By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 26, 2024 ~ The former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, has learned the hard way the cost of loyalty to Donald Trump and his prevarications. Giuliani has lost his New York law license; was disbarred in Washington, D.C.; has been ordered by a court to pay two defamed Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, $148 million in damages after they became the victims of harassment and death threats after he and Trump spread voter fraud claims about them. This month, Giuliani pleaded for donations to his fundraising page, saying he can’t afford to buy food. Trump’s former personal attorney and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, was disbarred in New York and served time in prison for Trump-related crimes. And multiple other lawyers have seen their law licenses suspended for getting too close to Trump. Trump’s past history of separating lawyers from … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 25, 2024 ~ Last Friday, in a flurry of announcements of cabinet nominees, President-elect Donald Trump dropped the name that the entire world had been waiting to hear: his pick for U.S. Treasury Secretary. The man Trump chose, Scott Bessent, is the founder and majority owner of the hedge fund, Key Square Capital Management LLC. If confirmed by the Senate, Bessent will inherit sprawling powers. He will sit at the helm of a federal agency that includes the IRS; the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks and reports on their hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives; the Bureau of Engraving and Printing; the U.S. Mint; the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) which is tasked with combating money laundering but has failed miserably in the job; and numerous other units. In addition, legislation passed by Congress will put Bessent in charge of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 21, 2024 ~ Today’s New York Times carries a diagram prepared by the U.S. Department of Justice during its multi-year investigation into then Congressman Matt Gaetz. (We have printed the left-hand section of the diagram above.) The diagram illustrates the following about the DOJ’s investigation into the man that President-elect Donald Trump wants to install as the U.S. Attorney General – the top law enforcement officer at the U.S. Department of Justice: The DOJ had receipts for the money flows between Matt Gaetz and the women he was paying for sex and the other individuals involved in the related sex and drug parties from 2017 to 2020. The public also learned this past week from the attorney, Joel Leppard, who represented two of the young women who were paid for sex with Gaetz – that the DOJ had interviewed at least a dozen of the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 19, 2024 ~ Tens of millions of Americans rise each morning and pray they are awakening from a bad dream about the President-elect’s plans to put a plethora of outrageously unfit people in charge of critical federal agencies that protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we feed our children, our ability to obtain healthcare, social security for the elderly, response to disasters and so forth. What few Americans understand is that this plan is very real, dead serious, and was hatched 44 years ago by two fossil fuel billionaire brothers – Charles and David Koch. The plan was publicly released as the Libertarian Platform when David Koch ran for Vice President of the United States in 1980. David Koch died in 2019, leaving his brother, Charles, who turned 89 this month, to relentlessly push to install the platform, notwithstanding that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 18, 2024 ~ Last week President-elect Donald Trump announced the nomination of Jay Clayton to become U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York – the regional office of the U.S. Department of Justice that brings (or passes on bringing) criminal prosecutions against the Wall Street megabanks for their serial looting of the American people. In Trump’s first term as President, Clayton was tapped by Trump to serve as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission – notwithstanding that Clayton had represented 8 of the 10 largest Wall Street banks in the prior three years as a law partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the oldest Wall Street go-to law firms. Clayton returned to Sullivan & Cromwell after his stint at the SEC and currently serves there as Senior Policy Advisor and Of Counsel. When Clayton’s name was first announced by Trump to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 14, 2024 ~ Live streaming to you from various production sites in the nation’s capitol is Donald Trump’s new reality TV show, “Remaking U.S. Government in My Image.” What the cast of the show lacks in serious credentials to run a government for the largest industrialized nation with 5,000 nuclear warheads is being offset by attractive faces and savvy scriptwriters determined to bring daily gasps from the viewing audience. A collective gasp came yesterday afternoon as president-elect Donald Trump announced his nomination of House Rep Matt Gaetz of Florida to serve in the highest law enforcement position in the nation: Attorney General of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). Being under an ongoing probe for sex with an underage girl and illicit drug use is apparently not a barrier to sitting at the helm of the U.S. Department of Justice in Donald Trump’s plans … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 12, 2024 ~ On Friday evening, August 2, Howard Lutnick, the Chairman and CEO of the Wall Street trading house, Cantor Fitzgerald, held a fundraiser populated by the super wealthy at his home in the Hamptons. The bash was to help presidential candidate Donald Trump shore up his sagging campaign coffers. Tickets went for $25,000 each or $50,000 if you wanted a photo with Trump. You could be listed on the program as a host for a mere $500,000. According to Lutnick, the event raised $15 million. According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, Lutnick himself was responsible for a third of that amount. He wrote out a check for $5 million to the Trump campaign the Monday after the event. Not long thereafter, Trump announced Lutnick as Co-Chair of his transition team, a post he shares with former World Wrestling Entertainment chief executive Linda … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 5, 2024 ~ Yesterday, the National Association of Realtors released their annual Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. It showed that by the time Americans have saved enough money for a downpayment to buy their first home in America, they will be close to middle age. The study recorded the median age of first-time home buyers as the oldest in the history of the study, at 38 years of age. (In the 1980s, first-time home buyers were in their 20s.) At the same time the age of first-time home buyers was hitting a record high, the percentage of first-time buyers was hitting a record low – just 24 percent of the market in the latest survey. That is the lowest percentage share of first-time home buyers since the National Association of Realtors began conducting the survey in 1981. The study reminded us of a series of articles … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 4, 2024 ~ The largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, has a rap sheet that rivals that of a crime family — and those crimes show no signs of slowing down. The financial institution is, in effect, a criminal enterprise in drag as a federally-insured banking powerhouse. The facts backing the above assertions are so strong that two trial attorneys, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer, wrote a book in which they compared the bank to the Gambino crime family and suggested JPMorgan Chase should be charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The authors wrote at the time on their website that “The pattern is clear. JPMorgan Chase has a culture — like the mob — where anything goes so long as it is profitable. This is precisely the kind of pattern of criminal activity that RICO was intended to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 31, 2024 ~ The New York Fed, long the quintessential keeper of secrets for the Wall Street megabanks that it has been bailing out since the financial crisis of 2008, has suddenly decided to come clean on a big threat to capital at these and other banks. The New York Fed has created gasps in the corridors of power in the banking world by releasing a paper that documents how banks have ginned up their capital by “extending and pretending” on their underwater commercial real estate (CRE) loans. The new paper was written by Matteo Crosignani, Financial Research Advisor at the New York Fed, and Saketh Prazad, a former Research Analyst at the New York Fed who is now a Doctoral Student in the Business Economics program at the Harvard Business School. The authors get right to the crux of the matter on page two of … Continue reading →