By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 14, 2016 Rudy Giuliani is said to be under serious consideration by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the U.S. Department of Justice as Attorney General. There are a number of serious problems with Giuliani serving in this post, including his track record of stomping on the Bill of Rights and his employment as a law partner with Greenberg Traurig, a corporate law firm with a long history of lobbying for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to weaken protections for the average citizen. During Rudy Giuliani’s two terms as Mayor of New York City, from 1993 through 2001, he was sued 30 times by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), the state affiliate of the ACLU. Of those 30 lawsuits, the NYCLU won 27 of the cases. (See Editor’s note below on her own case that was successfully challenged in court against the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 11, 2016  Yesterday, CNBC announced that anonymous sources had told the cable business news outlet that Trump’s advisers were considering JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon for U.S. Treasury Secretary. The rumor nugget was quickly spread by other media outlets. The likelihood is that the rumor is coming from Jamie Dimon’s hyper-charged public relations machine rather than from Trump’s closest advisers. Should Dimon get the nomination from Trump he would have to appear before the Senate Banking Committee for his confirmation hearing. He would be facing hostility from progressive Senate Democrats on the Committee like Senators Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown and Jeff Merkley for overseeing a Wall Street mega bank that has garnered an unprecedented three felony counts from the U.S. Justice Department in just the past three years while Dimon took home massive pay and bonuses. Two felony counts against the bank were for aiding … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 10, 2016 Yesterday, WikiLeaks released a new email that synthesizes why Hillary Clinton and the Democrats suffered such devastating losses in Tuesday’s election, losing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that should have been easy wins for the Democrats. The email clarifies how Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chairman, John Podesta, had created an impossible conflict in how he was running Clinton’s campaign: he wanted it to serve the dual role of embellishing President Obama’s legacy, thus muzzling Clinton on criticizing the President’s policies. It should have been readily clear that this was a losing gamble as tens of thousands turned out at Senator Bernie Sanders’ primary rallies as he called for a “political revolution” against the establishment in Washington while Clinton attracted modest crowds with her stay the course mantra. The email shows that on October 7, 2015, Hillary Clinton’s advisers were working on … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 9, 2016 As election day arrived in the U.S. yesterday, European newspapers signaled their grave concerns over a presidential election that has left them stunned and anxious. The French newspaper, Aujourd’hui En France, used its front page to question whether the American dream (Le Reve) even still exists in the U.S. The French Liberation publication featured a silhouette of Donald Trump’s face on its front cover with the prophetic bold headline, “Le Grande Flip.” The day before the election, Jonathan Freedland wrote in the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper: “…one thing will certainly be over – and that is the dizzying, sometimes nauseating, 18-month-long saga that has been the 2016 campaign….In 2012, the Guardian’s front-page story branded the battle of Barack Obama v Mitt Romney ‘one of the most closely fought and polarised in recent history’. Looking back, that race looks like a veritable philosophy seminar, exemplary … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 8, 2016  Two partners at major law firms have likely been holding their breath since WikiLeaks released an email on November 1 showing that Obama had vetted Hillary Clinton for Vice President and the review came back “too critical,” thus leading Obama to select Joe Biden as his Vice Presidential pick during the 2008 campaign. The vetting memorandum on Clinton shows in the email thread to have been transmitted with the email but WikiLeaks has not provided it – yet. According to the email, which carries a capitalized heading of “CONFIDENTIAL,” the vetting of Clinton had been done by James Hamilton, then a law partner at Bingham McCutchen LLP. Hamilton is now a partner at Morgan Lewis, a firm with a long history of ties to Wall Street. His official bio shows that he “served as the Clinton-Gore transition counsel for nominations and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 7, 2016 Yesterday, at 4:33 p.m., we checked at the digital front page of CNN to see how it was delivering the news that FBI Director James Comey had sent yet another letter to Congress (on a Sunday, no less). The letter indicated that the FBI had reviewed the additional emails from the private server of Hillary Clinton that were found on sext-addict Anthony Weiner’s laptop and that it had not changed its conclusions that Comey had expressed in his July statement. The July announcement from Comey found that Clinton had been “extremely careless” by transmitting information classified as Top Secret and Secret over a non secure server in the basement of her New York home while serving as Secretary of State in the Obama administration but that the investigation had concluded with no recommendation to charge her with any crime. The statement … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 4, 2016 A few years back, when William D. Cohan was writing for Bloomberg News, one could reliably count on him to hold Wall Street’s feet to the fire. Now Cohan is writing for the New York Times and it feels like the Times sent him for an in-house lobotomy or at least a crash course in reoriented thinking. Consider Cohan’s article from yesterday in the Times, titled Why Washington Needs Wall Street. First Cohan piles on to the recent bashing of Senator Elizabeth Warren by Roger Lowenstein in the pages of the Times. Warren has led a meaningful, multi-year charge to expose the failed reforms and lapdog regulators overseeing Wall Street, which is hands-down the most corrupt industry in America and located in the same home town as the New York Times.  (If you can’t clean up your own home town, what … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 3, 2016 Last night, at 10:04 p.m., two reporters at the Wall Street Journal tossed an incendiary device into the already smoldering debris of what is attempting to pass for a U.S. presidential election – where one of the two leading candidates is under a criminal investigation and the other was caught on tape bragging about being able to randomly grab women by their genitals. Wall Street Journal reporters Devlin Barrett and Christopher Matthews revealed last evening that the FBI has had an active investigation underway into the Clinton Foundation since last summer but in February of this year the Justice Department told the FBI agents to “stand down” on that investigation. The Clinton Foundation is a sprawling international charity which has accepted tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments and foreign corporations as well as Wall Street firms and other U.S. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 2, 2016  It’s more than a coincidence that at a time when the two leading candidates for the highest office in the United States are considered untrustworthy by tens of millions of their fellow citizens, the industry that has perpetually attempted to stack the political deck in Washington has also lost the trust of a majority of Americans. This feels to many like having Wall Street’s one percent at the rudder for the past two decades has finally steered the ship of state into a toxic sink hole that is devouring the credibility of the United States at home and abroad. Wall Street’s image has fallen so low that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is holding an annual “Reforming Culture and Behavior in the Financial Services Industry” conference. That New York Fed President Bill Dudley is heading up this conference shows … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 1, 2016 The Chief Medical Examiner’s Office for Washington, D.C. has released the findings on the cause of death of Shawn Lucas, the 38-year old process server who served the complaint against the Democratic National Committee and Debbie Wasserman Schultz on behalf of Senator Bernie Sanders’ supporters on July 1 of this year. One month later, his girlfriend arrived home to find Lucas lying dead on the bathroom floor of their apartment. According to an email received today from the Communications Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the cause of death was: “Combined adverse effects of fentanyl, cyclobenzaprine, and mitragynine.” The manner of death was listed as an “Accident.” Family members could not be reached to determine if Lucas had any history of taking drugs. The National Institute on Drug Abuse calls Fentanyl “a powerful synthetic opioid analgesic that is similar to morphine but is 50 … Continue reading →