Search Results for: rap sheet

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 22, 2018 President Donald Trump’s persistence on his Twitter page in touting how well the stock market is doing is distracting investors from a scary, negative indicator for stocks – rising yields on U.S. Treasury securities. Since September of last year, yields have been on a steady and sharp upward trajectory, reminiscent of standing at the base of a mogul run in Colorado and craning one’s neck toward the summit. The complacency the stock market is showing toward the fierce rise in yields may also turn out to be a dangerous, slippery slope for those heavily weighted in stocks. On November 9, 2016 the two-year U.S. Treasury Note closed the day with a yield of 0.8942 percent. One year later, on November 9, 2017, it finished its trading session with a yield of 1.64 percent. As of 6:50 a.m. this morning, the yield … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 4, 2018  On Monday, 37-year old Arthur Gregg (A.G.) Sulzberger took the helm as the new Publisher of the New York Times, succeeding his father, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., whose tenure in the post lasted for the past quarter of a century. A.G. has previously held positions at the Times as metro reporter, national correspondent, associate editor for strategy and deputy publisher. He marked the occasion of becoming the fifth generation of his family to assume the mantle of Publisher by invoking his great-great grandfather, Adolph Ochs, who promised readers he would “give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved.” A.G. then added his own 900-word promise for “independent, courageous, trustworthy journalism” on his watch. In one particularly poignant passage from the missive, A.G. writes: “The Times will hold itself to the highest standards of independence, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 17, 2017 U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appears to have inaugurated a perpetual bring your wife to work day. It’s become so farcical that it frequently feels like the United States Treasury Department has morphed into a low-budget, badly scripted reality TV show where the female star is so out-of-touch that she must continually scurry about in her haute couture erasing the haughty things she has written about the little people on multiple continents. We’ll get to that shortly, but first some background: It all started back on January 19 when actress and then fiancée Louise Linton sat by her man during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing to become U.S. Treasury Secretary. At the hearing, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon had this to say about his repugnance to see Mnuchin fill the post as U.S. Treasury Secretary: “Mr. Mnuchin’s career began … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 20, 2017  Last week Jim Rutenberg penned a column for the New York Times titled Facing Down the Network that Produced Harvey Weinstein. Rutenberg explored the reasons that Weinstein’s decades of sexually harassing women and charges of assaults had not made it to the front pages of newspapers sooner. Correctly calling it “something akin to a protection racket,” Rutenberg defined it as a “network of aggressive public relations flacks and lawyers who guard the secrets of those who employ them and keep their misdeeds out of public view.” That sentence brought to mind a 2009 Rachel Maddow program on MSNBC where she enumerated the ignominious historical milestones of the monster public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller, capping the history by calling it the “p.r. firm from hell.” Among her litany of its p.r. projects, Maddow cited: “…when Blackwater killed those 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, they … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 7, 2017 Last Monday, Thomas Hoenig, the Vice Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), sent a stunning letter to the Chair and Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. The letter contained information that should have become front page news at every business wire service and the leading business newspapers. But with the exception of Reuters, major corporate media like the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, the Business section of the New York Times and Washington Post ignored the bombshell story, according to our search at Google News. What the fearless Hoenig told the Senate Banking Committee was effectively this: the biggest Wall Street banks have been lying to the American people that overly stringent capital rules by their regulators are constraining their ability to lend to consumers and businesses. What’s really behind their inability to make more loans is … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 6, 2017 According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), as of March 31, 2017 there were a total of 5,856 banks in the U.S. operating under its Federal deposit insurance umbrella. But according to government financial researchers, five of those banks pose an ongoing material threat to the U.S. financial system. Not surprisingly, those five banks hold insured deposits for savers while simultaneously engaging in highly leveraged, high risk trading on Wall Street. On June 27, Janet Yellen, the Chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve (the nation’s central bank) spoke at an event at the British Academy in London. She stated the following about the U.S. financial system: “Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis? You know probably that would be going too far, but I do think we are much safer, and I hope that it will … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 28, 2017  Yesterday the Chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, was in London for a wide-ranging financial markets discussion with Nicholas Stern, the President of the British Academy. Making headlines from that discussion was Yellen’s stated belief that there will not be another financial crisis in our lifetimes. Yellen stated to Stern: “Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis? You know probably that would be going too far, but I do think we are much safer, and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes and I don’t believe it will be.” While that remark has dominated the news, the more meaningful story is that Yellen (the top monetary authority in the United States; the head of the U.S. central bank; and the top dog at the Federal watchdog that regulates the largest bank holding … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 7, 2017 Yesterday, the German global bank, Deutsche Bank, fell by 3.82 percent by the close of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on news of a capital raising and revamp in strategy. That price action took down every major Wall Street bank stock and, interestingly, MetLife, which closed down 1.64 percent, beating out even Citigroup which closed down 1.18 percent. The rest of the major derivatives players fared as follows: JPMorgan Chase closed with a loss of 0.95 percent; Bank of America was off by 0.75 percent; Morgan Stanley closed down 0.56 percent; with Goldman Sachs down a meager 0.35 percent after infusing itself throughout the Trump administration’s corridors of power in Washington. Last June, Deutsche Bank found itself the subject of unwanted attention in a report issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The report looked at the “Financial System … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 27, 2017 Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, authors an annual letter to shareholders that receives wide media coverage for the nuggets of wisdom dispersed to the masses. His latest letter, released on Saturday, trumpets American exceptionalism, the miraculous market system Americans have created, while it blithely dismisses the greatest wealth and income inequality in America since the 1920s. Buffett preposterously observes that “Babies born in America today are the luckiest crop in history.” Let’s start with that last statement. According to our own Central Intelligence Agency, there are 55 countries that have a lower infant mortality rate than the United States. Even debt-strapped Greece beats the United States. Much of what Buffett has to say in this letter sounds like unadulterated propaganda to reassure the 99 percent that his amassing of a net worth of $76.3 billion was a result of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 4, 2017 Over the span of the last two weeks, President-elect Donald Trump’s U.S. Treasury Secretary nominee, Steven Mnuchin, has been the subject of multiple, scathing investigative reports by the media; earned a web site established by Senate Democrats dubbing him the “Foreclosure King” and soliciting complaints from the public; garnered a television ad campaign directed against him; and has been skewered by a devastating document leaked by someone currently or formerly connected to the California State Attorney General’s Office, indicating that the bank Mnuchin ran from 2009 to 2015, OneWest, repeatedly violated California foreclosure law, including backdating documents and making illegal bids, in order to throw thousands of vulnerable people out of their homes. Mnuchin is also a former Goldman Sachs partner and hedge fund operator who has never held public office before. His rapid rise to nominee for one of the … Continue reading →