By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 7, 2023 ~ Deposits at the 25-largest domestically-chartered U.S. commercial banks peaked at $11.680 trillion on April 13, 2022, according to the updated H.8 data maintained at the Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED). As of the most current H.8 data for the week ending on Wednesday, July 26, 2023, deposits stood at $10.709 trillion at those 25 commercial banks, a dollar decline of $970 billion and a percentage decline of 8.3 percent. Equally noteworthy, the decline shows no signs of letting up. According to the FRED data, between July 5 and the most current reading on July 26, the 25 largest U.S. banks shed $174 billion in deposits. Despite all of the misleading news reports about depositors seeking out the perceived safety of the largest banks since the banking crisis in the spring, it’s actually been the smaller banks that have staged a comeback … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 3, 2023 ~ At 5:13 p.m. ET on Tuesday, after the stock market closed, Fitch downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+. Fitch is now the second of the three major credit rating agencies to have taken the historic step of removing the triple-A rating from the U.S. S&P made its first-ever downgrade to the U.S. credit rating on August 5, 2011, also from AAA to AA+, and has kept it there ever since. Moody’s is now the only member of the Big Three credit rating agencies that has maintained a triple-A rating on the U.S. As the chart above indicates, the stock market responded negatively to this development yesterday, particularly over the fact that it came at a time when the U.S. Treasury is boosting the amount of debt it is issuing. Yesterday, the U.S. Treasury announced its plans to increase … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 2, 2023 ~ On July 24th and 25th, the Attorney General’s Office for the U.S. Virgin Islands filed dozens of documents in the court case it has launched against the largest federally-insured bank in the United States – JPMorgan Chase – in a U.S. district court in Manhattan. A quick glance at the giant blur of filings indicated that the vast majority had been filed under seal. (See a partial screen shot here.) The U.S. Virgin Islands is credibly alleging in its lawsuit that JPMorgan Chase “actively participated in Epstein’s sex trafficking venture” where dozens of underage girls were sexually assaulted by Epstein or his rich pals. Wall Street On Parade has learned over the years to deeply scrutinize anything that is happening in the federal district court in the Southern District of New York, where Wall Street has kept critical information about its … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 31, 2023 ~ The chart above compares the stock price performance of the kidney dialysis company, DaVita (ticker DVA), with the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index since 1996. Right away, something looks very wrong. Why should a healthcare company delivering dialysis treatment to people with kidney failure make the kind of profits that would generate this outsized stock price return? Investigative reporter and author, Tom Mueller, has dedicated his latest book to pulling back the curtain on the dirty underbelly of this industry. The book, How to Make a Killing: Blood, Death and Dollars in American Medicine, will be available for sale in bookstores tomorrow. If you have a loved one receiving kidney dialysis at centers run by either DaVita or Fresenius, we urge you to stop what you’re doing, buy this book, and read it from cover to cover. The book presents nothing … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 27, 2023 ~ On July 5, Wall Street On Parade filed a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request with the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), the state agency that investigates and penalizes financial institutions for engaging in illicit activities. We were curious as to why the DFS had fined Deutsche Bank upwards of $150 million on July 7, 2020 for its illicit dealings with the sex trafficker of underage girls, Jeffrey Epstein, but had remained silent on any investigations or fines against JPMorgan Chase. Our curiosity was heightened by the fact that Deutsche Bank had only a 5-year banking relationship with Epstein, from 2013 to 2018, while JPMorgan Chase had a 15-year banking relationship with Epstein, from 1998 to 2013. When we examined the details in the consent order that the DFS had filed against Deutsche Bank, our curiosity was heightened … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 26, 2023 ~ The Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands, armed with highly effective legal talent from the law firm, MotleyRice – which stakes its reputation on its “boldness” – has filed new documents in its federal lawsuit against the largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase. The new documents are, indeed, breathtakingly bold. The U.S. Virgin Islands’ attorneys have clarified to the court that they plan to show in a trial scheduled for October that JPMorgan Chase not only facilitated the sex trafficking of underage girls by Jeffrey Epstein but that the bank “actively participated in Epstein’s sex-trafficking venture from 2006 until 2019.” That is a very explosive assertion. For starters, it throws up a giant red flare as to why the American public has heard nothing from the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice about a criminal case … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 25, 2023 ~ In June, Reuters reported that JPMorgan Chase was expanding the reach of its commercial bank into two additional foreign countries – Israel and Singapore – bringing its foreign commercial bank presence to a total of 28 countries. Those plans could potentially add billions of dollars more to its already problematic uninsured deposits. Why federal regulators are allowing JPMorgan Chase to continue to expand, despite it admitting to five criminal felony counts since 2014 and currently facing three lawsuits in federal court for facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of underage girls is drawing attention from watchdogs. According to its regulatory filings, as of December 31, 2022, JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. held $2.015 trillion in deposits in domestic offices, of which $1.058 trillion were uninsured. It also held another $418.9 billion in deposits in foreign offices, which were also not insured by the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 24, 2023 ~ Prior to Ben Bernanke being sworn in as Fed Chair on February 6, 2006, the United States had been through World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Vietnam War and the stagflation of the 1970s, without an explosion in the Fed’s balance sheet. But since Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell have, in turn, sat at the helm of the Federal Reserve, there has been unprecedented growth in the Fed’s Balance Sheet. For example, from June 1960 to August 1990, the Fed’s balance sheet increased from $53 billion to $309 billion – an increase of 483 percent in 30 years. But during the tenures of Bernanke, Yellen and Powell, the Fed’s balance sheet has exploded from $805 billion in February 2006, when Bernanke took his seat as Fed Chair, to the current reading last Wednesday, July 19, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 20, 2023 ~ The data in the chart above comes directly from what the biggest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, reported on its 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the quarter ending March 31, 2023. Despite all those mainstream media headlines and news stories about the biggest banks in the U.S. being the deposit beneficiaries of the banking panic earlier this year, the cold, hard facts on the ground are the following: at the end of the first quarter of this year, JPMorgan Chase had seen deposit outflows in four out of the past five quarters. Mainstream media conveniently forgot to mention that. The only quarter in which JPMorgan Chase saw an inflow of deposits was the first quarter of this year, when three banks blew up: Silvergate Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. That increase was … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 19, 2023 ~ For more than two decades, we have been reading about former employees of Goldman Sachs who have fled jobs there over a toxic, soul-crushing work culture. The pace of these stories has been picking up steam, rather than declining. Shareholders of Goldman Sachs should be asking themselves, is this good for the future of the company over the long haul and the price of its stock. Here’s a small sampling of some of the complaints from 2004 to the present: In 2004, Nomi Prins, now a well-known author and a former Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, wrote the following in her book, Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America: “When I left Wall Street, at the height of a wave of scandals uncovering scores of massively destructive deceptions, my choice was based on a very personal sense of right and wrong…So, … Continue reading →