By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 21, 2023 ~ On March 17, 2022, the Federal Reserve began its interest rate hiking cycle, which has, thus far, evolved into 10 consecutive rate hikes, making it the fastest rate increases in 40 years. The Fed’s actions to tame inflation included four consecutive interest rate hikes of an aggressive 75 basis point hike (three quarters of one percent) on June 16, July 28, September 22, and November 3 of last year. At that point, every trading veteran on Wall Street was scratching their head and asking themselves the same question: why aren’t we hearing about interest rate derivatives blowing up and taking down either a U.S. mega bank or its counterparty on the wrong side of the trade? According to the quarterly derivative reports released by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator of national banks, as of December … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 20, 2023 ~ The tenure of Jamie Dimon as Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest federally-insured bank in the United States and the largest trading casino on Wall Street, has copiously revealed the following: the bank is more than willing to look the other way at crime if it means an increase in assets, profits or business referrals. Each of those three ingredients were present in the bank’s decades long involvement with Bernie Madoff, with its Chinese Princeling scandal and in the unfolding details of its intimate relationship with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. This reality may be difficult for the New York business press to acknowledge – since it has mostly covered Jamie Dimon as the grand statesman of Wall Street – but this is the hard reality nonetheless. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal’s Khadeeja Safdar and David Benoit revealed the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 19, 2023 ~ At a March 13 court hearing this year, prominent attorney, David Boies, argued in open court that the largest federally-insured bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase – which has more than 5,000 Chase bank branches holding mom and pop savings from coast to coast – had used a private jet owned by the bank’s hedge fund, Highbridge Capital, to transport girls for Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. A January 13, 2023 amended complaint filed by Boies’ law firm, elaborated on the allegation as follows: “As another example of JP Morgan and [Jes] Staley’s benefit from assisting Epstein, a highly profitable deal for JP Morgan was the Highbridge acquisition. “In 2004, when Epstein’s sex trafficking and abuse operation was running at full speed, Epstein served up another big financial payday for JP Morgan. “Epstein was close friends with Glenn Dubin, the billionaire … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 15, 2023 ~ Sigrid McCawley is a Managing Partner at law firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, which has been representing the sexually assaulted and/or sex-trafficked victims of Jeffrey Epstein for years, including Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who settled claims against Prince Andrew last year for an undisclosed sum of money. Giuffre alleged in her lawsuit that Epstein had trafficked her and forced her to have sex with Prince Andrew when she was just 17.  McCawley is also a key lawyer on the case styled as Jane Doe 1 v JPMorgan Chase in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. That lawsuit alleges that JPMorgan Chase was for years aware that Epstein was a sexual predator of underage girls, kept him as a client nonetheless, and functioned as a cash conduit for his crimes while ignoring anti-money laundering laws. The JPMorgan internal emails … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 14, 2023 ~ Following the dot-com mania of the late 90s, the Nasdaq reached a closing high of 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000. The Nasdaq then proceeded to lose 78 percent of its value over the next 2-1/2 years. It reached a closing low of 1,114.11 on October 9, 2002. There is mounting evidence that the S&P 500 is in a similar bubble today – this time fostered by Wall Street hyperbole and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) around Artificial Intelligence (AI) boosting big gains at mega tech companies. Headlines are sprouting up at various news outlets, touting that the S&P 500 is in a new bull market. But, in fact, almost all of the gains in the S&P 500 Index year-to-date have come from just seven stocks: Apple (ticker AAPL), Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, ticker META), Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 13, 2023 ~ Yesterday, at 9:33 a.m. ET, JPMorgan Chase and the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, issued a terse joint statement indicating that they had informed Judge Jed Rakoff’s federal court in Manhattan that claims against the bank for aiding and abetting Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking of underage girls had been settled by the two sides. The settlement will require court approval. Law partner David Boies later confirmed to the press that the dollar figure for that settlement was an astonishing $290 million, despite the fact that the lawsuit was brought by just one women, Jane Doe 1. After Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, had argued for months that the bank was not responsible for Epstein’s sex crimes and trafficking of young girls, why would the bank flip on a dime on June 12 and decide to effectively admit its … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 12, 2023 ~ A dangerous malignancy has been growing on the U.S. banking system for at least two dozen years: It’s the job function benignly called the “Relationship Manager.” In October 2013, Carmen Segarra, a lawyer and former Bank Examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Relationship Managers there, who were assigned to delicately manage relationships between the New York Fed and the powerful Wall Street banks, had obstructed and interfered with her investigation of Goldman Sachs and tried to bully her into changing her negative findings. When Segarra refused to change her examination, she was fired, according to a federal lawsuit she filed. In 2018, Segarra provided a more detailed accounting of how these corrupted relationships play out in her book, Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street. Given the influence that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 8, 2023 ~ Yesterday, news headlines blared that New York City had the worst air quality in the world, as an eerie brownish-orange haze enveloped the city and Long Island. Photographs that looked more like scenes from a sci-fi movie popped up all over Twitter. Daytime took on a nighttime quality as streetlights automatically flipped on. Outdoor activities of all kinds were cancelled: the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies cancelled their home games that had been scheduled for Wednesday; schools banned outdoor activities on playgrounds; millions of Americans living in the Northeast United States were cautioned to remain indoors. The Governor of New York State, Kathy Hochul, announced she was distributing one million N95 masks – a flashback to the hellish life of New Yorkers in 2020 and 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic engulfed the city and the overflowing bodies of COVID victims … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 7, 2023 ~ It’s only June 7, but the liquidating, federally-insured, crypto-loving Silvergate Bank is having one helluva month. On June 1, the Federal Reserve released an enforcement action (called a Cease and Desist Consent Order) that it and a California banking regulator had filed against Silvergate Bank and its parent, Silvergate Capital Corporation. (See our report: Disgraced Silvergate Bank Hints It May Not Be Able to Cover All of Its Deposits; Fed Slaps It with a Cease and Desist Consent Order.) The bank had announced on March 8 that it was going to voluntarily wind down and liquidate itself. The announcement followed a run on the bank when news articles began appearing linking Silvergate Bank to indicted crypto kingpin, Sam Bankman-Fried. The bank is facing a growing roster of lawsuits on charges that it moved customer funds deposited at Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, FTX, to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 6, 2023 ~ As we reported yesterday, Silicon Valley Bank was not even on the “Problem Bank List” maintained by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) when it imploded in a span of 48 hours in March. According to testimony by the Federal Reserve’s Vice Chairman for Supervision, Michael Barr, on March 28 before the Senate Banking Committee, depositors had yanked $42 billion of their deposits from the bank on March 9 and had queued up to grab another $100 billion on March 10 when it was abruptly put into FDIC receivership. Had the FDIC not stepped in, Silicon Valley Bank would have lost 85 percent of its deposits in a two-day stretch. Two of the key internal problems at Silicon Valley Bank were its large amount of uninsured deposits (which pose a flight risk in times of banking turmoil) and Silicon Valley Bank’s … Continue reading →