By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 3, 2017 On the campaign stump in Charlotte, North Carolina last October 26, Donald Trump promised to bring back a 21st Century version of the Glass-Steagall Act as a means of reforming Wall Street’s casino culture. At around noon today, Trump will continue the Orwellian reverse-speak of his campaign promises and do the opposite of what he promised. According to leaks to the financial media, Trump will today sign executive actions ordering swift reviews aimed at rolling back the feeble safeguards on Wall Street that currently exist while replacing them with — nothing. There has been no further word from Trump on bringing back the core principles of Glass-Steagall which would force the formal separation of banks holding taxpayer-backstopped insured deposits from the high-risk, derivatives-peddling, hedge-fund-financing investment banks. Trump is expected to sign one executive action today ordering financial regulators to review rolling back … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 2, 2017 Johnny Depp, the celebrated film star internationally known for his Pirates of the Caribbean series of movies for Disney, is currently engaged in a nasty, highly publicized court battle with his long time business management company, TMG, run by the well known attorney brothers Joel and Robert Mandel. Depp’s lawsuit is over the Mandels’ 17-year financial management of his income and assets. Depp filed his lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on January 13 alleging breach of fiduciary duty, fraudulent concealment, constructive fraud, unjust enrichment, wrongful foreclosure and myriad other charges. TMG filed a cross complaint on January 31, alleging they are owed money by Depp and portraying him as a “selfish, reckless and irresponsible” wild spender who is spreading “vile lies and frivolous allegations” against them, despite their constant warnings to him that he was living wildly beyond his means. The story went … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 1, 2017 The U.S. Treasury Secretary is one of the four most powerful posts in the U.S. government, overseeing a sprawling network of functions that impact the average American every single day. Putting a man or woman in that post who has exhibited impeccable integrity throughout their career should be the sworn duty of every member of the U.S. Senate, which oversees the confirmation hearing process. Yesterday, every Democratic Senator on the Senate Finance Committee upheld their duty and boycotted the vote on Steven Mnuchin, President Donald Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary. The boycott denied the Senate Finance Committee the ability to have a quorum and a final vote. Trump had pushed Mnuchin forward not because of his sterling credentials but because Mnuchin had helped to raise millions of dollars for Trump as his Campaign Finance Chairman. As the tawdry details of Mnuchin’s … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 31, 2017 In the midst of being skewered across media outlets yesterday for his chaotic rollout of an Executive Order that appeared to target Muslims, including those legally living in the U.S. as businessmen, doctors, university faculty and students — who were initially denied reentry after travel abroad — President Donald Trump tried desperately to change the subject. Following a plunge of over 200 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average yesterday, Trump pivoted to something he thought would please his financial backers on Wall Street. He called the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation passed in 2010 by the Obama administration a “disaster” and promised to “do a big number” on it soon. The Dow closed down 122 points — now wary of Trump’s fire-ready-aim leadership on complex matters. The legitimate fear across Wall Street right now is that Trump’s zero-vetting approach to rule-by-Executive-Order … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 30, 2017 At 8:05 a.m. this morning in New York, futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were showing a potential loss of 55 points when the market opens at 9:30 a.m. At least some of the market jitters can be traced to the weekend of chaos at U.S. airports where legal residents of the U.S. found themselves in a twilight zone, unable to get back into the country as a result of President Donald Trump’s hastily penned Executive Order. As media word spread of university faculty, Ph.D. candidates, medical students and business executives being denied reentry into the U.S. after visits abroad, spontaneous protests erupted at major international airports across the U.S. including San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Dulles outside of Washington, D.C. The chaos resulted from an Executive Order signed by Trump on Friday that bans … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 27, 2017 During his first week in office, Donald Trump issued an executive order stating that it “is the policy of the executive branch” to “secure the southern border of the United States through the immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border” with Mexico. Researchers have put the cost of the wall at $15 to $25 billion. That price tag would come to a nation with a staggering national debt of $19.9 trillion and a D+ rating on its critical infrastructure that plays an essential role in the country’s economic growth and ability to pay its debt. Every four years the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) releases a comprehensive assessment of the U.S. infrastructure. The last report was released in 2013 giving a D+ rating to U.S. infrastructure. (The next report is due in March of this year.) The … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 26, 2017  On Monday, Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University, wrote an opinion piece for Bloomberg News that offered several thought-provoking reasons that Trump and his staff are willing to tell bald-faced lies that are easily debunked. The column came after a weekend where Trump and his staff appeared neurotically obsessed to convince big media that Trump is the most popular president in history, notwithstanding the hundreds of thousands of protesters against his presidency that filled Washington D.C. and other major cities around the country on Saturday. Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer stated on Saturday that “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.” Spicer went on to assail the media’s “attempts to lessen the enthusiasm for the inauguration” as “shameful and wrong.” The Washington Post easily debunked the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 25, 2017 It was announced yesterday that Andrew Ceresney, the head of enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) since 2013, would be returning to Debevoise & Plimpton as co-head of its litigation department – a nice promotion. In 2009, one year into the biggest financial crash since the Great Depression, Debevoise & Plimpton’s Ceresney was lead author, with two of his colleagues, of a lengthy article for the American Criminal Law Review titled: Regulatory Investigations and the Credit Crisis: The Search for Villains. Debevoise & Plimpton, both then and now, represents some of the largest Wall Street banks that have serially engaged in fraudulent conduct against the investing public. The article seemed to be suggesting that prosecuting these banks would be too labor intensive and the facts too hard to prove because the deals were too complex. One paragraph reads as … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 24, 2017 Yesterday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) charged two units of the Wall Street mega bank, Citigroup, with insidious fraudulent acts against homeowners while it imposed a modest $28.8 million in relief and penalties. The penalty portion of $7.4 million is meaningless because this is a bank that serially breaks the law, laughs at its regulators, and, most outrageously, it was simultaneously engaging in heinous misdeeds against Americans while the U.S. government was using taxpayer money to bail out its failed business model of brazen financial frauds. The $7.4 million in fines also stands in contrast to the $14.9 billion that Citigroup reported as net income for 2016. We will get to the current CFPB charges in a moment, but first some necessary background. On May 20, 2015, Citigroup’s commercial banking unit, Citicorp, pled guilty to criminal charges brought by the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 23, 2017 Most Americans are unaware that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the Federal body that stands behind corporate pension plans known as defined benefit plans, has only three members and three votes on its Board of Directors: the U.S. Labor Secretary, the U.S. Commerce Secretary and the U.S. Treasury Secretary. Under the Donald Trump administration, all three votes could be problematic for workers’pension interests if Trump’s current nominees are confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Andrew Puzder is Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Labor Department. Puzder is already on record as opposing a substantial increase in the Federal minimum wage and an opponent of making more workers eligible for overtime pay. Much less is known about Puzder’s eyebrow-raising earlier career. From 1978 to 1991, Puzder was a trial lawyer in St. Louis at the law offices of Morris A. Shenker, the man … Continue reading →