the tiny window the public has … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 16, 2018 There’s a very good reason that major Wall Street frauds haven’t been in the headlines of late. It’s certainly not because those frauds aren’t taking place at this very moment all across Wall Street and its stealthy operations in London. It’s also not simply that the U.S. Justice Department is consumed with Russian spies and the President of the United States remains obsessed with Hillary Clinton’s email server. It’s because the major investigative body of Wall Street in the U.S. Senate, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has been turned into a sleepy little backwater that has held only two hearings this year and only three during all of last year and not one of those hearings has focused on Wall Street crime. One hearing was on government red tape; two were on opioids; and two were on sex traffickers. Those are … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 13, 2018 ~ Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched against President Donald Trump’s inhumane immigration policies on Saturday, June 30, in the United States and now hundreds of thousands more are marching today and tomorrow in London and cities throughout Britain as Trump meets with Prime Minister Theresa May and is scheduled to have tea with the Queen. The sweeping public outrage has, unfortunately, escaped the tone-deaf Republican controlled Congress of the United States. Republican majority leaders have scheduled two hearings since June 28 to bolster Trump’s base and berate the FBI over the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016 and, yesterday, to flog the FBI for bias against Trump. What the Republican majority leaders in Congress see no urgency to investigate or hold hearings on is how the Trump administration has effectively abducted 3,000 children as young as two months old … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 12, 2018 ~   According to a statistical release from the Federal Reserve, as of March 31, 2018 there were 1,812 commercial banks in the United States holding consolidated assets of $300 million or more. Of those 1,812 banks, just four banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup’s Citibank) held 45 percent of the consolidated assets of those 1,812 banks. But looking at data at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) the situation is even more extreme. The FDIC shows there are 5,606 insured banks in total holding $17.531 trillion in assets. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup’s Citibank are holding 40.42 percent of the assets of all the insured banks in the country. Let us put it another way. Those four banks represent 0.07 percent of all banks in the U.S. but they have somehow managed to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 11, 2018 ~  Just days before President Trump announced his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Monday evening, a dark money group called the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) was airing a television ad calling some of the most trusted  Democrats “extremists.” As photos of Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley flashed across the screen (along with other well known Democrats) a voice warned that these “extremists will lie and attack the nominee.” One thing this threesome actually stands out for is telling the hard truths to the American people. During his presidential bid in 2016, Sanders traveled around the country telling tens of thousands of people at his rallies that the “business model of Wall Street is fraud.” Warren exposed the $6 trillion in a backdoor bailout that the Federal Reserve had funneled secretly to Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch during … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 10, 2018 ~ There is something revoltingly un-American about a man who stands with his wife and two young daughters to accept the nomination for the highest court in America, talks about feeding the homeless and coaching girls’ basketball – all the while knowing that a lot of very dirty corporate money lurks in the shadows of his nomination. We’re talking about the fact that Trump made his Supreme Court nominee selection of Brett Kavanaugh from a list that was pre-approved by the Federalist Society – a receptacle for the dark money that flows from the billionaire Charles Koch’s network of corporate polluters and democracy-killing front groups that got the Supreme Court to rubber stamp unlimited corporate money in political campaigns via the Citizens United decision in 2010. According to the Desmog, using data compiled by the Conservative Transparency project, Donors Trust and Donors … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 9, 2018 Since 1999 the chief risk officers of the Wall Street banks that blew themselves up in 2008 because of reckless and irresponsible risk practices have been meeting in secret and calling themselves the Counterparty Risk Management Policy Group (CRMPG). Their plan was to periodically release erudite-sounding reports to regulators suggesting that Wall Street could police itself under a set of “Guiding Principles” in order to perpetuate its off balance sheet debt bombs, unregulated OTC derivatives and a self-regulation regime. The group was led by former New York Fed President E. Gerald Corrigan who then moved on to a lucrative career at Goldman Sachs. Representatives from banks like Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch sat on key committees of the Group and helped to formulate the “Guiding Principles” for Wall Street. Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy on September 15, 2008 – … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 6, 2018 ~ Last year Simon & Schuster released The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives by the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist at ProPublica, Jesse Eisinger. If you read nothing else this summer, you should read this book followed by Nomi Prins’ Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World. The two books provide Americans with a comprehensive understanding of how the Justice Department, Federal regulators, a growing number of Federal judges and the central bank of the United States known as the Federal Reserve have been corrupted by corporate influence. To a large degree, they now serve their corporate masters, not the American people. The Chickenshit Club is a lively, fascinating and disturbing look behind the scenes at the U.S. Justice Department, its U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the judges and lawyers who … Continue reading →