By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 29, 2016 Mavi Ramirez is a Mom, a social media entrepreneur and a dedicated citizen journalist who took a day off from work to cover the first hearing on August 23 in the Federal lawsuit that has been filed by Senator Bernie Sanders’ supporters against the Democratic National Committee and its former Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The lawsuit, which currently has more than 100 plaintiffs and more than a thousand in the wings with retainer agreements, is charging the DNC with fraud, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive conduct, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence. Leaked DNC documents and emails by Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks show Wasserman Schultz disparaging the Sanders’ campaign while key DNC officials actually plotted to sabotage the Sanders’ campaign by putting the word out that he is an atheist (which Sanders says he is not) and characterizing his campaign as … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 26, 2016 According to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for Washington, D.C., it has still not determined a cause of death for Shawn Lucas, the 38-year old process server who delivered the class action lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee and its then Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to the DNC headquarters on July 1. One month later, the girlfriend of Lucas came home to find him dead on the bathroom floor. It has now been more than three weeks since Lucas died with no cause of death announced. We asked the Chief Medical Examiner’s office if the delay was a result of toxicology tests being conducted. We were told it can make no comment beyond the fact that the cause of death is “pending.” The official report from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C. indicates that officers Kathryn Fitzgerald and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 25, 2016 On July 25, during the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, Senator Elizabeth Warren made the following comments during her speech: “Here’s the thing: America isn’t going broke. The stock market is breaking records. Corporate profits are at all-time highs.” We noted at the time that Senator Warren is one of the smartest members of Congress; a former Harvard law professor who taught commercial contracts and bankruptcy law; a member of the Senate Banking Committee and its Economic Policy Subcommittee. If Senator Warren was not aware that quarterly earnings on a year-over-year basis as measured by the largest companies in America – the Standard and Poor’s 500 – were on track to log in their fifth consecutive quarterly decline in earnings, how could the average American possibly know this? Equally important, if the stock market was setting new highs based … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 24, 2016 On Monday, Andrea Tantaros, a Fox News host, became the latest in a growing drumbeat of voices charging Fox News with tolerating and condoning a hostile work environment for women that “operates like a sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency, and misogyny,” according to the lawsuit Tantaros filed in New York State Supreme Court. Tantaros charges in the lawsuit that she was sexually harassed by Roger Ailes, who recently stepped down as Fox News CEO, while he ran an intimidation campaign against her through his public relations department. This is the second lawsuit to be filed against Ailes by Fox News women in as many months. In July, Gretchen Carlson went public with similar charges against Ailes in a high-profile lawsuit. According to the Washington Post, Carlson’s lawyers have received reports from more than 20 women that “they were … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 23, 2016  What people across Wall Street cannot figure out is why the Board of JPMorgan Chase, America’s biggest bank by assets, didn’t sack its CEO, Jamie Dimon, at some point between the bank’s first two felony counts in 2014 and its third felony count in 2015. Or, as two trial lawyers, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer point out on their web site, during the past five years as JPMorgan Chase racked up $35.7 billion in fines and settlements for “fraudulent and illegal practices.” JPMorgan Chase’s abuses of its own customers are so vast that Chaitman and Gotthoffer had to create a Wheel of Misfortune to catalog the scams for ease of viewing by the public. And here’s the worst part: those are just the frauds that the public is allowed to read about. JPMorgan Chase, along with other notoriously abusive banks … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 22, 2016 Last Thursday the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Student Loan Ombudsman released a report detailing the hurdles and outright barriers that college students who took out student loans face when they attempt to get Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans. These plans allow student loan payments to be tied to income. The report found that the debt holders are reporting that they are facing prolonged processing delays and wrongful rejections by their private student loan servicing companies. Some facets of the report suggested that student debt holders are intentionally getting the runaround by the outside servicing company. The report noted: “Borrowers report being rejected because their application had missing information or because their servicer lost paperwork, without ever being notified by their servicer or being given a chance to fix the problem. Other borrowers report being rejected simply for checking the wrong box, without … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 19, 2016 Yesterday the U.S. Olympic Committee released a statement apologizing “to the people of Brazil” for what it appears to concede was a trumped up story by four U.S. athletes about being robbed at gunpoint. The statement from the USOC characterized the alleged “robbery” as follows: “They stopped at a gas station to use the restroom, where one of the athletes committed an act of vandalism. An argument ensued between the athletes and two armed gas station security staff, who displayed their weapons, ordered the athletes from their vehicle and demanded the athletes provide a monetary payment.” The USOC added: “The behavior of these athletes is not acceptable, nor does it represent the values of Team USA or the conduct of the vast majority of its members.” Our first epiphany that America was in trouble on the issue of lying about matters … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 18, 2016 Since the Wall Street crash in 2008 crippled the U.S. economy, Congress has played the role of a spectator at a big league baseball game – munching on popcorn and licking its greasy fingers soiled with corporate campaign loot – as the real players on the field, the Federal Reserve, controlled the action. The above chart shows the steady erosion of Capacity Utilization in the U.S. since Congress surrendered its job to the deeply conflicted Fed. The chart comes courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, which defines Total Industry Capacity Utilization this way: “the percentage of resources used by corporations and factories to produce goods in manufacturing, mining, and electric and gas utilities for all facilities located in the United States (excluding those in U.S. territories).” In November 2007, prior to the onset of the crash, Capacity Utilization … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 17, 2016 On Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission released the details of an enforcement action it plans to bring before one of its own Administrative Law Judges against Donald (Jay) Lathen, Eden Arc Capital Management, LLC and a related hedge fund, Eden Arc Capital Advisors, LLC. Lathen is charged with using terminally ill patients in nursing homes, who were expected to die within six months, to reap profits from issuers of bonds or Certificates of Deposits (CDs) that had a death put feature (also known as a Survivor Option or SO). The bonds or CDs can be purchased in joint name and redeemed at the full face amount if one of the owners of the joint account dies. Lathen was racking up profits by buying the bonds or CDs at a discount from the full face amount. Naturally, the issuers of the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 16, 2016 A dubious search engine company trading over-the-counter on Wall Street, with a felon as a “General Design and Marketing Strategist” who was banned from the industry for previous stock frauds, and with the craziest SEC filings and disclosure documents you’ll ever read in your lifetime, was finally halted from trading yesterday by the SEC – but only after reaching a market value of $35 billion. The SEC said in its announcement of the trading halt of the company, NeuroMama, Ltd., Inc., that it had “concerns” about “the identity of the persons in control of the company’s operations and management, false statements to company shareholders and/or potential investors that the company has an application pending for listing on the NASDAQ Stock Market, and potentially manipulative transactions in the company’s stock.” Yesterday’s SEC statement simply does not do justice to the insanity of … Continue reading →