By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 27, 2023 ~ Between March 10 and May 1 of this year, three of the largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred. On March 10 the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) seized Silicon Valley Bank after $42 billion in deposits had exited the bank the day prior with another $100 billion queued up to leave the next day – meaning it was possible for a federally-insured bank to lose 85 percent of its deposits in the span of 48 hours in the digital age. (For a closer look at what was going on at Silicon Valley Bank, see our report: Silicon Valley Bank Was a Wall Street IPO Pipeline in Drag as a Federally-Insured Bank; FHLB of San Francisco Was Quietly Bailing It Out.) Two more bank failures followed in short order: Signature Bank on March 12 and First Republic Bank on May 1. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 26, 2023 ~ There are three shocking takeaways from the class action settlement documents that were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York last week in the Jeffrey Epstein victims’ case against Wall Street megabank, JPMorgan Chase. (See settlement documents linked at the end of this article.) First, the attorneys for the unnamed victims are requesting $87 million in legal fees from the $290 million settlement amount, plus another $2.5 million in expenses. The victims, on the other hand, are guaranteed no minimum monetary payment but must file a release form before they learn if they will get a dime. This language appears in the settlement documents: “All Class Members shall be bound by all determinations and judgments in the Litigation concerning the Settlement (including, but not limited to, the releases provided for therein) whether favorable or unfavorable … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 22, 2023 ~ According to unsealed documents released this week by the U.S. Virgin Islands in its federal lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase over claims it facilitated Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of underage girls for more than a decade, the largest bank in the United States has a lot of explaining to do to the American people – and potentially to the criminal division of the U.S. Justice Department. After Jeffrey Epstein was arrested by the U.S. Department of Justice on July 6, 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges, JPMorgan Chase – which had been Epstein’s banker from 1998 to 2013 – apparently decided to get a quick look at how much legal liability and reputational damage it might have if its labyrinthine client relationship and intimate and undisclosed business relationship with Epstein came to light. The “top of the house” at JPMorgan Chase ordered … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 21, 2023 ~ On March 17, 2022, the Federal Reserve began its interest rate hiking cycle, which has, thus far, evolved into 10 consecutive rate hikes, making it the fastest rate increases in 40 years. The Fed’s actions to tame inflation included four consecutive interest rate hikes of an aggressive 75 basis point hike (three quarters of one percent) on June 16, July 28, September 22, and November 3 of last year. At that point, every trading veteran on Wall Street was scratching their head and asking themselves the same question: why aren’t we hearing about interest rate derivatives blowing up and taking down either a U.S. mega bank or its counterparty on the wrong side of the trade? According to the quarterly derivative reports released by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator of national banks, as of December … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 20, 2023 ~ The tenure of Jamie Dimon as Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest federally-insured bank in the United States and the largest trading casino on Wall Street, has copiously revealed the following: the bank is more than willing to look the other way at crime if it means an increase in assets, profits or business referrals. Each of those three ingredients were present in the bank’s decades long involvement with Bernie Madoff, with its Chinese Princeling scandal and in the unfolding details of its intimate relationship with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. This reality may be difficult for the New York business press to acknowledge – since it has mostly covered Jamie Dimon as the grand statesman of Wall Street – but this is the hard reality nonetheless. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal’s Khadeeja Safdar and David Benoit revealed the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 19, 2023 ~ At a March 13 court hearing this year, prominent attorney, David Boies, argued in open court that the largest federally-insured bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase – which has more than 5,000 Chase bank branches holding mom and pop savings from coast to coast – had used a private jet owned by the bank’s hedge fund, Highbridge Capital, to transport girls for Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. A January 13, 2023 amended complaint filed by Boies’ law firm, elaborated on the allegation as follows: “As another example of JP Morgan and [Jes] Staley’s benefit from assisting Epstein, a highly profitable deal for JP Morgan was the Highbridge acquisition. “In 2004, when Epstein’s sex trafficking and abuse operation was running at full speed, Epstein served up another big financial payday for JP Morgan. “Epstein was close friends with Glenn Dubin, the billionaire … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 15, 2023 ~ Sigrid McCawley is a Managing Partner at law firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, which has been representing the sexually assaulted and/or sex-trafficked victims of Jeffrey Epstein for years, including Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who settled claims against Prince Andrew last year for an undisclosed sum of money. Giuffre alleged in her lawsuit that Epstein had trafficked her and forced her to have sex with Prince Andrew when she was just 17.  McCawley is also a key lawyer on the case styled as Jane Doe 1 v JPMorgan Chase in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. That lawsuit alleges that JPMorgan Chase was for years aware that Epstein was a sexual predator of underage girls, kept him as a client nonetheless, and functioned as a cash conduit for his crimes while ignoring anti-money laundering laws. The JPMorgan internal emails … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 14, 2023 ~ Following the dot-com mania of the late 90s, the Nasdaq reached a closing high of 5,048.62 on March 10, 2000. The Nasdaq then proceeded to lose 78 percent of its value over the next 2-1/2 years. It reached a closing low of 1,114.11 on October 9, 2002. There is mounting evidence that the S&P 500 is in a similar bubble today – this time fostered by Wall Street hyperbole and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) around Artificial Intelligence (AI) boosting big gains at mega tech companies. Headlines are sprouting up at various news outlets, touting that the S&P 500 is in a new bull market. But, in fact, almost all of the gains in the S&P 500 Index year-to-date have come from just seven stocks: Apple (ticker AAPL), Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, ticker META), Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 13, 2023 ~ Yesterday, at 9:33 a.m. ET, JPMorgan Chase and the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, issued a terse joint statement indicating that they had informed Judge Jed Rakoff’s federal court in Manhattan that claims against the bank for aiding and abetting Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking of underage girls had been settled by the two sides. The settlement will require court approval. Law partner David Boies later confirmed to the press that the dollar figure for that settlement was an astonishing $290 million, despite the fact that the lawsuit was brought by just one women, Jane Doe 1. After Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, had argued for months that the bank was not responsible for Epstein’s sex crimes and trafficking of young girls, why would the bank flip on a dime on June 12 and decide to effectively admit its … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 12, 2023 ~ A dangerous malignancy has been growing on the U.S. banking system for at least two dozen years: It’s the job function benignly called the “Relationship Manager.” In October 2013, Carmen Segarra, a lawyer and former Bank Examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Relationship Managers there, who were assigned to delicately manage relationships between the New York Fed and the powerful Wall Street banks, had obstructed and interfered with her investigation of Goldman Sachs and tried to bully her into changing her negative findings. When Segarra refused to change her examination, she was fired, according to a federal lawsuit she filed. In 2018, Segarra provided a more detailed accounting of how these corrupted relationships play out in her book, Noncompliant: A Lone Whistleblower Exposes the Giants of Wall Street. Given the influence that … Continue reading →