By Pam Martens: February 22, 2013 You know the President’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, is in trouble when media from the left, right and center of the political spectrum are shredding the mild-mannered, bespectacled numbers cruncher. For good reason, I might add.  Lew will now have more embarrassing details to explain (or not, as has become his custom). We’ve dug out the details of his head-spinning mortgage deals with his two former employers,  New York University and Citigroup. This comes on the heels of the bombshell dropped by Senator Orrin Hatch in the confirmation hearing regarding Lew’s cozy employment agreement with Citigroup that paid him a bonus of $940,000 if he could somehow manage to secure a “full time high level position with the United States Government or a regulatory body.” The insolvent bank had just been bailed out by the taxpayer, making the $940,000 bonus accepted by Lew … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 21, 2013  President Obama covered so much ground in his February 12 State of the Union address that it’s easy to lose sight of the four words he failed to mention – even once: Wall Street and campaign finance. Nothing is going to materially change in America in terms of restoring fairness, opportunity, income equality and representative government until those two areas are radically reformed. Instead, the President offers platitudes and empty promises.  To confront the malignancy that is shriveling our democracy, Americans must begin to separate the symptoms from the disease. The diseases are Wall Street’s institutionalized wealth transfer system and the use of that unjustly created vast wealth by corporations and individuals to finance political campaigns.  The President can make endless promises about lifting up the middle class, eradicating poverty and leveling the playing field – but these are just the symptoms of the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 19, 2013  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a devastating appraisal of the financial toll the 2007 to 2009 Wall Street financial crisis has had on the U.S. economy and workers. According to the GAO, cumulative output losses could exceed $13 trillion with another $9 trillion in losses in household wealth through declines in home equity, bringing just those two areas of losses to potentially $22 trillion. The study notes that it can’t quantify losses in financial assets since the stock market has regained much of its lost ground but many people as well as portfolio managers of pensions and retirement assets locked in their losses by selling as the market dived.  The report indicates that the steep decline in home values during the financial crisis left homeowners collectively holding home mortgage debt in excess of the equity in their homes, marking a first since the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 18, 2013 The President of the United States, who told us this past Tuesday evening in his State of the Union address how concerned he is with the middle class, disappeared into a millionaire’s enclave for a three-day bachelor vacation with  pals. According to the White House, Tiger Woods was among those playing golf with the President. First Lady Michelle, and daughters, Malia and Sasha, are skiing out west. While the President is certainly entitled to rest and relaxation, what he is not entitled to during the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression is hypocrisy. Fresh from his State of the Union speech on Tuesday and a speaking tour focusing on how he plans to lift up the poor and middle class, the President flew on Friday evening to the Floridian Yacht & Golf Club in Palm City, Florida, a millionaire’s golfing enclave where cottages rent for … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 15, 2013 (This column, with updates, runs periodically at Wall Street on Parade. Please consider emailing it to friends and family members.)    A study conducted by Edward N. Wolff for the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College in March 2010 made the following findings:  The richest 1 percent received over one-third of the total gain in marketable wealth over the period from 1983 to 2007. The next 4 percent also received about a third of the total gain and the next 15 percent about a fifth, so that the top quintile collectively accounted for 89 percent of the total growth in wealth, while the bottom 80 percent accounted for 11 percent.  Debt was the most evenly distributed component of household wealth, with the bottom 90 percent of households responsible for 73 percent of total indebtedness.  Wealth concentration in too few hands while the general populace … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 14, 2013  At last we know how the grease is funneled to that revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. One only gets a $940,000 bonus from Wall Street’s Citigroup if you can land a “full time high level position with the United States Government or a regulatory body.” It can’t be just a part-time job, mind you; and you can’t be rank and file. Citigroup’s dangling carrot will only pay $940,000 if the company can add a “high level” government mover and shaker to their gold-plated Rolodex. This was the bombshell dropped by Senator Orrin Hatch yesterday in Jack Lew’s confirmation hearing for one of the highest offices in the land – Secretary of the U.S. Treasury who will also head the body that makes critical decisions impacting Citigroup – the Financial Stability Oversight Council. (Lew held an executive position with Citigroup at the time of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 13, 2013  President Obama delivered an uplifting State of the Union address to the Nation last evening, promising “to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class.” He said it was the country’s “unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country – the idea that if you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead.” He said it was his job “to make sure that this government works on behalf of the many, and not just the few.”  Unfortunately, the President’s speechwriter is not in charge of nominating candidates who could turn those lofty goals into realities. One must wonder exactly who is in charge of nominating candidates. When it comes to the most important posts that oversee Wall Street, the one industry in America that does more than any other to prevent hardworking Americans from getting ahead, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 12, 2013 Yesterday, the nonprofit group, Move to Amend, held a press conference with Congressman  Rick Nolan of Minnesota to announce the introduction of a Constitutional Amendment that would overturn the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Citizens United  v. Federal Election Commission, that put corporate campaign spending on an equal footing with other forms of free speech, effectively removing most limits on the amount of cash corporations can spend on elections. The proposed amendment will clarify that rights recognized under the Constitution belong to human beings only, and not to government-created artificial legal entities such as corporations and limited liability companies; and political campaign spending is not a form of speech protected under the First Amendment. Nolan said: “It’s time to take the shaping and molding of public policy out of corporate boardrooms, away from the corporate lobbyists, and put it back in city halls – back with county boards and state legislatures – and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 11, 2013  Senator Chuck Grassley set off a media uproar on Friday when he reported that President Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, had owned a Citigroup investment housed at a Cayman Islands building that President Obama has previously suggested was a tax scam due to almost 19,000 corporations being registered at that address. Lew had worked as a Deputy Secretary in the State Department for almost two years before he sold the investment in 2010 after returning to government service from Citigroup.  The response from the White House has been that Lew made this disclosure known to the Senate for his confirmation hearing in 2010 and the Senators didn’t raise any issues with it.  We first reported Lew’s investment in the Citigroup Venture Capital International (CVCI) private equity fund on January 14 of this year. In that report, we attached the financial disclosure report that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 8, 2013  President Obama might as well drape the White House with a giant banner declaring in bold red type: “Drop Dead 99 Percent.”  A pattern is emerging in the nominations coming out of the Oval Office. If you’ve played a role in collapsing a major bank, the President has a top slot for you. But only millionaires and billionaires need apply. Union busting scores extra points.  Jack Lew was paid millions as Chief Operating Officer for the very division of Citigroup that collapsed the bank in 2008 and Jack Lew is nominated by the President for U.S. Treasury Secretary. Before that, Lew played a key role in busting a grad students union at New York University.  Billionaire Penny Pritzker was involved in the collapse of the Superior Bank of Illinois, a Chicago savings and loan that went belly up in 2001 and now, according to … Continue reading →