By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 9, 2019 ~ On October 3, 2018 the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 26,828. Yesterday, the same stock market index that is watched around the world closed at 26,806 – a loss of 22 points from where it stood nine months ago. If you’ve been invested all this time you’ve essentially gone nowhere plus you’ve had the not so rollicking fun of that brutal 4,000-point plunge from December 3 to Christmas eve 2018, which took the Dow from a close of 25,826 on December 3 to a Christmas eve close of 21,792. So the next time you read that the Dow is setting new highs, do the math and see just how many points you’ve actually gained since October 3, 2018.

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 8, 2019 ~ Yesterday, Deutsche Bank announced it would be cutting its payroll by approximately 18,000 jobs over the next three years and exiting its stock trading business, along with other restructuring moves like creating a “bad bank” to hold toxic assets. What could possibly force a global bank to shed stock trading? According to the most recent report from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator of national banks in the United States, four U.S. commercial banks made $8.79 billion in trading revenues in the first quarter of this year. Of that amount, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA represented 60 percent or $5.29 billion. (The other three banks were Citibank, Goldman Sachs Bank USA and Bank of America.) Just to be clear, this is not how much each bank made from trading in all their divisions, this is just … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 5, 2019 ~   According to press reports around the globe, there’s going to be a hot confab this Sunday by the Board of Deutsche Bank that will focus on the potential to create a so-called “bad bank” to hold some of Deutsche’s toxic assets along with discussions of cutting 15,000 to 20,000 employees from the payroll – meaning as many as one out of every five employees could get the axe. A big part of the job losses will hit Manhattan where Deutsche Bank has a heavy presence on Wall Street — which it plans to severely pare back. Here’s the short version on why the bank is contemplating these radical moves: Deutsche Bank has reported losses in three of the last four years; its share price has lost 90 percent of its value since February of 2007; as of the close … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 3, 2019 ~ According to the Center for Responsive Politics, which keeps meticulous tabs on political campaign flows, as of this morning, the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison – which has represented Citigroup through more than two decades of serial fraud charges – is the number one campaign donor to the Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator Kamala Harris. As the Center notes, the money isn’t coming from the law firm itself, but from its “PACs; their individual members, employees or owners; and those individuals’ immediate families.” The campaign ad for Harris reads like this: “Kamala Harris has spent her entire life defending our American values. From fighting to fix our broken criminal justice system to taking on the Wall Street banks for middle class homeowners, Kamala has always worked For The People.” But here we are in the early days of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 2, 2019 ~ While the Securities and Exchange Commission and Congress finesse a delicate dance around the potential criminality of Bitcoin trading and other cryptocurrencies, NYU Professor and economist Nouriel Roubini has launched a savage attack on the “currencies,” calling them “a joke,” a “scam,” a “sh*tcoin,” and no better than “cocaine drug pushers.” Not to put too fine a point on it, but Roubini is also the man who correctly called the impending financial crisis that landed in 2008 while Federal regulators wore their blinders about the corruption and leverage building inside the largest banks on Wall Street. Roubini, a long-time critic of Bitcoin, has launched his fiercest comments on cryptocurrencies in the past 24 hours on his Twitter page and in an interview on Bloomberg TV. In the Bloomberg interview, Roubini had this to say: “Crypto currencies are not even currencies. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 1, 2019 ~ The current fragmented, opaque, and deeply conflicted structure of the U.S. stock market as well as the structure of the giant Wall Street banks that interact in every imaginable way with capital formation in America, is not in the public interest, the national interest or in the interest of capitalism itself. Let’s start with the structure of the stock market. Those quaint video clips that you see on television of traders mulling about on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at 11 Wall Street in Manhattan, as executives from some new company that just listed its shares ring the bell to begin stock trading, is meant to lull the public into a sense of confidence that humans are still in charge and looking out for your retirement investments in your 401(k) or public pension plan. But 11 Wall … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 28, 2019 ~ How many second chances should a criminal recidivist get? JPMorgan Chase has logged in guilty pleas to three criminal felony counts in the past five years; it has a criminally-charged precious metals trader singing to the Feds currently as JPMorgan admits in regulatory filings that it’s under a new criminal investigation in that matter; the bank has paid $36 billion in fines for wrongdoing since the financial crash, including $1 billion for trading exotic derivatives in London with bank depositors’ money and losing at least $6.2 billion of those depositor funds (the London Whale scandal). And in just the past year it has proven that it’s “game on” for more regulatory fines and illicit profits. (See Could JPMorgan Chase Be Hit with a Fourth Felony Count for Rigging Precious Metals Markets?) Despite all of this, yesterday the Federal Reserve announced … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 27, 2019 ~ On July 18 of last year, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted two Merrill Lynch precious metals traders, Edward Bases and John Pacilio, charging them each with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution and one count of commodities fraud each.  Pacilio was further charged with five counts of spoofing. (Spoofing is where a trader uses a high-speed computer to issue a rapid barrage of buy or sell orders, with no intention of executing the trades, in order to mislead the market and gain an advantage for his own position in the market.) On Tuesday of this week, a unit of Merrill Lynch was given a deferred prosecution agreement in the same matter by the Justice Department in exchange for an agreement to cooperate. Merrill also agreed to pay a measly $25 million in fines … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 26, 2019 ~ Some decades back, the late MIT economist Lester Thurow wrote this: “Essentially, the economic problem is like that of the wolf and the caribou. If the wolves eat all the caribou, the wolves also vanish.” What Thurow did not take into consideration is that if the wolf pack is large enough, it can survive for quite a while by turning on other wolf packs. That’s what is happening right now on Wall Street. The wolves are at war with each other. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have filed a lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission and are slinging mud in court at a former, long-tenured JPMorgan Chase executive, Brett Redfearn, who now polices them at the SEC. We’ll get to all that in a moment, but first some background. It all started when the stock exchanges decided … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 25, 2019 ~ In her 2007 book, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, Anne Goldgar writes that “the f1000 one might pay in January 1637 for one hypothetical Admirael van der Eyck bulb,” could have bought “a modest house in Haarlem,” or “nearly three years’ wages” of a master carpenter. Comparing that to U.S. dollars in 2007, the year her book was released, Goldgar says it would be like one tulip bulb selling for $12,000. Goldgar notes that as historians have looked back, the tulip mania of the 1630s in Holland has become a “byword for idiocy.”  She quotes from a passage written in 1648 by the historian Theodorus Schrevelius: “I don’t know what kind of angry spirit was called up from Hell…Our Descendants doubtless will laugh at the human insanity of our Age, that in our times the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 24, 2019 ~ As of March 31 of this year, there were 5,362 Federally-insured commercial banks and savings associations in the United States. Just two of these banks, JPMorgan Chase NA and Citibank NA control 75.7 percent of all precious metals derivatives contracts held by all of the 5,362 Federally-insured banks and savings associations. This finding comes from a report released last week by the regulator of national banks, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). (See Table 9 in the Appendix of the OCC report.) Commercial banks are supposed to be making safe and sound business loans to keep the U.S. economy humming, creating good-paying jobs and making America competitive around the world. But according to the latest OCC report, of the $38.57 billion held in precious metals derivative contracts by all Federally-insured banks and savings associations in the U.S., … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 21, 2019 ~ On Wednesday, June 19, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets held a hearing on “Putting Investors First: Examining Proposals to Strengthen Enforcement Against Securities Law Violators.” Eight pieces of draft legislation were being vetted to address critical gaps in protecting U.S. investors from financial fraud and make sure wrongdoers paid for their crimes. Despite the critical nature of the legislation to be discussed at this hearing, it received a news blackout from corporate business media, with the exception of a report that appeared in advance of the hearing by Francine McKenna of the Dow Jones news outlet, MarketWatch. We knew early on that there was going to be a big push back from Wall Street on this proposed legislation when we saw the name of one of the four witnesses scheduled to testify: Andrew … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 20, 2019 ~ Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average are up early this morning by more than 200 points. But the 10-year U.S. Treasury has also had a big rally, which dropped its yield overnight to just below 2 percent. The 10-year Note yield below 2 percent suggests a serious slowdown in the U.S. economy. That’s not something corporate stocks should be cheering about. The continuing aberrations in the U.S. stock market suggest a malfunctioning stock market structure and the first place to look is Dark Pools, which are unregulated stock exchanges run by the same mega Wall Street banks that blew up the U.S. financial system in 2008 and received the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history. Apparently unbeknown to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), when Goldman Sachs changed the name of its big Dark Pool that trades here in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 19, 2019 ~ What good is being the President of the most powerful nation on earth if you can’t humiliate people on Twitter and fire them if they refuse to do your bidding (even if the law mandates their independence from politics.) This appears to be the thinking of Donald Trump, the sitting President of the United States. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, is the latest person to come into the President’s cross-hairs. Yesterday, Bloomberg News broke the story that “In February, the White House counsel’s office examined the legality of stripping Powell of his chairmanship and leaving him as a Fed governor.” The review of Trump’s legal options occurred “as the president repeatedly expressed public frustration with the Fed’s interest-rate increases,” according to the article. In an interview with the Washington Post last November, Trump said he was “not … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 19, 2019 ~  In response to the stunning announcement from Facebook that it is planning to launch a cryptocurrency, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, issued the following statement yesterday: “Facebook has data on billions of people and has repeatedly shown a disregard for the protection and careful use of this data. It has also exposed Americans to malicious and fake accounts from bad actors, including Russian intelligence and transnational traffickers. Facebook has also been fined large sums and remains under a Federal Trade Commission consent order for deceiving consumers and failing to keep consumer data private, and has also been sued by the government for violating fair housing laws on its advertising platform. “With the announcement that it plans to create a cryptocurrency, Facebook is continuing its unchecked expansion and extending its reach into the lives of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 18, 2019 ~ President Donald Trump has now tied his campaign, and himself, up in ticker tape. On June 15 the sitting President of the United States Tweeted the following message: “The Trump Economy is setting records, and has a long way up to go….However, if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I know the competition very well), there will be a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before! KEEP AMERICA GREAT” First, since the stock market lost 90 percent of its value from 1929 to 1932 and the President is calling for “a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before,” he is effectively predicting that the stock market will lose 91 percent or more of its value. (Even for raging bears, that’s quite a stretch.) But since it’s the billionaires and multi-millionaires who … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 17, 2019 ~ U.S. stock markets have historically been challenged by corrupt actors. But there have been two extreme periods of corruption in the history of U.S. stock markets. One period occurred in the lead up to the 1929 stock market crash when Wall Street cartels were forming pools to wildly manipulate stock prices. That period led to an economic calamity known as the Great Depression. It also led to two years of intense hearings in the U.S. Senate to investigate the structure of the stock market, followed by intense legislative reforms including the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The second period was the lead up to the 2008 stock market crash which led to the economic collapse known as the Great Recession. In that period, like 1929, Wall Street banks were allowed to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 14, 2019 ~ According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), as of September 30, 2018 there was a total of $13.6 trillion in deposits at all 5,397 Federally insured banking and savings institutions in the U.S. but just nine mega banks represented 40 percent of all domestic deposits. Those nine are the insured banking units of the holding company for JPMorgan Chase with $1.3 trillion in domestic deposits; Bank of America at $1.36 trillion; Wells Fargo with $1.27 trillion; Citigroup at $504 billion; U.S. Bancorp $314 billion; Morgan Stanley $181 billion; BB&T $161 billion; Goldman Sachs $130 billion; and State Street $108 billion. Unfortunately, the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund had only $100.2 billion as of September 30, 2018 to cover losses should any of those trillion-dollar-banks fail – which means they can’t fail and have thus become known as too-big-to-fail, even as they continue to take … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 13, 2019 ~ Dark Pools are opaque stock trading platforms operated by the largest Wall Street banks and other firms. They are, effectively, stock exchanges but have been given exemptions by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from having to register as a stock exchange or to submit to more rigorous oversight by the SEC. The rationale for the existence of Dark Pools owned by the mega banks has escaped the public since these are the same banks that are serially fined for abusing the public’s trust and rigging other markets like foreign exchange, Libor, and the Nasdaq stock market in the 1990s. Their conduct was so bad in the Nasdaq matter that they were forced to submit to having their trading phone calls taped and reviewed by regulators. Wall Street On Parade has written extensively about the highly suspect transactions that are … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 12, 2019 ~  The two greatest stock market crashes that triggered deep economic upheaval in the U.S. occurred from 1929 to 1932 and from 2008 to 2009. There has long been a debate as to why the 1929 crash was followed by a Great Depression while the 2008 epic crash, which took down century-old iconic names on Wall Street along with the U.S. housing market and labor market, was followed by a less severe Great Recession. Another debate about those two periods is why the stock market, as measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, took a quarter-century to regain the peak it had set in 1929 while the stock market returned to the peak it had set in 2007 just six years later. (See charts below.) We believe the answer is found in one word – debt. On January 1, 1939, after … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 11, 2019 ~ On September 25, 2013, after spending five years and 7,000 hours using taxpayers’ money investigating the potential rigging of the silver market, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) concluded that “there is not a viable basis to bring an enforcement action with respect to any firm or its employees related to our investigation of silver markets.” The investigation was provoked by multiple complaints asserting the market was rigged. The CFTC is a Federal regulator that oversees the U.S. commodities markets. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is also a Federal agency and the only one that can bring a criminal case against firms and individuals who commit conspiracy and fraud in commodity and securities markets. (The Securities and Exchange Commission can bring only civil, not criminal, cases.) On October 9 of last year, the DOJ used its criminal powers and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 10, 2019 ~ On Friday markets digested the nonfarm payrolls report from the U.S. Labor Department showing a weak job growth in May of just 75,000. That news adds to a myriad of other economic data, including a slowdown in durable goods orders, that suggest a deceleration of the U.S. economy. The Atlanta Fed’s closely watched GDPNow indicator is showing a very weak 1.4 percent forecast for the second quarter of this year. The 10-year U.S. Treasury note has duly noted the deceleration in the economy and has fallen from a yield of 2.9 percent since the middle of December to 2.08 percent at Friday’s close. The yield of the U.S. Treasury has an inverse relationship to its price. That is, as the market value of the Treasury note rises, the yield declines. Thus, as the perception grows that the U.S. economy is … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 7, 2019 ~  Federal Reserve inspectors appear to be on some kind of mind-altering drug or their superiors are simply taking their marching orders from Wall Street cronies in the Trump Administration. Yesterday the Fed released a terse 104-word statement indicating that the largest and serially charged bank in the U.S., JPMorgan Chase, had shown “evidence of substantial improvements” in its “risk-management program and internal audit functions” and the Fed was therefore removing the dog collar it had put on the bank in January 2013. (JPMorgan Chase had been required to provide written progress reports to the New York Fed in 2013 until further notice – which became six years.) The Fed’s actions in 2013 stemmed from JPMorgan Chase secretly gambling with depositors’ money in exotic derivatives in London and losing at least $6.2 billion of those funds. The incident became infamously known … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 6, 2019 ~ The long-awaited final rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission called Regulation Best Interest, which grew out of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation and was intended to require that the nation’s stockbrokers put their clients’ interests ahead of their own, was voted on by the SEC yesterday. Three Republican Commissioners voted for it while the sole Democrat, Robert Jackson, voted against it and issued a detailed statement on why it sells out Main Street. SEC Chairman, Jay Clayton, was one of the three who voted in favor of passing the rule. Prior to joining the Trump administration as SEC Chair, Clayton was a law partner at one of Wall Street’s go-to law firms, Sullivan & Cromwell, where he had represented 8 of the 10 largest Wall Street banks within the prior three years. (See related articles below for how … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 5, 2019 ~ It felt like headline writers were out to engineer a stock market rally yesterday by scaring hedge funds that had shorted the market to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. When traders who are short the market act simultaneously on breaking news, (news that suggests the stock market is going to rally), by buying back stock to close out their short positions, that causes a big upward spike in the stock market. In Wall Street parlance, it’s called a short squeeze. It happens a lot in a secular bear market and is a head fake to investors desperately looking for a bullish trend. A number of major business publications put a bullish spin on what the Chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, actually said in his opening remarks yesterday morning at a conference sponsored by the Federal … Continue reading →