Search Results for: Federal Reserve

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 27, 2022 ~ Both Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel and Harvard economics professor Larry Summers are trolling Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Siegel thinks Powell is “talking way too tough” on inflation while Summers thinks Powell is not restrictive enough. Siegel appeared on CNBC yesterday and scolded Powell to “offer the American people an apology” for his poor monetary policy over the years. In a Tweet, Summers effectively told the Fed Chairman to shut up, lecturing him on not talking so much at his press conferences. (See Tweets below.) In his CNBC interview, Siegel cited “home prices declining, commodity prices declining, freight rates declining,” as examples of easing inflationary pressures that warrant the Fed taking a less aggressive stance on raising rates. He also cited the sharp rise in the U.S. dollar, saying “the dollar is showing how tight the Fed actually is.” Summers … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 22, 2022 ~ Yesterday, the New York State Attorney General, Letitia James, filed a 222-page lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, his three adult children (Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric), and two company executives, Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney. The lawsuit is the culmination of a three-year investigation and documents in meticulous detail a “staggering” pattern of fraud from 2011 through 2021. A sampling of the more than 200 instances of fraud alleged by the New York State Attorney General is as follows: “Relying on objectively false numbers to calculate property values. For example, Mr. Trump’s own triplex apartment in Trump Tower was valued as being 30,000 square feet when it was 10,996 square feet. As a result, in 2015 the apartment was valued at $327 million in total, or $29,738 per square foot. That price was absurd given the fact … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 20, 2022 ~ There are eight Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBS) in the U.S. They are: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon, Morgan Stanley, State Street and Wells Fargo. These are the banks that pose the greatest risk to the stability of the U.S. financial system and are monitored under the Federal Reserve’s stress tests. Five of those eight banks pose the greatest risk to financial stability because together they hold $200.18 trillion (yes trillion) in notional derivatives (face amount) or 86 percent of all derivatives held by all of the nation’s banks, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency – the federal regulator of national banks. Those banks are: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America. In any Senate Banking or House Financial Services Committee hearing that is going … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 14, 2022 ~ The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,276 points yesterday for a decline of 3.94 percent. The Dow’s losses were outpaced by the tech-heavy Nasdaq, which gave up 632.8 points for a drop of 5.16 percent. The sharp selloff was triggered by the 8:30 a.m. report yesterday morning, an hour before the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, that inflation had come in hotter than expected in August. Wall Street had been looking for a 0.1 percent decline in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Instead, the August reading showed an increase of 0.1 percent. The year-over-year rate slowed to 8.3 percent from 8.5 percent in July. The Fed is set to meet next Tuesday and Wednesday and with the CPI number coming in hotter than anticipated, there is now talk of the Fed slamming on the brakes more than anticipated, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 8, 2022 ~ Bailing out the Wall Street megabanks that are serially fined and hit with felony counts appears to be catching on as a major career advancement strategy at the New York Fed. On August 22, Lorie Logan began her big promotion as President of the Dallas Fed, a position that paid $440,700 at the end of 2020. That’s $40,700 more than the salary of the President of the United States. Prior to joining the Dallas Fed, Logan was the Manager of the System Open Market Account (SOMA) at the New York Fed, effectively the Fed’s trading floor. As part of her job, Logan oversaw the trillions of dollars that were electronically created at the New York Fed to bail out Wall Street trading houses in the fall of 2019 and through the middle of 2020. (See our related report The Fed Appears … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 8, 2022 ~ The Fed would appear to have violated both the spirit and the letter of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in the second quarter of 2020, according to new repo loan data released by the New York Fed for the second quarter of 2020. The data shows that Citigroup received 96 percent of all repo loans made by the Fed between June 24, 2020 and June 30, 2020. Citigroup also dwarfed all other borrowers in the Fed’s repo loan program during the full second quarter of 2020. Citigroup borrowed a cumulative total of $454,751,000,000 from the Fed between April 1 and June 30, 2020. Of the 24 firms that borrowed during the second quarter of 2020 from the Fed’s repo loan program, Citigroup’s share amounted to more than the combined total of 19 firms. (See charts above and below.) Congress and the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 7, 2022 On Thursday evening, September 1, President Joe Biden addressed the nation from Philadelphia, the second location of the U.S. Capitol in its early years. During his remarks, Biden spoke these words: “Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic. “Now, I want to be very clear — very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans. “But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.” The two most important words in this excerpt from Biden’s remarks are the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 6, 2022 On August 11, the Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice, Merrick Garland, told the American people at a press conference that: “Faithful adherence to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Department and of our democracy. Upholding the rule of law means applying the rule of law evenly, without fear or favor.” That was certainly not true of Eric Holder’s Justice Department under President Obama, nor was it true of William Barr’s Justice Department under President Trump. In fact, just the opposite was true. Under Holder, the Justice Department functioned as a coverup and white-washing mechanism for a crime syndicate of powerful players on Wall Street. (See here and here.) Under Barr, the Justice Department took a machete to the rule of law and sculpted an art form out of doling out favorable treatment to criminal … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 30, 2022 ~ According to YCharts (give the chart time to load) since January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2021 – a span of five years – JPMorgan Chase has spent a total of $84.312 billion buying back its own stock. In eight of those quarters, it spent more than $5 billion buying back its own shares. In the three quarters when JPMorgan Chase was on a secret feeding tube from the Fed via the Fed’s emergency repo loans and other emergency programs, the bank bought back the most stock in its history according to YCharts: $6.949 billion for the quarter ending September 30, 2019; $6.751 billion for the quarter ending December 31, 2019; and $6.517 billion for the quarter ending March 31, 2020. Now, the unthinkable has happened. The Fed has actually put JPMorgan Chase on a leash. As a result, the bank … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 29, 2022 ~ Tomorrow, Simon & Schuster will release a new book by Jamie Fiore Higgins, a woman who worked her entire Wall Street career at one firm. Over the span of just under 18 years, beginning on September 2, 1998 and ending officially on May 31, 2016 according to BrokerCheck, Fiore Higgins achieved a level of financial success rarely attained by a woman on Wall Street. She was fresh out of college, at age 22, when this journey began. She was a seven-figure Managing Director at the quintessential good ole boys club on Wall Street when it ended. Now, six years after she resigned her post (possibly heretofore restrained by the customary non-disparagement agreement one is asked to sign when leaving a Wall Street investment bank) Fiore Higgins is spilling the beans on what she saw and heard and experienced at Goldman Sachs. … Continue reading →