By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 2, 2018 The former FBI Director, James Comey, is set to release his new book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership on May 1. It is anticipated that it will provide titillating details from his career in public service, notably his career as FBI Director that ended abruptly on May 9 of last year when Comey was fired by President Donald Trump in the midst of an FBI probe into Trump campaign ties to Russia. A three-year span that is not likely to make it into Comey’s book is the time he spent as General Counsel of Bridgewater Associates, immediately preceding his nomination by President  Obama in 2013 to be FBI Director. Bridgewater Associates is the weirdly managed hedge fund that promotes “radical truth and radical transparency.” The firm has become notorious for videotaping all of its internal meetings, including at least … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 27, 2017 During Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s press conference on December 13, she had this to say about financial stability on Wall Street: “And I think when we look at other indicators of financial stability risks, there’s nothing flashing red there or possibly even orange. We have a much more resilient, stronger banking system, and we’re not seeing some worrisome buildup in leverage or credit growth at excessive levels.” Where does Fed Chair Janet Yellen get her information on financial stability risks to the U.S. financial system? A key source for that information is the Office of Financial Research (OFR), a Federal agency created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to keep key government regulators like the Federal Reserve informed on mounting risks. On December 5, the OFR released its Annual Report for 2017. It was not nearly as sanguine as … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 20, 2017 Like that box of macaroni in your kitchen cupboard, the U.S. stock market has become a lot more expensive but has actually shrunk in terms of quantity. In 1975, U.S. domestic companies that traded on U.S. exchanges totaled 4,819. Forty years later, the market has shrunk to less than 4,000, despite a tripling in GDP. If you take a shorter time span of  20 years, which included the dot.com craze of listing companies known to Wall Street insiders as “crap” and “dogs,” the numbers are worse. In September of last year, Jim Clifton, the Chairman and CEO of Gallup, the polling company, reported the following: “The number of publicly listed companies trading on U.S. exchanges has been cut almost in half in the past 20 years — from about 7,300 to 3,700. Because firms can’t grow organically — that is, build more business … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 18, 2017 On Saturday, the news broke that Kory Langhofer, counsel to Donald Trump’s transition team known as Trump for America, Inc. (TFA), had sent a 7-page letter to House and Senate Committees stating that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office had improperly received “tens of thousands of emails” from the General Services Administration (GSA), a Federal agency, that had been sent or received by members of Trump’s transition team. Both the GSA and Mueller’s spokesmen denied that there had been anything improper about the turnover of the emails. Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, said that “When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process.” Lenny Loewentritt, a veteran lawyer for the GSA told Buzzfeed that transition team members were told by the GSA that materials “would … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 15, 2017 During Janet Yellen’s last press conference as Federal Reserve Chair on Wednesday, Donna Borak, the Senior Economics Writer at CNN, asked Yellen a question regarding the proposed tax cut. Borak queried: “To return back to the prospective tax bill questions, in your view at all is the Republican tax bill an ill-timed fiscal stimulus, and are you concerned at all it will wind up squandering the tools both the Congress and the Fed have when it comes time to dealing with the recession?” Yellen answered as follows: “So look, I will just say that it is up to the administration and Congress to decide on appropriate fiscal policy, and our job is to maintain our focus on employment and inflation. We continue to think, as you can see from the projections, that a gradual path of rate increases remains appropriate even … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 14, 2017 The outgoing Chair of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, held her last press conference yesterday following the Federal Open Market Committee’s decision to hike the Feds Fund rate by one-quarter percentage point, bringing its target range to 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 percent. Given the growing reports from market watchers that the stock market has entered the bubble stage and could pose a serious threat to the health of the economy should the bubble burst, CNBC’s Steve Liesman asked Yellen during the press conference if there are “concerns at the Fed about current market valuations.” Yellen gave a response which may doom her from a respected place in history. She stated: “So let me start Steve with the stock market generally. Of course the stock market has gone up a great deal this year and we have in recent months characterized the general … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 13, 2017 As mainstream media sees it, Roy Moore’s stunning special election loss yesterday in red-state Alabama to Democrat Doug Jones is all about narrowing Republican control in the U.S. Senate; or it’s about Trump’s inability to boost a fellow Republican; or it’s an early warning for Republicans as to how they will fare in the 2018 midterm elections. But if the media could pull itself out of the 24/7 political swamp for a moment and broaden our nation’s horizon past 2018, we might consider the impact that last night’s events will have on the lives of the women who had the courage to come forward and accuse Roy Moore of sexually molesting them when they were young girls and its impact on the next generation of American girls who desperately need and deserve less hostile work environments in our so-called “democracy” when … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 12, 2017 The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Wall Street’s self-regulator with a long history of conflicts of interest, has released a summary of its findings from the examinations it conducts at the nation’s brokerage firms. As is typical of FINRA, the document released to the public is extremely light on details. (Almost half of FINRA’s Board comes from inside the industry, with current representation from JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Citadel and Fidelity, to name just a few of the insiders.) One area of the report did stand out, however. FINRA has expressed concerns about the fairness of the price you’re getting on the stock or bond trade you’re placing with your broker. In Wall Street parlance, this is known as “Best Execution.” The report explains: “Best execution is a significant investor protection requirement that essentially obligates a broker dealer to exercise reasonable … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 11, 2017  In 2012, the Sentencing Project released a study that estimated that 5.85 million people would be ineligible to vote in the U.S. Presidential election that year because they had been convicted of a felony. In 22 states, felons lose their voting rights during incarceration, and for a set period of time thereafter. Usually, this includes while the individual is on parole and/or probation. Eleven states in the U.S. are more harsh. They deny voting rights to felons who have served their time in prison and have successfully completed parole and probation. If you’re a citizen of the United States and commit a felony, it’s a big deal. If you’re a Wall Street bank and commit a felony, it’s business as usual. In January 2014, JPMorgan Chase was charged with two felony counts by the U.S. Department of Justice for its involvement … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 8, 2017 Some of the same warning signs that emerged before the 1929 to 1933 market crash, the tech mania crash of 2000, and the epic Wall Street meltdown of 2008 are flashing red. If you have significant amounts of your 401(k) invested in equity mutual funds (that is, those invested in stocks), it’s time to take an objective appraisal of today’s market versus historic benchmarks. This is also a good time to remember that markets have lost as much as 50 percent of their value from peak to trough in the last 20 years. If that’s more pain than you’re prepared to suffer, it may be time to trim back your exposure. We’ll get to the specifics on today’s market shortly, but first some necessary background. In the market crash of 1929 to 1933, the stock market lost 90 percent of its … Continue reading →