By Pam Martens: September 20, 2012 When we read the lawsuits involving Wall Street – firms colluding with each other, document shredding, lawyers’ hiding evidence, decades of deceiving the American people, strong arm tactics, deceptive trade associations – it all has a familiar ring.  It should. Wall Street is following in the footsteps of Big Tobacco.  And there’s one more common bond that should deeply trouble every American.   The law firm that fronted for Big Tobacco for four decades, Covington & Burling, has its former lawyers ensconced in three of the top slots at the U.S. Justice Department. Now Covington & Burling has become Wall Street’s go-to guys for legal counsel in a growing roster of alleged crimes.  The public, and Congress, have a pressing need to question how a law firm that was cited by a U.S. District Court, an Appellate Court and the U.S. Supreme Court as playing … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 19, 2012  The Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center on Broadway, built with more than $150 million of taxpayers’ dollars, is spy-central for keeping tabs on the Occupy Wall Street protesters.  Currently sitting around spy-central at taxpayer-funded computer workstations are representatives from the following Wall Street institutions: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.  (A Freedom of Information Law request filed by the author with the New York Police Department 11 months ago to obtain the full list of occupants has yet to be answered, despite New York law mandating a response in 5 to 20 business days.)  Sharing the space with the Wall Street crowd in spy-central are at least four formal police groups: the New York City Police Department, the Transit Police, the Port Authority Police, and the newly exposed, privately employed, Federal Reserve … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 18, 2012  There are now three nagging images of Mitt Romney that are seared in the public consciousness.  Many years ago, Romney drove 12 hours to begin a summer vacation with the family inside the car and their Irish setter, Seamus, caged in a dog carrier on top of the car.  Even after the dog became ill, Romney sprayed the dog off and put him back on top of the car.  It’s hard to escape both the inhumanity as well as lack of judgment.  Romney has confirmed the episode but said the dog liked riding on top of the car.  Then there was the episode in 1965 at the elite Cranbrook School.  Romney was a senior in high school – old enough to be responsible for his actions and thought processes.   According to the Washington Post, Romney was repulsed by the long, bleached blond hair of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 17, 2012 By mid morning today, as Occupy Wall Street protesters marched around the perimeter of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, all signs that an FRPD (Federal Reserve Police Department) existed had disappeared.  The FRPD patrol cars and law enforcement officers had been replaced by NYPD patrol cars and officers.   That decision may have been made to keep from drawing attention to a mushrooming new domestic police force that most Americans do not know exists. Quietly, without fanfare or Congressional hearings, the USA Patriot Act in 2001 bestowed on the 12 privately owned Federal Reserve Banks, domestic policing powers. Section 364 of the Act, “Uniform Protection Authority for Federal Reserve,” reads: “Law enforcement officers designated or authorized by the Board or a reserve bank under paragraph (1) or (2) are authorized while on duty to carry firearms and make arrests without warrants for any offense against the … Continue reading →

We are mindful that the preservation of liberty depends in part upon the maintenance of social order. But the First Amendment recognizes, wisely we think, that a certain amount of expressive disorder not only is inevitable in a society committed to individual freedom, but must itself be protected if that freedom would survive. — U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, Jr., City of Houston v. Hill (1987) By Pam Martens: September 17, 2012 With chants of “Police everywhere; justice nowhere,” protesters marching through the streets of lower Manhattan this past weekend to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, ably summed up the situation in New York City.  At times, as captured on video footage, law enforcement looked like the unruly mob, grabbing peaceful protesters and arresting people for no apparent reason. In 1987, in the City of Houston v. Hill, the Nation’s highest court made the law … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 14, 2012 The incendiary anti-Islam film, Innocence of Muslims, is being widely blamed for sparking anti-U.S. demonstrations in the Middle East, leading to the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in Libya.  This morning, according to NBC News, a Federal law enforcement official has confirmed that the shadowy Sam Bacile, the producer of the film, is really Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, an ex-con on probation for financial crimes.  Nakoula produced an amateurish documentary that was screened in one tiny theatre, with a trailer released on the internet.  That limited circulation stands in sharp contrast to another Islamophobic film that was broadly circulated in 2008 by mainstream newspapers with financial backing from a nonprofit group with ties to the Koch brothers. In the Fall of 2008, in the leadup to the Presidential election, approximately 100 newspapers and magazines in the U.S., including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 13, 2012 The U.S. Census Bureau reported yesterday that annual household income fell in 2011 for the fourth straight year to an inflation-adjusted $50,054.  That figure is 8 percent lower than in 2007 and 1.5 percent lower year over year.  The $50,054 figure represents the Nation as a whole.  The West and the Midwest showed even sharper declines year over year, losing 4.1 and 2.1 percent, respectively.  The U.S. poverty rate, which is defined as an annual income of $23,021 for a family of four, was 15.0 percent in 2011 versus 15.1 percent  in 2010.  That figure translates into 46.2 million of our fellow Americans living in poverty – a national disgrace by any interpretation.  On September 22, 2010,  Forbes magazine released its annual list of the 400 richest Americans.  Their combined net worth climbed 8% that year, to $1.37 trillion.  More recently, from 2010 to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 12, 2012 At first I thought someone had emailed me a piece from The Onion, the on-line satire magazine; Charles G. Koch lecturing Americans on business integrity and crony capitalism – what else could it be but satire?  So I went directly to the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal last Sunday evening and there it was – a piece by Charles G. Koch titled “Corporate Cronyism Harms America,” — the equivalent of  Mitt Romney lecturing Americans on  compassionate pet care.  Koch puts forth the premise that when businesses collude with government and receive corporate welfare, we all lose.  But along the way in this argument, he makes a number of highly hypocritical comments.  Koch tells us that the role of business is to “act lawfully and with integrity.”  Should someone with Koch’s baggage dare to make that assertion, and in a newspaper owned by … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 11, 2012 Will someone please wake up the Wall Street Scrooge crowd with the news that while they may still be munching on their Golden Osetra caviar and sipping Billinis, tens of thousands of fellow citizens of their city are experiencing the worst downturn since the Great Depression – and, for God’s sake, that includes innocent children who can’t be blamed by even the most Ayn Randian of cold hearts for their circumstances. According to New York City data and a report in the New York Daily News on Sunday, the number of homeless children sleeping in New York City shelters reached 19,000 last week.  That’s on a par with the data for the Great Depression. The numbers are rising dramatically year after year and yet Wall Street’s response last year to a core charity easing the suffering of homeless children in its own city  was … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: September 10, 2012  Last week the business media was buzzing about a newly ramped up investigation into the $5.8 billion in losses thus far reported by JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Office in what is now dubbed the London Whale trade.  The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Chaired by Carl Levin, is reportedly interviewing former personnel who worked in that division, based in London as well as New York.  Levin’s powerful subcommittee has jurisdiction to conduct investigations into a wide array of issues, including fraud and abuse, and corporate crime.  The real breaking news on this matter, however, occurred on May 13 of this year when Levin appeared on Meet the Press.  Host David Gregory asked Levin what should be the price for what occurred at JPMorgan.  Levin has this to say:  “In terms of past activities, that’s in the hands of people who are assessing whether there was any criminal … Continue reading →