Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 4, 2024 ~ The largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase, has a rap sheet that rivals that of a crime family — and those crimes show no signs of slowing down. The financial institution is, in effect, a criminal enterprise in drag as a federally-insured banking powerhouse. The facts backing the above assertions are so strong that two trial attorneys, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer, wrote a book in which they compared the bank to the Gambino crime family and suggested JPMorgan Chase should be charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The authors wrote at the time on their website that “The pattern is clear. JPMorgan Chase has a culture — like the mob — where anything goes so long as it is profitable. This is precisely the kind of pattern of criminal activity that RICO was intended to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 31, 2024 ~ The New York Fed, long the quintessential keeper of secrets for the Wall Street megabanks that it has been bailing out since the financial crisis of 2008, has suddenly decided to come clean on a big threat to capital at these and other banks. The New York Fed has created gasps in the corridors of power in the banking world by releasing a paper that documents how banks have ginned up their capital by “extending and pretending” on their underwater commercial real estate (CRE) loans. The new paper was written by Matteo Crosignani, Financial Research Advisor at the New York Fed, and Saketh Prazad, a former Research Analyst at the New York Fed who is now a Doctoral Student in the Business Economics program at the Harvard Business School. The authors get right to the crux of the matter on page two of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 22, 2024 ~ Four researchers at the University of Westminster School of Finance and Accounting in London have taken a hard look at the much-touted Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in the U.S. that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010. The voluminous 848-page bill followed the greatest financial crash in the U.S. since the Great Depression. Unfortunately, it was big on word count and short on iron-clad reforms, leaving the implementation of final rules to be negotiated by revolving-door regulators and an army of Wall Street lobbyists and lawyers. (For how that has played out over the ensuing 14 years, see here, here, here and here.) The authors of the study are Dr. Julie Ayton; Professor Abdelhafid Benamraoui; Dr. Huyen (Trang) Ngo; and Dr. Stefan van Dellen. They define the purpose of the study as follows: “The research paper tests two critical … Continue reading →

Commentary Next to Arrows Has Been Added by Wall Street On Parade. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 21, 2024 ~ According to its own FRED data, the last time the central bank of the United States – the Federal Reserve – operated in the green was September 14, 2022, more than two years ago. Since then, it has been consistently losing over $1 billion a week with its cumulative operating losses now topping $204 billion as of the last reporting by the Fed on October 16, 2024. Operating losses of this magnitude are unprecedented at the of Fed, which was created in 1913. If a publicly-traded company had been bleeding operating losses of more than $1 billion a week for more than two years, there would very likely be a change of leadership at the top. But Fed Chair Jerome Powell is no ordinary mortal. He survived the worst trading … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 17, 2024 ~ The risk of Big Tech firms like Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft getting an entrée into the federally-insured banking system by being allowed to buy or create a federally-insured industrial bank has raised alarm bells among three nonprofit watchdogs and the law professor who, literally, wrote the book on the mushrooming systemic risks in the U.S. banking system. Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr., Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University Law School, joined with the Consumer Federation of America, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, and the Center for Responsible Lending, to file an 18-page letter last Friday with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). (For background on Wilmarth’s seminal book, see our report: Everything this Book Predicted on Wall Street Megabanks Ruling their Regulators Is Now Unfolding.) Friday’s letter was in response to the FDIC’s proposal to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 7, 2024 ~ On September 24, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released its Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities for the second quarter of this year. The OCC is the federal regulator of banks that operate across state lines, which are known as “national banks.” The shorthand for this report should be the “Casino Report.” Increasingly, the report showcases how much dangerous trading activity the brokerage firms on Wall Street have been able to muscle into their federally-insured banking units where the deposits of millions of average Americans reside. Since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 under the Bill Clinton administration, Wall Street trading firms have been allowed to combine with federally-insured banks – creating an endless series of crises and bailouts. No bank has been able to blur the lines between a trading casino and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 23, 2024 ~ Taxpayer-backstopped federal deposit insurance at commercial banks in the U.S. was never meant to be a get-rich scheme for the wild and voracious appetites of traders on Wall Street. But a quarterly report produced by the federal regulator of national banks – those operating across state lines – shows that vast amounts of trading on Wall Street is now taking place inside the federally-insured commercial banks that are owned by the trading powerhouses on Wall Street: JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America. (Wall Street trading houses have been allowed to own federally-insured banks since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 under the Wall Street friendly Bill Clinton administration.) For decades, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has published its “Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities.” The reports have shown that the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 19, 2024 ~ The Federal Reserve yesterday cut its benchmark interest rate, the Fed Funds rate, for the first time in four years. The cut was by half a point rather than the customary quarter point increments typical of Fed rate moves. Only one member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), Michelle Bowman, voted against the action. Bowman wanted a quarter point cut according to the FOMC announcement. A Fed rate cut of a quarter point to a half point was widely anticipated by the market, so the stock market’s wild swings were puzzling to veteran Wall Street watchers. The FOMC released its written announcement at 2 p.m. As the chart above indicates, the written announcement produced a surge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average to an intraday high of 41,981.97, which was also an all-time high on an intraday basis. But within … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 16, 2024 ~ It is rare for a book to be so comprehensive and insightful that it provides a roadmap for the future – especially when its cast of characters are the lawyered-up megabanks on Wall Street and their legions of lobbyists and public relations flacks. We’re referring to Taming the Megabanks: Why We Need a New Glass-Steagall Act by Arthur E. Wilmarth, Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University. Last Tuesday, the Federal Reserve completely capitulated to the demands of the Wall Street megabanks on its plan to dramatically raise capital levels at the megabanks — the so-called Basel III Endgame. The Fed, via its Vice Chair for Supervision, Michael Barr, announced it was cutting the required capital it had formally proposed in July of 2023 by more than half and will continue to allow the megabanks to use their own dodgy … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 12, 2024 ~ When the next megabank blows up from its derivative exposure, you can add the names Jamie Dimon and Patick McHenry to former Republican Congressmen Randy Hultgren and Kevin Yoder as four of the men who greased the skids for another derivatives banking crisis. (For our report on the role played by Hultgren and Yoder, see our 2021 report here.) Dimon and McHenry are the latest lead players in the disastrous history of derivative regulation in the U.S. Dimon is the Chair and CEO of the riskiest and largest bank in the United States, JPMorgan Chase. After his bank lost $6.2 billion gambling in derivatives in London in 2012 – using deposits from his federally-insured bank – Dimon would, to rational minds, seem like the least qualified candidate to be giving advice to his banking regulators on how much capital megabanks need … Continue reading →