Search Results for: Federal Reserve

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 7, 2023 ~ On the first day of trading in January 2007 (the year prior to the Wall Street financial crisis in 2008 that saw century-old iconic financial firms explode one after another), Citigroup closed the trading day at $55.25. Yesterday, Citigroup’s common stock closed at an effective share price of $4.20. Citigroup did a 1-for-10 reverse stock split on May 9, 2011. That means that investors holding 100 shares of Citigroup back in January 2007 saw their position shrink to 10 shares after May 9, 2011. So yesterday’s closing price of $42.04 for Citigroup is effectively $4.20 for long-term shareholders, adjusting it for the reverse stock split. To put that in even starker terms, investors who have held onto this dog for almost 17 years have watched 92 percent of its share price vanish. More dire news on Citigroup came yesterday with a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 31, 2023 ~ To understand how truly bizarre and alarming the trading scandal case involving former Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan is, some important background is necessary: Kaplan didn’t just trade in and out of stocks while a voting member of the interest-rate setting committee of the Fed (known as the Federal Open Markets Committee or FOMC); Kaplan also traded in and out of $1 million+ lots of S&P 500 futures. That is astonishing; unprecedented; and lacks any viable justification for a sitting Fed official.  (See Kaplan’s financial disclosure forms from 2015 through 2020 while employed at the Dallas Fed.) Kaplan resigned from the Dallas Fed in September 2021, the same month that the trading scandal went viral in the news. S&P 500 futures allow an individual to trade almost around the clock from Sunday evening to Friday evening, unlike stock exchanges in the U.S. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 24, 2023 ~ The Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 big-cap stocks closed out last year on Friday, December 30, 2022 at 33,147.25. After setting a year-to-date low of 31,819.14 on March 13 of this year during the banking crisis (a negligible decline of 4 percent year-to-date), the Dow climbed its way back to a year-to-date high of 35,630.68 on August 1. Since then, the Dow has been setting sharply lower lows – a sign of deterioration in its components. The Dow again went negative year-to-date last Friday, October 20, closing at 33,127.28. Equally notable, 20 components of the Dow 30, or two-thirds of the components, were negative year-to-date as of the close yesterday, October 23. Ten of the Dow’s components were down by double-digits year-to-date, through October 23. (See chart below.) The Dow index reading would be looking far worse were it not for … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 24, 2023 ~ Last Friday, the Federal Reserve published its Financial Stability Report, which takes a detailed look at U.S. financial stability through the second quarter of this year. Although the Fed does its best to put a rosy glow on the outlook, it’s not a pretty picture. We found the most disturbing sentence in the report to be the following: “Overall, estimated runnable money-like financial liabilities increased 3.4 percent to $20.3 trillion (75 percent of nominal GDP) over the past year.” Given that a handful of banks this past spring, with combined liabilities of less than $1 trillion, caused a full blown banking panic and bank runs, the Fed’s figure of $20.3 trillion of “runnable” money is not a comforting thought. The Fed elaborates as follows: “The banking industry maintained a high level of liquidity overall, but some banks continued to face funding pressures; meanwhile, structural vulnerabilities … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 23, 2023 ~ As the chart above indicates, Friday was not a good day to own regional bank stocks. The percentage declines are just for the one day of trading on Friday — not the year-to-date percentage losses. After the bank runs this past spring at regional banks brought on the second, third and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history, things had quieted down in recent months. Then, along came earnings announcements last week, showing renewed struggles among the regional banks. One of the big losers for the week was Zions Bancorp. Its shares plunged 9.7 percent on Thursday and another 7.07 percent on Friday. The bank posted poor year-over-year comparisons on net interest income as it experienced rising expenses to compete for deposits. Another plunging bank stock on Friday was Regions Financial. The bank is facing continuing pressure on its net interest income. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 17, 2023 ~ Bank of America is the second largest bank by assets in the United States, topped in assets by only JPMorgan Chase. Both mega banks have seen a steady decline in deposits since the first quarter of 2022. But the decline in deposits at Bank of America represents just 65 percent of the deposit outflows that have occurred at JPMorgan Chase in the past seven quarters. (Bank of America, as the chart above shows, did report a small uptick in deposits in the current quarter.) At the end of the first quarter of 2022, Bank of America held $2.046 trillion in deposits. According to the 8-K filing the bank made with the Securities and Exchange Commission this morning, as of September 30, 2023 Bank of America’s deposits had declined to $1.885 trillion, a shrinkage of $161 billion. In the same span of time, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 12, 2023 ~ On Monday, Michael Barr, the Vice Chair for Supervision at the Federal Reserve, addressed a contentious issue in a speech before the American Bankers Association’s annual convention in Nashville. The topic was why federal banking regulators have proposed higher capital levels for the largest U.S. banks, those with assets over $100 billion. As we reported on September 20, there has been aggressive pushback on the proposal from large banks, their lobbyists and their trade associations. (Community banks are not impacted by the proposal.) During his speech, Barr put a staggering dollar figure on the destruction to the U.S. economy that could materialize from another major financial crisis. Barr said this: “Research suggests the costs of a financial crisis are sizable. While estimates vary widely, the cumulative loss in economic activity is consistently estimated to lie above 20 percent of annual GDP—and in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 11, 2023 ~ Immediately upon departing her post as Chair of the Federal Reserve, but prior to getting the nod from the Biden administration to become U.S. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen engaged in what the courageous reporter at ProPublica, Jesse Eisinger, called a “two-fisted money grab from banks.” Yellen raked in more than $7 million in speaking fees with the bulk of that coming from Wall Street banks and trading houses, including JPMorgan Chase. In a Tweet, Eisinger said: “This is corruption, but isn’t called that because it’s so quotidian.” Now there is the appearance that a quid pro quo is coming full circle. According to a press release posted on JPMorgan Chase’s website, “it has been designated by the United States Treasury Department under a financial agency agreement to provide account validation services for federal government agencies” in order to ensure “Treasury’s commitment to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 9, 2023 ~ It took eight years of research to compile a data set of annual balance sheets of more than 11,000 commercial banks dating back to 1870 in 17 advanced economies. And in every country, the study arrived at the same finding: concentrating the banking system in the hands of five or less giant banks leads to financial instability and more severe financial crises. The bank balance sheets of the following countries were examined: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The 150-year banking study is titled: “Survival of the Biggest: Large Banks and Financial Crises.” Its authors are Matthew Baron of Cornell University; Moritz Schularick of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and Sciences; and Kaspar Zimmermann of the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE. Other … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 5, 2023 ~ As evidenced by the speech that the FDIC Chair, Martin Gruenberg, delivered at a conference yesterday, the FDIC is very much aware that both the level of uninsured deposits and the concentration of those uninsured deposits among a handful of mega banks is a serious problem for the U.S. banking system. Gruenberg didn’t name names, but we will do that in this article. Gruenberg pointed out in his speech that year-end data for the three banks that failed this past spring indicated that anywhere from 90 percent to 70 percent of their deposits were uninsured. (During a banking panic, uninsured deposits are typically those that head for the exits at the fastest clip.) But those three failed banks (Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank) were minnows compared to the asset-size of the banking whales which now account for … Continue reading →