By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 13, 2016 Last Thursday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that Wells Fargo was paying $185 million in fines and penalties for allowing its employees to open “more than two million deposit and credit card accounts” that were not authorized by its customers. The employees were attempting to “hit sales targets and receive bonuses.” In one of the most audacious forms of bank fraud, according to the CFPB, employees actually “transferred funds from consumers’ authorized accounts to temporarily fund the new, unauthorized accounts.” This resulted in untold numbers of customers being charged for insufficient funds in their legitimate accounts or paying overdraft fees. If anyone ever doubted Senator Bernie Sanders when he repeatedly said during campaign stops that fraud has become a business model on Wall Street, that debate is over. According to the CFPB, this conduct at Wells Fargo went on for … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 12, 2016 European and Asian stock markets were firmly in the red overnight as Friday’s 394 rout in the Dow Jones Industrial Average fueled global concerns. The chart above shows how the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index of the biggest companies in America has, over the past five years, traded relatively in sync with Goldman Sachs (frequently called Government Sachs for the number of its partners it has placed in top money slots in both Democrat and Republican administrations). When there has been divergences in the chart above, the relationship has gravitated back to a converged path after a time. Inevitably, the health of the country’s banks plays a critical role in the health of the overall economy. If one ever doubted that, the Wall Street bank crash in 2008 and cataclysmic economic aftermath ended that debate. (And, yes, Goldman Sachs is now a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 11, 2016 Today marks the 15th Anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001 and yet the American public remains in the dark about critical details of hundreds of billions of dollars of financial dealings by the Federal Reserve in the days, weeks and months that followed 9/11. What has also been lost in the official 9/11 Commission Report, Congressional hearings and academic studies, is how Wall Street, on the day the planes slammed into the World Trade Towers, was on the cusp of being exposed by the New York State Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer, as the orchestrator of a fraud of unprecedented proportion against the investing public. That investigation was stalled for more than six months. It would have been politically incorrect to do perp walks outside Wall Street’s biggest investment banks as families mourned the loss of their loved ones; … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 9, 2016 Fifteen years after 9/11, an expanding international body of scientific researchers and legal experts continue to challenge the official narrative of 9/11. They will host a two-day symposium this Saturday and Sunday in the historic Great Hall of Cooper Union in New York City to present the science-based evidence they have compiled. Tickets will be available at this site for a limited period of time. (See the two-day program and lineup of speakers here, here and here.) Saturday’s program will include a presentation by Dr. J. Leroy Hulsey on the preliminary findings of a computer modeling study of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper in lower Manhattan that was not hit by a plane but collapsed to the ground within seconds at 5:20 p.m. on the afternoon of 9/11. The study is being conducted at the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 8, 2016 This Sunday will mark the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy – one of those seminal events in human memory that is seared forever on the brain. Because of the emotional toll 9/11 took on the human psyche — watching U.S. commercial airline planes converted to killing machines on U.S. soil — America’s collective memory of exactly what happened on 9/11 has more to do with repetitive TV clips of the Twin Towers collapsing and a rush to war than specific details of the actions of those pulling the monetary levers on Wall Street. The day’s events were so bizarre and triggered such cognitive dissonance that millions of Americans did not realize for years that a third World Trade Center skyscraper had collapsed in lower Manhattan that day. World Trade Center Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper not hit by a plane, collapsed at 5:20 … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 7, 2016 Wall Street was determined that a Democratic Socialist like Senator Bernie Sanders would never occupy the Oval Office. In hindsight, Wall Street may come to seriously regret that it and a full blown conspiracy at the Democratic National Committee blocked the ascendancy of one of the most popular and trusted presidential candidates in a generation. Trust and confidence are essential ingredients for a healthy stock market and U.S. economy. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. consumers spent over $12 trillion last year “on all kinds of stuff, including new cars, furniture, clothes, groceries, beauty products, electronics, visits to doctors and dentists, and tickets to sporting events and movies.” The total U.S. GDP for 2015 was $17.947 trillion. That makes the consumer the Decider in Chief of what happens in the U.S. The consumer’s willingness to spend represented 66.86 percent … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 6, 2016 The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has set up an online database of financial horror stories that shows what happens when an average American interacts with one of the financial supermarkets (a/k/a universal banks) that grew out of the repeal of the investor protection legislation known as the Glass-Steagall Act. The complaints are concentrated against the biggest Wall Street banks. If you are one of the lucky Americans who has not already been mugged in the shopping aisles of the financial supermarkets, you should carefully browse through the database to see what awaits the unwary. Just go to the complaint archive, and place the name of any bank you want to examine in the upper right-hand search box. Searching under the name Citibank (part of the Wall Street behemoth Citigroup) will bring up 29,000 rows of complaints. A search under Chase, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 1, 2016 President Obama holds the highest office in the United States. He has a law degree from Harvard Law and was a former editor of the Harvard Law Review. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton holds a law degree from Yale University. Despite the legal background of the President and former Secretary of State, both seem to be winking at the serious legal issues surrounding the former Democratic National Committee Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Wasserman Schultz has been sued along with the DNC in the Federal District Court of South Florida, where the lead plaintiff, Carol Wilding, resides. The lawsuit is on behalf of Senator Bernie Sanders’ supporters and alleges fraud, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive conduct, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence. There are already more than 100 named plaintiffs and the court was told in the amended complaint that an additional 1,000 … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 31, 2016 Democratic primary voters in South Florida’s 23rd Congressional District ignored the Democratic National Committee scandal that has engulfed Debbie Wasserman Schultz and gave the incumbent a 56.46 percent win over her Democratic challenger, Tim Canova, who claimed 43.54 percent of the vote. Unfortunately for Canova, who had the backing of Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters, Independents were not allowed to vote in this closed primary. Wasserman Schultz will still have to compete against a Republican rival, Joe Kaufman, in the November 8 general election. Her District is heavily Democratic, however, and she is expected to achieve an easy win – unless new scandals arrive between now and election day. Canova is a law professor at Nova Southeastern University. This was his first endeavor in running for public office. His strong showing in this race and his ability to raise $3.3 … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 30, 2016 Over the past week Rasmussen polls have captured the epic disgust of voters in the direction America is heading. Only 31 percent of likely voters believe the country is heading in the right direction; 67 percent of voters are angry at the current policies of the federal government; and just 24 percent trust the federal government to do the right thing most or nearly all the time. The smooth functioning of the U.S. economy is based on citizens having confidence in the country’s leaders. Over two-thirds of the U.S. economy stems from consumer spending. When consumers lack confidence, they scale back spending. When businesses lack confidence, they lay off workers or stop hiring. When new home buyers lack confidence, they postpone signing a contract. Last Friday, Bloomberg News reported that the CEO of Signet Jewelers Ltd., Mark Light, was blaming a slowdown … Continue reading →