Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 7, 2025 ~ Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is more alert to the threat of fascism than most Americans. His father fled Nazi Germany at age 18. Blumenthal also knows exponentially more than the average American about the threat of criminal conspiracies to national security: He’s a Yale Law grad and previously worked as the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut as its U.S. Attorney in the Department of Justice. Unfortunately for Elon Musk, one of the most conflicted and inappropriate corporate CEOs on the planet to be given access by Donald Trump to the U.S. Treasury’s $6 trillion payment system (along with his equally conflicted team of 19-25 year old lackeys), Blumenthal is also the Ranking Member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI). For those unfamiliar with just how deeply PSI has the ability to dig, consider the 300-page report that PSI delivered on … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 29, 2025 ~ We’ll get to Google’s AI Search model shortly, but first some necessary background. Like many of you, we spent a good part of our day yesterday reading up on DeepSeek, a Chinese startup that purports to have built an AI model that rivals U.S. industry leaders like OpenAI and Google – for a mere fraction of the cost. On Monday, the news that DeepSeek’s AI model might have rendered most of those sophisticated and expensive chips from Nvidia obsolete shaved $600 billion off the market value of Nvidia – the largest one-day dollar loss in a stock in U.S. market history. Adding to the nervousness, DeepSeek has made its AI model open-source, meaning its base code is publicly available for tech geeks in the U.S. and around the world to examine and build on. Also bringing out the worry beads in Silicon … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 7, 2025 ~ On July 31, 2023 the World Health Organization released a report on cigarette smoking. It noted the following: “The tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced, killing over 8 million people a year around the world. More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.3 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke. “All forms of tobacco use are harmful, and there is no safe level of exposure to tobacco…. “Around 80% of the 1.3 billion tobacco users worldwide live in low- and middle-income countries, where the burden of tobacco-related illness and death is heaviest. Tobacco use contributes to poverty by diverting household spending from basic needs such as food and shelter to tobacco. This spending behaviour is difficult to curb because tobacco is so addictive.” Despite awareness for … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 6, 2025 ~ There is a precise date as to when the American public became overtly aware that the stock market structure had become outrageously rigged. That date is March 30, 2014 when famed author and former Wall Street veteran, Michael Lewis, went on 60 Minutes to proclaim: “The United States stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism, is rigged.” When asked to explain just who it is that’s rigging the stock market, Lewis explained that it’s a “combination of these stock exchanges, the big Wall Street banks and high-frequency traders.” That 60 Minutes program occurred during President Obama’s administration. Not only was nothing materially done to stop the rigging during Obama’s eight years in office, but the rigging has grown in both size and complexity since then as hedge funds and Dark Pools take over large segments of stock market structure. Dark Pools are … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 31, 2024 ~ The Bank Policy Institute calls itself “a nonpartisan public policy, research and advocacy group…” In fact, it’s a registered lobbyist for the megabanks on Wall Street. The Chairman of its Board of Directors is Jamie Dimon, the Chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States. The rest of its Board consists exclusively of the top executives of large banks, including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. So when the Bank Policy Institute decides to sue the Fed, one of the key regulators of the Wall Street megabanks, you can be certain that Jamie Dimon has a dog in this fight. (Plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the Fed, which was filed on Christmas Eve, include other bank-funded groups as well.) Dimon sits atop not just the largest bank in the U.S. but also the bank … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 19, 2024 ~ If President-elect Donald Trump thought Fed Chair Jay Powell was going to be taking a loyalty oath to him, Trump got a rude awakening yesterday. The Fed cut interest rates by a quarter point yesterday but issued a statement suggesting that rate-cutting would be far more subdued next year than the market had expected. In response, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1123 points, closing near its lows of the day and marking its 10th consecutive day of losses. The Dow gave up 2.58 percent of its value while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 3.56 percent. The megabanks on Wall Street were among the big losers of the day. Morgan Stanley dropped 5.25 percent; Goldman Sachs was down by 4.25 percent; Citigroup gave up 4.22 percent; Bank of America lost 3.44 percent while JPMorgan Chase shed 3.35 percent by the closing bell. These … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 12, 2024 ~ The Associated Press is reporting that Donald Trump will ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange at 9:30 a.m. this morning as Time Magazine is expected to name him its “Person of the Year,” also today. This appears to be the latest in growing efforts by Trump’s marketing machine to define deviancy down while attempting to normalize Trump’s unprecedented monetizing of the Presidency as nothing more than good ole capitalism. (The Trump Organization now has its own “official retail website,” TrumpStore.com, hawking everything from sweaters and gift wrap to a line of home goods, all emblazoned with the “Trump” name.) If Trump does show up this morning to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, it will be his first time doing so. It will also be the first time that a 34-count convicted felon has … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 9, 2024 ~ On Friday, this headline appeared in The Guardian newspaper: “Trump Assembling US Cabinet of Billionaires Worth Combined $340 Billion.” Receiving much less attention is the fact that the indicted Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, named a billionaire heiress, Jessica Tisch, as the new Commissioner of the New York City Police Department on November 20. Tisch has never been a police officer – of any rank. Nonetheless, she will now oversee 36,000 police officers and 19,000 civilian employees at the NYPD. Tisch took her office on November 25. Nine days later, an unprecedented assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, took place on a Manhattan sidewalk outside of the New York Hilton Midtown hotel on December 4. The UnitedHealth Group, Inc., the parent of Thompson’s employer, is a stock component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average with a half-trillion-dollar market … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 21, 2024 ~ Today’s New York Times carries a diagram prepared by the U.S. Department of Justice during its multi-year investigation into then Congressman Matt Gaetz. (We have printed the left-hand section of the diagram above.) The diagram illustrates the following about the DOJ’s investigation into the man that President-elect Donald Trump wants to install as the U.S. Attorney General – the top law enforcement officer at the U.S. Department of Justice: The DOJ had receipts for the money flows between Matt Gaetz and the women he was paying for sex and the other individuals involved in the related sex and drug parties from 2017 to 2020. The public also learned this past week from the attorney, Joel Leppard, who represented two of the young women who were paid for sex with Gaetz – that the DOJ had interviewed at least a dozen of the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 18, 2024 ~ Last week President-elect Donald Trump announced the nomination of Jay Clayton to become U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York – the regional office of the U.S. Department of Justice that brings (or passes on bringing) criminal prosecutions against the Wall Street megabanks for their serial looting of the American people. In Trump’s first term as President, Clayton was tapped by Trump to serve as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission – notwithstanding that Clayton had represented 8 of the 10 largest Wall Street banks in the prior three years as a law partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the oldest Wall Street go-to law firms. Clayton returned to Sullivan & Cromwell after his stint at the SEC and currently serves there as Senior Policy Advisor and Of Counsel. When Clayton’s name was first announced by Trump to … Continue reading →