Search Results for: Federal Reserve

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 10, 2021 ~ On May 26 business media reported that the U.S. Department of Justice had opened a probe into the March collapse of the Archegos family office hedge fund. Archegos is believed to have leveraged $20 billion of its own capital into more than $100 billion in stocks and derivative exposure through margin loans tricked up as derivatives by some of the largest banks on Wall Street. One of the laws that the banks may have fallen afoul of is the Fed’s Regulation T. Under Reg T, broker dealers on Wall Street could not have loaned Archegos more than 50 percent to make its stock purchases. To get around this, the banks did not open a margin account for Archegos. Instead, the banks structured derivative contracts where they loaned as much as 85 percent of the money to Archegos to make the trades … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 9, 2021 ~ On October 12, Wall Street On Parade filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors seeking the specific dates on which former Dallas Fed President, Robert Kaplan, had made purchases and sales in S&P 500 futures contracts in 2020. According to Kaplan’s financial disclosure forms, he had made “multiple” transactions of over $1 million in S&P 500 futures during 2020, the year that he sat as a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee and was privy to the Fed’s unprecedented interventions in the market during the economic upheaval from the pandemic. (See Kaplan’s financial disclosure forms from 2015 through 2020 here.) Kaplan was under very precise instructions on his annual financial disclosure form to provide the “month, day, year” of each of his purchases of securities and each of his sales. But … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 8, 2021 ~ Yesterday, Cornell Law Professor, Saule Omarova, withdrew from her nomination to become the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator of national banks. Emily Flitter, reporting for the New York Times, said it was because Omarova had been “painted as a communist.” In terms of the full story on why Omarova had to withdraw, that is like pointing to a single droplet of rain as the cause of a hurricane. In October, the Vanderbilt Law Review published a 69-page paper by Omarova in which she made the following bizarre recommendations to reform the U.S. banking system: (1) Move all commercial bank deposits from commercial banks to so-called FedAccounts at the Federal Reserve; (2) Allow the Fed, in “extreme and rare circumstances, when the Fed is unable to control inflation by raising interest rates,” to confiscate deposits … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 7, 2021 ~ Last Friday, December 3, 2021, the Nasdaq stock market recorded 12 stocks setting new 52-week highs in contrast to 585 stocks setting new 52-week lows. Let that sink in for a moment. There were 48.75 times more stocks setting new 52-week lows than were reaching new 52-week highs. That extremely negative reading of market breadth came on a day when the Nasdaq closed down just 1.9 percent. Imagine what the breadth would have looked like if the percentage decline on the overall market had been worse. Yesterday, Monday, December 6, with the Nasdaq closing up 139.6 points, the new 52-week lows still swamped highs, with 137 new lows and only 53 new highs. Unfortunately, Americans never see headlines in their newspapers about the deterioration in the stock market’s underpinnings. What they do see on a regular basis are headlines about the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 3, 2021 ~ Progressives are waiting with bated breath to see if President Joe Biden will show more moxie than former President Barack Obama when it comes to Wall Street regulation. So far, the record has been nothing short of bizarre. See here and here. When it came to Wall Street, Obama was all talk and no show. One gift to Wall Street that has been all but forgotten by progressives is that Obama was mandated under Section 1108 of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to appoint the very first Vice Chairman for Supervision of banks at the Federal Reserve. Instead, Obama served out his two terms as President without ever filling that mandated post. It was not until the Presidency of Donald Trump in 2017 – seven years after the passage of Dodd-Frank – that Randal Quarles was appointed the very … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 1, 2021 ~ Fed Chair Jerome Powell along with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen appeared before the Senate Banking Committee yesterday to deliver their semi-annual reports. Approximately 34 minutes into the hearing, in response to a question from Senator Pat Toomey, Republican from Pennsylvania, Powell announced that he was retiring the word “transitory” to describe the inflationary forces that have a grip on prices in the U.S. The stock market interpreted this to mean that Powell, who just eight days prior had become Democrat President Joe Biden’s nominee for another four years at the helm of the Fed, was now pivoting to cater to Republican inflation hawks in order to win their votes at his upcoming confirmation hearing. The Dow Jones Industrial Average quickly did a bungee dive of 402 points. About 90 minutes into the hearing, the stock market went into a new wave … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 23, 2021 ~ Fed Chair Jerome Powell now finds himself in the same position as Morgan Stanley’s Howie Hubler and JPMorgan’s Bruno Iksil: he’s got a big trade on and no exit plan. The problem for the U.S. economy is this: Hubler and Iksil were gambling with billions of dollars. Powell is gambling with trillions of dollars. Powell’s Fed has effectively become the Whale in the U.S. debt market. Powell was last sworn in as Fed Chair on February 5, 2018. Five days earlier, the securities held on the Fed’s balance sheet totaled $4.2 trillion. As of last Wednesday, that figure stood at $8.179 trillion, thanks to Powell’s endless purchases of U.S. Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Making this situation even more dicey, the Fed bought these debt securities with money it creates out of thin air. The U.S. taxpayer is on … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 19, 2021 ~ Yesterday, at 11:41 a.m., as Cornell Law Professor Saule Omarova sat before the Senate Banking Committee for her confirmation hearing to head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator of national banks, Republican Senator Tom Cotton Tweeted the following: “Saule Omarova stole $214 (~$400 adjusted for inflation) from T.J. Maxx in 1995. She’s woefully unqualified to supervise the banking system.” Cotton’s Tweet links to a Fox News report which indicates that it has obtained the police report that shows that Omarova was 28 years old at the time of the arrest in 1995. The items she was reported to have taken without paying for them were “four pairs of shoes, two bottles of cologne, two belts and socks.” According to the report, she had left the store with the items when confronted by a security guard … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 11, 2021 ~ Former Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan made “over $1 million” trades in and out of S&P 500 futures throughout his tenure at the Dallas Fed, which began in September 2015 and ended with his resignation on September 27 of this year over his scandalous trading. Trading in S&P 500 futures is a market-timing device used by hedge funds and day traders. No individual with market-moving information at the Federal Reserve should ever use such a device. The U.S. stock market is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. (ET) Monday through Friday. But S&P 500 futures trade around the clock during weekdays. The E-mini S&P 500 futures contract is the most popular and liquid S&P 500 futures contract. It can be leveraged by as much as 95 percent. The E-mini trades continuously from 6 p.m. Sunday night through 5 p.m. on … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 10, 2021 ~ According to Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s daily appointment calendar, he met privately with Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, from 3:00 to 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 30. JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States. It is supervised – badly – by the Federal Reserve. Just how bad is that supervision? JPMorgan Chase is the only U.S. bank to have been charged by the Justice Department with five felony counts since 2014 – admitting to all of them. But despite that unfathomable number of felony counts under the same Chairman and CEO, the Board of JPMorgan Chase didn’t sack Dimon. The Federal Reserve didn’t order JPMorgan Chase’s Board to sack Dimon either – not even after the bank was charged with rigging the U.S. Treasury market last year – the market that allows the U.S. … Continue reading →