By Pam Martens: August 29, 2013  The Public Banking Institute has released a new video making serious claims, backed by graphs and government documents, that the largest Wall Street banks are an unsafe choice for the savings of moms, pops and public payrolls. Citing a December 10, 2012 jointly approved plan between the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Bank of England, which resides on the FDIC’s federal web site, the organization says depositors in the U.S. could see portions of their deposits confiscated, similar to what happened in Cyprus, should there be another Wall Street collapse as occurred in 2008.  The first question, of course, is why the U.S. government is negotiating its banking policy with the United Kingdom instead of the U.S. Congress. The obvious answer is that global banks, now allowed to troll the planet in search of the next high-flying derivatives trade, must harmonize … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 28, 2013  One day after terrorists set off a bomb at the Boston Marathon leaving a tragic trail of senseless human suffering, the U.S. House of Representatives held a scheduled hearing to debate another form of terrorism – the kind of economic terrorism that gripped the United States from 2008 to 2010 and lingers today in the form of 46 million Americans living in poverty, mass underemployment, stagnating wages, a shaky housing market, tepid GDP growth and ballooning national debt. The House was debating the “grave threat” to the Nation posed by the too-big-to-fail banks. You likely didn’t hear about the hearing because the media was focused on the Boston Marathon and its more easily understood, visually shocking form of terrorism.  On April 16, 2013, members of the House Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee of the Financial Services Committee wanted to learn more about two words, “grave … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 27, 2013  George Melloan has done a deep disservice to the ever-shrinking pool of ethical investigative writers covering Wall Street, civic-minded prosecutors, and to the underpaid but dedicated career regulators overseeing the financial markets. (No, the revolving door from Wall Street to Washington hasn’t quite killed off all that is good.)  Yesterday, Melloan penned an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that was so Koch-esque, so preposterously skewed, and so utterly lacking in factual basis that it must be called out. Melloan makes the claim that the big banks aren’t doing anything more egregious than they have done in the past and the growing charges of fraud are the product of overly zealous regulators, “encouraged by the Obama administration” to blame the nation’s economic ills “on the rich, Wall Street, moneybags bankers, deal makers like Mitt Romney or almost anyone else who still wears a suit … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 26, 2013  The sine qua non of image handlers dealing with negative revelations in the media is to infuse the happy faces of children and puppies into the equation.  Did you hear that the Obamas have a new puppy? Her name is Sunny and like her big brother, Bo, she’s a Portuguese Water Dog. There’s photos and even a video at WhiteHouse.gov showing the adorable pair frolicking on the White House lawn.  As former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, has continued to leak documents to newspapers showing that President Obama has overseen a surveillance dragnet on innocent Americans and U.S. allies, raising serious questions about this former constitutional law professor’s respect for democratic ideals, the President took to the road in a bus during the month of August to promote a new agenda to help the middle class. This past weekend the emphasis was on making college … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 23, 2013 President Obama spoke to students yesterday at the State University of New York in Buffalo and at Henninger High School in Syracuse on his plans to make college more affordable for middle class families. Total student debt in the U.S. now exceeds $1 trillion and, according to the President, is crushing the ability of graduates to buy homes or start a business and thus holding back economic growth. On learning of the President’s new college affordability initiative, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who has been in a tug of war for the last six months with New York University (NYU), one of the most expensive universities in the country with a four-year tab estimated at $280,000 including dorm, released the following statement: “I agree with President Obama on reducing college costs and student debt.  One area for consideration is college spending on high executive … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 22, 2013 The Nasdaq stock market, home to some of the most sophisticated tech companies in America (Apple, Cisco, Intel and Microsoft, to name a few) had another bout of tech problems today, halting trading in all of its member shares and options from approximately 12:14 p.m. until about 3:25 p.m. – just 35 minutes before the closing bell rang at the New York Stock Exchange, which remained open throughout the Nasdaq halt. The trading fiasco came just two days after Goldman Sachs said it had a computer misfire and issued erroneous trading instructions to three exchanges, resulting in a mess of trade cancellations and potentially tens of millions of dollars in losses. Nasdaq is rapidly gaining the reputation of a tech exchange that needs some techies. On May 29 of this year,  the SEC fined Nasdaq $10 million for the trading debacle on the day Facebook … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 22, 2013  The lingering impact of the Wall Street crash of 2008 to 2010 has devastated the job market for young college grads. The government debt piled on to bail out Wall Street has killed the prospects for the next generation’s standard of living. Now, Wall Street is literally killing the next generation.  Moritz Erhardt, a 21-year old college intern working for the investment banking division of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, was found dead in his shower after working around the clock for three straight days at the U.S. bank’s offices in London, according to published reports from fellow interns who shared the premises.  Merrill Lynch, known on the street as “Mother Merrill,” wants you to know it is “deeply shocked and saddened.”  London newspapers are reporting that Erhardt had worked eight all-nighters in a two-week period in hopes of securing a permanent post at Merrill … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 21, 2013 The last 30 days have been pretty much the summer from hell for the Obama administration’s efforts to shore up confidence that its policing of Wall Street is producing results. Still under multiple investigations for rigging the interest rate benchmark known as Libor, we learned late last month that Wall Street’s largest firms have also gained effective control of the London Metal Exchange and are causing financial damage to the economy by hoarding aluminum in metal warehouses. On top of that, JPMorgan recently paid a $410 million fine for rigging electricity markets in California and the Midwest while two of JPMorgan’s traders were just criminally indicted for their role in the infamous London Whale matter where $6.2 billion of bank deposits were lost in a wild trading scheme. Certainly no slouch, Goldman Sachs is holding up its end in the busting of public confidence … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 20, 2013 The White House issued a statement yesterday on the President’s meeting with the federal agencies that regulate Wall Street. Curiously, the phrase used to describe the agencies was “independent regulators.” The President’s Deputy Press Secretary, Josh Earnest, held a press briefing with reporters yesterday, taking questions on the meeting. In that briefing, Earnest referred to the regulators as “independent” seven times. If the President now finds it necessary to attempt to brainwash the American public through endless repetition of the word “independent” to shore up sagging public doubt that there are any real cops on the beat when it comes to policing Wall Street, he has no one to blame but himself. When President Obama appointed Mary Jo White to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Jack Lew for U.S. Treasury Secretary, and has floated the idea for weeks that Larry Summers could … Continue reading →

August 19, 2013 This afternoon, the White House released the following statement on what transpired at the 2:15 p.m. meeting today between the President and Wall Street regulators. According to the President’s daily schedule printout, the meeting took place in the Roosevelt Room. We will have significantly more to say on this subject tomorrow. ~~~ “This afternoon, President Obama hosted a meeting with lead independent financial regulators.  In addition to White House staff, participants include the Comptroller of the Currency, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Acting Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), and the chairs of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the National Credit Union Administration, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).  Treasury Secretary Jack Lew also attended the meeting. “The President and the regulators … Continue reading →