Search Results for: Federal Reserve

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 4, 2023 ~ Jamie Dimon is the Chairman and CEO of the serially-charged criminal trading operations of JPMorgan Chase, which thanks to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, is also allowed to own the largest federally-insured bank in the United States and use its trillions of dollars in mom and pop deposits to gamble in derivatives. Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley; served in the administrations of Presidents Ford and Carter and as Labor Secretary under Clinton; is the author of 18 books, including bestsellers The Work of Nations, Saving Capitalism, and Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future. Reich received his B.A. from Dartmouth College, his M.A. from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and his J.D. from Yale Law School. Jamie Dimon made the mistake of coming into the radar of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 3, 2023 ~ The Fed’s problem and the U.S. Treasury’s problem just became the problem of every American who has their retirement savings stuffed in the stock market via 401(k) plans or direct holdings. As the chart above shows in crisp terms, stocks do not like yields on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note rising to a level that is competitive with the return on stocks – especially since the principal on the Treasury note is guaranteed at maturity while the principal in the stock market is guaranteed to take one’s stomach on a roller coaster ride. Last evening, the 10-year U.S. Treasury note had spiked to a yield of 4.682 percent, its highest yield since 2007. As of early this morning, its yield had spiked even higher, to 4.738 percent, making a 5 percent handle increasingly possible. In response to the competition from Treasury … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 21, 2023 ~ On July 27, the Federal Reserve, FDIC and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released a proposal to require higher capital levels at banks with $100 billion or more in assets – those that demonstrated quite clearly this past spring that they could spread systemic contagion throughout the U.S. banking system. Community banks will not be impacted at all by the new proposals according to the regulators. The three federal bank regulators provided a very generous public comment period of 120 days on the proposal. (Submit your own comment here.) The large banks had to only begin transitioning to the new rules on July 1, 2025, with full compliance not due for an absurd five years – on July 1, 2028. On September 12, the banking cartel made their anger known in a 7-page letter that assaulted the proposal from … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 20, 2023 ~ We’re very sorry to have to tell you this, but if you’re not watching Senate Banking or House Financial Services Committee hearings when the topic is about increasing bank capital or any new regulations to make the U.S. banking system less prone to blowing up, you are likely seriously underestimating how corruption has become the new normal in the United States of America. The big banks’ trade associations and law firms that pay millions of dollars each year to registered lobbyists to bend Congress to their will are now dominating the witness list at these hearings. The right-wing Republican Senators that are funded by the banks and Wall Street then read from a script written by the lobbyists to ask their toady questions, pretending there is actually a give-and-take in these hearings. Take, for example, the hearing held on September 14 by … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 18, 2023 ~ The full day conference sponsored by nonprofit watchdog Better Markets last Wednesday was a unique opportunity to gain brilliant insights from academic experts who have battled on the frontlines of the most unprecedented and ongoing era of corruption in U.S. financial history. (You can watch it on YouTube at this link.) In fact, at the close of the conference, Anat Admati, Professor of Finance and Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, summed up the U.S. financial system in five words: “Corruption has become the system.” Admati’s celebrated 2013 book, The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It, co-authored with German economist Martin Hellwig, will have an expanded new edition coming out in early January. The new edition includes coverage of the banking failures this spring and four new chapters: “Too Fragile Still,” “Bailouts and Central … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 12, 2023 ~ The outspoken nonprofit watchdog, Better Markets, and its co-founder, President and CEO, Dennis Kelleher, have planned a unique full-day webinar for tomorrow from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET. (Register here at no cost. You do not need Zoom to watch the program.) For millions of Americans who understand that the U.S. cannot remain a superpower, or even compete effectively on the world stage without a first-class banking system and a properly functioning Wall Street, this is an opportunity to hear from people who have been on the front lines of the battle for genuine reform for decades. Wall Street On Parade has covered the efforts of many of these individuals over the years. This virtual conference of some of the smartest minds in the country when it comes to banking and Wall Street could not come at a more critical time. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 5, 2023 ~ JPMorgan Chase is in a protracted legal battle in a federal district court in Manhattan over highly credible allegations that it “actively participated” in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking of minors. The lawsuit has been brought against JPMorgan Chase by the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands where Epstein owned a private island compound that was a frequent venue of the sex trafficking operation. Part of the bank’s damage control strategy has been to sue one of its former top executives, Jes Staley, making him a third-party defendant in the same case, and attempting to convince the Judge and the media that Staley is mainly responsible for the bank keeping sex trafficker Epstein as a client for more than 15 years (and perhaps as long as 28 years). The bank says in court documents that it wants to claw back Staley’s $140 million … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 23, 2023 ~ The speed at which the largest U.S. banks are shedding deposits is unlike anything seen in the last half century – at least. But then again, the speed at which those same banks gained deposits from the various stimulus programs during the COVID-19 pandemic was also unprecedented. According to Federal Reserve data, for the week ending April 13, 2022, deposits at the 25 largest domestically-chartered commercial banks in the U.S. stood at $11.68 trillion (a new record) before doing a bungee dive in the following week to $11.4 trillion – likely triggered by the horrific scenes on network television of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine along with the severe economic sanctions against Russia announced on April 6, 2022 by the U.S. and other nations. This likely triggered a rush by Russian oligarchs to get their billions of dollars out of U.S. banks. As … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 22, 2023 ~ The stock prices of KeyCorp and Comerica had already lost more than 40 percent of their market value over the past year through the closing bell on Monday. KeyCorp was sporting a depressed share price of $10.89 at the close yesterday after trading in the single digits during the banking crisis in March. Then S&P Global delivered more bad news yesterday. It downgraded the credit rating on both KeyCorp and Comerica by one notch.  Outlooks were indicated as “stable” for both banks by S&P. Three other banks were also downgraded by one notch yesterday by S&P: Valley National Bancorp, UMB Financial Corp. and Associated Banc-Corp. S&P lowered outlooks on two other banks to negative: River City Bank and S&T Bank. The ratings action on KeyCorp is particularly noteworthy. According to the Federal Reserve, as of June 30 KeyCorp had $193 billion in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 21, 2023 ~ Remember all of that sensational social media buzz in 2016 about a politically-connected ring of pedophiles operating out of a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C.? The story was debunked by Snopes but not before it had gone viral. While the pizza parlor was getting plenty of attention, an actual, highly sophisticated, child sex-trafficking ring had been operating with impunity for more than a decade out of the largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase. Based on astonishing internal documents from JPMorgan Chase obtained during discovery in a federal lawsuit and filed on the court docket last week, it now appears that the U.S. Department of Justice has turned a blind eye toward this bank’s facilitation of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking crimes for more than 16 years, during the administrations of four separate Presidents of the United States. The heavy-lifting for what … Continue reading →