Search Results for: rap sheet

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 16, 2016 The Citigroup Private Bank at 201 South Biscayne Blvd. in Miami is located in a 34-story building in downtown Miami with breathtaking views of Biscayne Bay. It’s also the address for dozens of offshore companies whose agent is Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal. The graph below shows just some of those companies, a number of which were incorporated as recently as 2013 through 2015. (Some companies indicate they are no longer active.) This new information comes from a search of the public database made available by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which received more than 11.5 million leaked files from the Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, which ICIJ calls “one of the world’s top creators of hard-to-trace companies, trusts and foundations.” The full cache of records has yet to be made public … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 16, 2016  Since Wall Street’s felony counts last May (see “Related Articles” below) and the unleashing of ever more creative ways to fleece the populace, it’s getting tougher and tougher to find people willing to shill for the Wall Street claptrap that it’s been punished enough and it’s time to put the bashing to rest. It’s getting tougher — but not impossible. Matt Winkler, the Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, wrote an opinion piece and appeared on Bloomberg TV last week to regurgitate the threadbare “Stop Bashing Wall Street. Times Have Changed” refrain. Winkler starts off with this premise: “One of the reasons the American economy is performing better than any of the largest in Asia and Europe is that its regulators have repaired the damage of the financial crisis and the worst recession since the Great Depression. Led by the Federal Reserve, they … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 30, 2015  Yesterday Larry Summers penned an opinion piece for the Washington Post, lecturing Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a Presidential candidate, on what Sanders should actually be saying in his own op-eds about reforming the Federal Reserve.  No one will ever accuse Larry Summers of being short on arrogance. After promising the American people in 1999, as Treasury Secretary in the Bill Clinton administration, that pushing through the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act would be “the right framework for America’s future financial system,” then watching that system collapse as a result of that repeal just nine years later in the worst economic upheaval since the Great Depression, one would think Summers would find some obscure hole in academia and crawl into it. Instead, Summers went on to become President of Harvard where, in 2005, he suggested at an economics conference that women … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 16, 2015 If the U.S. government issued a warning yesterday that there was a credible threat of a new terrorist attack from a foreign terrorist, we can guarantee you that it would have made front page headlines. What the U.S. government did instead yesterday was to issue a formal warning that the prospects for a new financial crisis have grown, and, in one area, are at an “historically elevated level.” Since the financial crisis of 2007-2009 did more economic damage to the U.S. than all terrorist attacks combined and will have a devastating impact on the standard of living of the next generation, one would think this new financial warning would have been worthy of a mention on the front pages of mainstream newspapers. And yet, we could find no mention in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 25, 2015 America’s new gilded age has been lined with Golden Parachutes with pathological underpinnings. On September 11, 2002, the Securities and Exchange Commission brought charges against the three top executives of Tyco International. The complaint began with this: “This is a looting case.” The SEC charged that Tyco’s CEO, Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Schwartz, its CFO, “took hundreds of millions of dollars in secret, unauthorized and improper low interest or interest-free loans and compensation from Tyco.” The transactions were concealed from shareholders and, according to the SEC, “Kozlowski and Swartz later pocketed tens of millions of dollars by causing Tyco to forgive repayment of many of their improper loans” and “engaged in numerous highly profitable related party transactions with Tyco and awarded themselves lavish perquisites — without disclosing either the transactions or perquisites to Tyco shareholders.” USA Today reported that the Manhattan … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 23, 2015 April 18, 2000 was the day John Reed retired from Citigroup, pushed out in a board room coup, leaving Sandy Weill the sole Chairman and CEO. In 1998, the two had, with great fanfare, merged the FDIC-insured Citibank with Salomon Smith Barney, an investment bank and brokerage firm, and insurance companies controlled by Travelers Group to create the global behemoth known as Citigroup. The pair had initially served as Co-Chairmen and Co-CEOs. At the time, the deal violated the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression era law which barred firms primarily engaged with underwriting securities to affiliate with insured banks. The Bill Clinton administration would obligingly repeal the Glass-Steagall Act the year after the Citigroup merger. At the close of trading on April 18, 2000, the day Reed stepped down, 100 shares of Citigroup were worth $6,212. Today, a decade and a half … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 11, 2015  Following the Republican Presidential debate in Milwaukee last evening, Senator Elizabeth Warren issued a blistering statement to supporters. It said, in part: “Did you see the attack ad about me during the GOP debate tonight? A right-wing group launched a full-scale assault on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – the watchdog we set up after the 2008 financial crisis to fight back when big banks try to cheat people on credit cards, mortgages, and other financial products…If the Republicans want a fight over the CFPB, I say, ‘Bring it on.’” The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is one of the few positive outgrowths of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation passed by Congress in 2010 after the epic financial crash in 2008. It’s a legitimate and real champion of the little guy.  But because the agency has been exposing student loan frauds … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 22, 2015  Last Friday, one day after the Fed’s announcement that it would hold rates steady at the zero bound range, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 290 points. It calmed itself a little yesterday but was off more than 200 points in the first five minutes of trading this morning. One catalyst for the market gyrations is that Ann Saphir, a reporter for Reuters, boldly asked Fed Chair Janet Yellen at Thursday’s press conference what has been on many minds for more than a year: is the Fed ever going to raise interest rates or are zero rates here for the rest of our lifetimes. This was the exact exchange: Ann Saphir: “Ann Saphir with Reuters. Just to piggyback on the global considerations, as you say, the U.S. economy has been growing, are you worried that given the global interconnecting this, the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 26, 2015  Wall Street has tried to keep all eyes focused on the ongoing rout in China’s stock markets and away from the slowdown in both earnings and revenues in the Standard and Poor’s 500 index of the largest U.S. corporations. In remarks yesterday, Sam Stovall, Managing Director of U.S. Equity Strategy for S&P Capital IQ said that among the growing concerns are “a possible U.S. profit recession.” Last evening, Bloomberg Business reported that “Profits reported by S&P 500 companies in the second quarter fell 2 percent from a year ago and are projected to slip 5.5 percent in the current period.” As earnings and revenues slide, the corporate balance sheets bloated with debt taken on to buy back the company’s own shares will provide an unwelcome headwind to grow earnings. Since 2009, S&P 500 corporations have spent over $2 trillion buying back … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 25, 2015  America’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, has lost 10.87 percent of its market capitalization in the past three trading sessions. That’s $27.18 billion in three days, raising serious questions about the Federal Reserve’s theory that beefed up equity capital would buffer the mega banks in a market downturn. While the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 3.57 percent yesterday, JPMorgan lost 5.27 percent, despite its rich dividend yield of 2.92 percent.  The indefatigable Eric Hunsader, owner of the market data firm Nanex, was Tweeting the abominations occurring in the stock market yesterday as the opening bell set off a bungee dive to a loss of 1,089 points in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA). The Dow ended the day down 588 points to close at 15,871.35, a three day loss of 1,477 points. One of Hunsader’s Tweets remarked on the bizarre price action … Continue reading →