By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 1, 2016 In July 2009, just two days after Goldman Sachs told the FBI that Sergey Aleynikov, a computer programmer at the firm, had removed source code containing trade secrets, Aleynikov was arrested by the FBI. Aleynikov was then prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department and spent 51 weeks in prison before the Second Circuit Appeals Court threw out the case against him. The Appellate judges found the case against Aleynikov so unfounded that it ordered him released from jail immediately at oral arguments.  The Second Circuit opinion in the Aleynikov case was handed down on April 11, 2012, finding that the prosecutors misapplied the Federal corporate espionage laws. But Goldman Sachs and the FBI weren’t happy so they handed their evidence to Cyrus Vance, the Manhattan District Attorney. Under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, an individual is not permitted to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 31, 2016 Current and former FBI officials have launched a media counter-offensive to engage head to head with the Clinton media machine and to throw off the shackles the Loretta Lynch Justice Department has used to stymie their multiple investigations into the Clinton pay-to-play network. Over the past weekend, former FBI Assistant Director and current CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst Tom Fuentes told viewers that “the FBI has an intensive investigation ongoing into the Clinton Foundation.” He said he had received this information from “senior officials” at the FBI, “several of them, in and out of the Bureau.” (See video clip from CNN below.) That information was further supported by an in-depth article last evening in the Wall Street Journal by Devlin Barrett. According to Barrett, the “probe of the foundation began more than a year ago to determine whether financial crimes or … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 27, 2016 Members of Congress were absolutely shocked – shocked! – that the employees of the commercial bank of Wells Fargo had created several million accounts and credit cards that their customers had never asked for simply to meet sales quotas set by the bank and/or to obtain bonuses. But what is going on every single day at the brokerage firms owned by all of these banking giants is that the stock broker (variously called a financial consultant, financial adviser or Vice President of Investments) is able to triple the commission he collects on the bonds he sells you at his discretion. It’s been that way for 30 years, if not longer. Let’s say you are buying a $10,000 corporate bond which the firm is showing on their computer screen with a one point commission. One point means $10 per thousand or a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 25, 2016  Yesterday, former SEC Chair Arthur Levitt penned an OpEd for the Wall Street Journal, effectively telling Senator Elizabeth Warren to stop criticizing Mary Jo White in public. White is the current Chair of the SEC that Senator Warren publicly asked President Obama to fire this month for her bad leadership. Senator Warren is a genuine champion of the investing public and understands how the SEC has become a lapdog to Wall Street under White’s inept leadership. Levitt is part of the Bill Clinton machine that de-regulated Wall Street and turned it into a massive looting racket in the 1990s through today. It’s important to take note of Levitt’s effort to muzzle Warren in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Expect to see more of this coming from a lot more of Wall Street’s cronies. Arthur Levitt was appointed as SEC … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: October 23, 2016  Julian Assange, founder and Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks, is the man responsible for the daily release of emails showing the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign to be an unprecedented machine whose tentacles and snitches reach into Wall Street, big corporations and big media. Earlier this year, WikiLeaks released emails showing that the Democratic National Committee had maliciously conspired to undermine the presidential campaign of Clinton challenger, Senator Bernie Sanders, in order to elevate Hillary Clinton to the top of the ticket. Now it has emerged that two of the top lawyers representing Assange, John Jones in London and Michael Ratner in New York, died within less than a month of each other this year. And, Assange’s closest confidant in London and a Director of WikiLeaks, Gavin Macfadyen, died just yesterday. Wall Street On Parade has carefully investigated the similarly unprecedented banker deaths over the past two … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 21, 2016 If there is any truth to the allegation that Russia is behind the hacking of emails being released by WikiLeaks, then the American public owes Russia a huge debt of gratitude. At a time when the American people are sharply focused on how the leader of the free world is chosen, WikiLeaks is giving us an unprecedented, historical opportunity to understand how corporate money in politics has corrupted everything we believe in as a democracy. This week, for example, emails from WikiLeaks show that President Obama, using the email address of bobama@ameritech.net, was communicating directly with Michael Froman of Citigroup in 2008, who fed Obama lists of recommended appointments to his cabinet. In an email from Froman dated October 6, 2008, with Froman using his Citigroup email address of fromanm@citi.com, Hillary Clinton shows up on Froman’s list for Secretary of State … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 20, 2016 There’s a new mantra making the rounds of Washington and Wall Street. No matter how big the lie you’re caught in, no matter how much documented evidence exists against you, just deny, deny, deny. That’s how Democratic National Committee Interim Chair Donna Brazile handled the email released by WikiLeaks showing that she leaked a debate question to Hillary Clinton; that’s how Hillary Clinton handled revelations about sending classified government material over an unclassified server in the basement of her home; and that’s how Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is handling the widespread public perception that there’s a banking cabal meeting in secret to plot its continued dominance over the interests of the average U.S. citizen. Yesterday, CNBC’s David Faber interviewed Blankfein and asked about the suggestion that Donald Trump had made on October 13 in a speech in West Palm Beach, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 19, 2016 Emails released by WikiLeaks have led to the outing of an elaborate scheme to scour, buff and shine the decades of scandals attached to Hillary and Bill Clinton using the marketing, branding and messaging tricks employed by corporations to resuscitate a stale, discredited or sagging brand. We’ve also learned that at least one of those re-branders, Wendy Clark, had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the Clinton camp, agreeing not to divulge details of her work. Clark acknowledged that agreement at a recent Fortune Magazine forum. Clark is widely considered a corporate branding genius, having been responsible for the “Share a Coke” campaign at Coca-Cola which featured folksy names on the side of their cans and bottles. In January of 2015, it was reported that Clark was taking a three-month leave of absence from her demanding and high-level position as President … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 18, 2016  Last Friday Senator Elizabeth Warren released a 12-page letter calling for President Obama to remove Securities and Exchange Commission Chair, Mary Jo White. For a female Senator and former Harvard Law professor to publicly humiliate a female Federal agency head and fellow lawyer is an extraordinary event. There is a code in Washington that women in power support other women in power. Warren didn’t just violate the code, she shredded it.  Warren called Mary Jo White’s conduct as SEC Chair “brazen” and wrote that White was undermining the SEC’s central mission of investor protection. All of that is true as Wall Street On Parade repeatedly predicted it would be over three years ago. (See here and here.) Between White’s career at law firm Debevoise and Plimpton and her husband John W. White’s long term career at the international law firm Cravath, Swaine … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens  and Russ Martens: October 17, 2016 According to the above statement from the WikiLeaks Twitter account, a state party has intentionally cut off access to the Internet for Julian Assange, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of WikiLeaks. This happened after the ninth consecutive day of releases of emails from the hacked account of John Podesta, the chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign committee. It also comes on the heels of a potentially serious campaign finance problem for the Hillary for America committee, the primary fundraising vehicle for Clinton, according to an email released by WikiLeaks just yesterday. This would be the second time in less than six months that the Clinton campaign’s finances have come under scrutiny. In April and May of this year, Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign charged the Clinton campaign with serious violations of campaign finance law, including “looting funds meant for the state parties to skirt … Continue reading →