By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 28, 2015 If you’ve been scratching your head since the middle of last year as consumer confidence surveys depicted an optimistic, eager to spend consumer while other hard economic data was showing a sputtering economy, we’re here to put your mind to rest. You’re not crazy. The U.S. economy is dramatically diverging from where most consumers think it is and we have three charts to prove it. Most Americans have never heard of the Labor Force Participation Rate. Consumers judge the availability of jobs, or lack of them, by the Unemployment Rate that is fed to them in newspaper headlines and TV sound bites monthly. The Unemployment Rate has been coming down nicely and fueling positive vibes among consumers. Unfortunately, the Labor Force Participation Rate, which measures the number of people who are either employed or actively looking for a job has been … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 27, 2015  Last Monday, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker held a press conference at the National Press Club to release his nonprofit’s plan for reforming U.S. bank regulation. Volcker’s plan includes elevating the Federal Reserve to even greater heights as a super regulator of a consolidated system. That’s exactly the opposite of what Congress has in mind as it holds hearings on fatal conflicts of interests between the Fed and Wall Street. At the press conference, Volcker delivered a thoroughly discredited statement suggesting some deep-pocketed backers are putting words in his mouth. Volcker said: “The Federal Reserve is the best-equipped, the most independent and most respected financial agency of the United States government.” Volcker’s views on financial reform must be seen against the backdrop of Volcker’s myriad conflicts and ties with the global ruling elite. His non-profit organization, The Volcker Alliance, has multiplied … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 24, 2015 Americans have been reading about Citigroup’s and JPMorgan’s roles in rigging the Libor interest rate benchmark for so many years that it’s a sure bet most folks think the U.S. Department of Justice has already fined and settled charges against these two banks. The truth of the matter is that despite seven years of probing these two banks’ involvement, the U.S. Justice Department has yet to lay one hand on either Citigroup or JPMorgan for their role in the Libor cartel. Libor is an interest rate benchmark used to set rates for trillions of dollars in consumer loans, swaps and interest rate contracts around the world. Banks having inside information on where Libor rates will set can make massive profits. The appearance of a home court advantage for these two U.S. banks comes in the wake of a guilty plea extracted … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: April 22, 2015 The U.S. Justice Department is relying on Americans’ gullibility with its arrest of a 36-year old in the U.K., charging him as a key culprit in the Flash Crash of the stock market on May 6, 2010. London newspapers report the young man trades from his bedroom in his parents’ middle class row house. The arrest came on the same day that news broke that Loretta Lynch was speeding toward a confirmation vote in the U.S. Senate as the next U.S. Attorney General, meaning that current U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is making his last hurrah after failing to prosecute any bigwigs on Wall Street throughout his tenure, notwithstanding their insidious role in the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. The first problem with the Justice Department’s complaint against the bedroom spoofer is that the complaint has gone missing. What was released to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 21, 2015 On October 23, 2008, with much of Wall Street lying in ruins and the U.S. economy rapidly heading toward a 1930s type of collapse, Henry Waxman, Chair of the House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee, attempted to elicit answers from Alan Greenspan, the former Chair of the Federal Reserve for an unprecedented 18 years who had pushed for the deregulation of Wall Street that had left the country teetering. After enumerating a series of  recent financial collapses occurring from either deregulation or corrupted business principles, Waxman said: “Each of these case studies is different, but they share common themes. In each case, corporate excess and greed enriched company executives at enormous cost to shareholders and our economy. In each case, these abuses could have been prevented if Federal regulators had paid more attention and intervened with responsible regulations.” In those three sentences, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 20, 2015 Manipulating Americans to organize or protest against their own interests is the sine qua non of big corporate front groups. These groups are alternately known as astroturf organizations because the grass in “grassroots” is fake turf. Just how fake that turf is came into crisp perspective on April 2 when Christine Stapleton, an investigative reporter at the Palm Beach Post, revealed that a protest rally called by the Tea Party of Miami and Florida Citizens Against Waste used paid actors from the Broward Acting Group as faux protesters. (Watch a video here.) The fake protest was in response to more than 100 real citizens turning out the prior month to demand that the South Florida Water Management District, a state agency, exercise its option before it expires to purchase 48,600 acres of corporate land owned by U.S. Sugar, a huge sugar … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 16, 2015 Since the depths of the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, has been talking up a storm and moving markets. On multiple occasions, however, after Bullard has talked up tightening, he’s had to backtrack and urge easier monetary policy as the U.S. economy wilted back into subpar GDP growth. Yesterday, at a presentation to the annual Hyman P. Minsky “Conference on the State of the U.S. and World Economies,” Bullard made a case for the Fed raising interest rates sooner than the markets expect. Among the key points presented in his slide presentation were that “U.S. labor markets have been improving at a rapid pace over the last year,” and “U.S. GDP growth prospects remain relatively robust.” Dow Jones’ MarketWatch called Bullard “a leading hawk on the Federal Reserve” in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 15, 2015 Media rumors have been rife since February that the U.S. Justice Department is edging closer to forcing a Citigroup banking unit to plead guilty to criminal charges of rigging foreign currency markets. On Monday, the umpteenth iteration of the infamous Citigroup Shuffle was announced, where the top ranks of management are shuffled about in preparation for charges of major wrongdoing by the bank. The Citigroup Shuffle has produced four CEOs over the past 12 years (Sanford Weill, Chuck Prince, Vikram Pandit, and the current CEO, Michael Corbat). The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) position changed three times in four months during 2009, moving from Gary Crittenden, to Edward “Ned” Kelly, to John Gerspach, the current CFO. Crittenden was later charged by the SEC with lying about Citigroup’s exposure to subprime debt, stating publicly that it was $13 billion when in fact it … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: April 14, 2015 At approximately 1:07 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, April 11, during the annual Cherry Blossom Festival celebrating springtime in the Nation’s Capitol, a 22-year old man took his own life with a gun on the Capitol grounds with a protest sign taped to his hand. According to the Washington Post, the sign read: “Tax the one percent.” Yesterday, the Metropolitan Police Department released the young man’s name. He was Leo P. Thornton of Lincolnwood, Illinois. Based on what is currently known, the young man had traveled to Washington, D.C. for the express purpose of making a political statement with his sign and then ending his young life. The Chicago Tribune reported that “Thornton’s parents filed a missing persons report on the morning of April 11 after he never came home from work on April 10, Lincolnwood Deputy Police Chief John Walsh said.” Those are the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: April 13, 2015 For nine years now we have written about Wall Street’s institutionalized system of transferring wealth from decent, hardworking Americans to the denizens of Wall Street and those it selectively chooses to favor in the one percent class. The methods of wealth transfer are as diverse as they are diabolical, thus even well intentioned members of Congress cannot stem the havoc on the financial well being of the average American and the overall economy. One facet that all of these wealth transfer systems have in common is that they all masquerade under a benign sounding name. The 401(k) plan is viewed by most Americans as a way to save for retirement. That’s a good thing – right? It is not a good thing when two-thirds of your savings over a working lifetime end up in Wall Street’s pocket, as carefully demonstrated by Frontline and math-checked … Continue reading →