Search Results for: Jamie Dimon

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 10, 2021 ~ On July 21, 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) became the law of the United States. Its promise to Americans was that it would reform the corrupt practices on Wall Street that had led to the worst financial collapse in 2008 since the Great Depression and the largest taxpayer bailout of Wall Street in history. But here we are, 11 years later, with every one of those corrupt practices in full display at the Wall Street mega banks today. Losses from wild derivative bets check. Trading for the house (proprietary trading), check. Secret bailouts from the Fed, check. Credit Default swaps, check. The continuance of the private justice system on Wall Street, check. Banks paying rating agencies for ratings, check. Banks giving insanely leveraged loans to hedge funds, check. And if we wanted to find the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 15, 2021 ~ According to the Merger and Acquisition database at PitchBook, entities tied to JPMorgan Asset Management have been buying up energy and infrastructure assets around the world including solar power plants, wind farms,  airports, water companies and the 120-year old El Paso Electric which provides electricity to approximately 437,000 retail and wholesale customers in west Texas and southern New Mexico. The acquisitions can be traced back to an entity called the Infrastructure Investments Fund (IIF). When IIF is seeking regulatory approval, as in the case of buying El Paso Electric, it contends it is not controlled by JPMorgan. But when JPMorgan is pitching the fund to institutional investors around the globe, the bank points out that 50 of the bank’s employees are actively engaged in the fund – along with “70 independent portfolio company directors.” The brochures (flipbooks) for IIF are marked … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 6, 2021 ~ After reading the documents released by the Justice Department in January 2014 in connection with JPMorgan Chase’s settlement over its role in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, the Los Angeles Times asked this question: “Bernie Madoff: Was he part of the JPMorgan ring, or was JPMorgan part of his ring?” Given the facts of the case, the question was more than fair. In January of 2014 JPMorgan Chase paid $2.6 billion in fines and restitution, signed a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department and walked away from further criminal charges over its 22-year involvement with Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. The Madoff Ponzi scheme was the largest in U.S. history with fictitious investment account statements showing his clients held $64.8 billion in securities with his firm. (Madoff never actually bought any stocks or other securities for his investment clients.) The Madoff … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 28, 2021 ~ Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has found a new magic hat trick: how to shrink and grow at the same time. Between March 31, 2009 and December 31, 2020, the assets at JPMorgan Chase’s bank holding company grew by an astonishing $1.3 trillion or 62.9 percent according to data archived at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). That stands in striking contrast to the next largest bank holding company in the U.S., Bank of America, whose assets grew by just $496.2 billion or 21 percent over the same period. The first thought that might come to your mind is that perhaps this staggering growth in assets came as a result of the Federal Reserve allowing JPMorgan Chase to purchase Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual during the 2008 Wall Street crash. That can’t be the reason, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 28, 2021 ~ According to the 10-K (Annual Report) forms that JPMorgan Chase has filed with the SEC for years 2017, 2018, and 2019, it has bought back a total of $59.5 billion of its own common stock, thus inflating its share price by that sum of money. In 2019 the bank bought back a whopping 212,975,185 shares for $24.12 billion; 181,504,483 shares in 2018 for a total of $19.98 billion; and 166,557,198 shares in 2017 for $15.4 billion. Notice that the growth in the dollar amount of the buybacks grew by 56.6 percent from 2017 to 2019. Who benefitted tremendously from this boosting of the share price? Insiders. According to the proxy JPMorgan Chase filed with the SEC on April 7, Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, owns 9,385,141 shares of the bank’s common stock – the bulk of which … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 24, 2021 ~ If you’ve been following our reporting of JPMorgan Chase since Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon has been at the helm, you’re aware of one striking fact: this bank has a pattern of getting into bed with unsavory characters: Bernie Madoff, check. Racketeering traders, check. A sex trafficker of children, Jeffrey Epstein, check. Money launderers, check. The guy who bragged on his resume that he knew how to game electric markets, check. Despite an unprecedented record of five felony counts from the U.S. Department of Justice since 2014, to which it admitted guilt, and the reputational damage this has done to its brand, JPMorgan Chase’s asset management unit made the unusual decision last year to form a joint venture with an SFR (Single-Family Rental company) whose tenant complaints are so eye-popping that they fill pages on the internet and have been the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 22, 2021 ~ A preliminary prospectus has been filed with the SEC to bring Krispy Kreme, the doughnut retailer, back to trade in U.S. public markets. JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citigroup will be three of the four Lead Book-Running Managers on the deal according to the preliminary prospectus. Those same three Wall Street underwriters have the distinction of just last week being banned from participating in a big European Union bond offering because of their past cartel activity in Europe. Morgan Stanley is to be the fourth Lead Book-Running Manager on the deal. Krispy Kreme’s net losses have been escalating over the past three years according to its SEC filing. Net losses in 2020 were $60.9 million; $34 million in 2019; and $12.4 million in 2018. During the company’s prior history as a publicly-traded company, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the company … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 18, 2021 ~ How embarrassing it must be for Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, that three of the largest banks in the U.S. that are supervised by the Fed, have been deemed not trustworthy enough by the European Commission that they were banned from participating in this week’s historic European Union bond offering. It is also egg on the face of the U.S. Department of Justice, which has been handing out deferred prosecution agreements to these same banks for felony counts like it’s a meter maid doling out parking tickets. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America were banned along with seven non-U.S. banks from participating in this week’s European Union bond offering. The syndicated offering is part of what will grow over the next five years to be a $969 billion COVID-19 recovery fund for the European Union, part of the plan … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 17, 2021 ~ On May 26 Bloomberg News reported that the U.S. Department of Justice had opened an investigation into Archegos Capital Management and its bank lenders. Archegos is the family office hedge fund that had blown up in late March, causing a total of more than $10 billion in losses to mega banks including Credit Suisse, UBS, Morgan Stanley and others. Archegos had obtained leverage of as much as 85 percent on its heavily-concentrated stock trades from some of its banks, in brazen violation of the Federal Reserve’s Regulation T which sets margin for stock trading at a maximum of 50 percent on opening trades. In addition, the banks were holding the stocks in their own names (while shifting losses and gains to Archegos under a derivatives contract called a swap) thus denying the public the knowledge of the true owners of these … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 15, 2021 ~ Jeff Bezos, the founder and man at the helm of Amazon for the past 27 years, announced last month that he will be stepping down as CEO on July 5. Fifteen days later, according to Bezos, he and his brother Mark will take off on the first crewed space flight from his rocket company, Blue Origin. (Another seat on the flight has been auctioned online for $28 million. The winner has not yet been named.) Following on the heels of Bezos’ 2019 announcement of his divorce to his wife of a quarter of a century, MacKenzie Bezos, and tabloid headlines over his accusations of attempted extortion and blackmail by the National Inquirer over Bezos salacious texts to his girlfriend, shareholders were likely becoming eager for Bezos to hop aboard that spacecraft. What shareholders were apparently not thinking about was what was going … Continue reading →