Search Results for: newest legislator

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 15, 2016 The problem with stereotyping Republicans is that when they are screaming from the rooftops about a legitimate fraud, Democrats don’t believe them — even when the evidence is overpowering that they are right. For years now, Republicans have been screaming that the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that was signed into law in 2010 by President Obama is a fraud on the public. Few have examined Dodd-Frank’s failed promises as carefully as Wall Street On Parade. The legislation promised to rein in derivatives – it didn’t. It promised to end the future need for taxpayer bailouts of too-big-to-fail banks. It didn’t. It promised to institute the Volcker Rule to prevent banks from gambling with insured deposits. It didn’t. It promised to reform the practices of the ratings agencies that played a pivotal role in the 2008 collapse. It … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 27, 2016 Back in 2010, with the public still numb from the epic financial crash and still in the dark about the trillions of dollars of secret loans the Federal Reserve had pumped into the Wall Street mega banks to resuscitate their sinking carcasses, Matt Taibbi penned his classic profile of Goldman Sachs at Rolling Stone, with this, now legendary, summation: “The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Historically, what smells like money to Goldman Sachs has been eight-figure money and higher. As recently as 2013, the New York Times reported that Goldman had a $10 million minimum to manage private wealth and was kicking out its own employees’ brokerage accounts if they were less than $1 million. Now, all of a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 30, 2015 The problem with Wall Street is not just that individual participants serially disrespect the law. The bigger problem is that Wall Street as an industry has structured itself as an ingrained law-avoidance system. There’s simply no other industry in America where you could start the sentence – “Wall Street is the only industry in America where…” – and find endless ways to finish that thought. Jamil Nazarali, the head of Citadel Execution Services, the trading arm of a hedge fund and dark pool operator, gave the above sentence a trial run on October 27 at a Securities and Exchange Commission meeting on market structure. Nazarali said: “This industry is the only one that I am aware of where a for-profit public company regulates its customers and competitors. And I understand that you guys think that that’s important but what is it … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 11, 2015  Following the Republican Presidential debate in Milwaukee last evening, Senator Elizabeth Warren issued a blistering statement to supporters. It said, in part: “Did you see the attack ad about me during the GOP debate tonight? A right-wing group launched a full-scale assault on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – the watchdog we set up after the 2008 financial crisis to fight back when big banks try to cheat people on credit cards, mortgages, and other financial products…If the Republicans want a fight over the CFPB, I say, ‘Bring it on.’” The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is one of the few positive outgrowths of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation passed by Congress in 2010 after the epic financial crash in 2008. It’s a legitimate and real champion of the little guy.  But because the agency has been exposing student loan frauds … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 21, 2015 Just when you thought Wall Street’s heist of the U.S. financial system couldn’t get any crazier, along comes a regulator’s report on FDIC-insured banks exposure to derivatives. According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), one of the regulators of national banks, as of June 30 of this year, Goldman Sachs Bank USA had $78 billion in deposits, and – wait for it – $45.7 trillion in notional amount of derivatives. (Notional means face amount of derivatives.) According to the OCC report, Goldman Sachs Bank USA’s notional derivatives are an eye-popping 563 percent of its risk-based capital. You and every other little guy in America are backstopping this bank because it’s, amazingly, FDIC insured. Compared to its Wall Street peers, Goldman Sachs Bank USA is a midget. JPMorgan Chase Bank NA has just shy of $2 trillion in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: May 19, 2015 In the late 1990s, Salomon Smith Barney’s telecom analyst, Jack Grubman, was viewed by his powerful firm as a “disruptor.” He was throwing out the old rules on how a telecom analyst should interact with a company on which he was delivering research to the public and creating a new, innovative model. Instead of following the old rules and remaining pristinely independent and objective, Grubman was sitting in on board meetings at WorldCom, giving investment advice to its executives, while simultaneously issuing laudatory research to induce the investing public to buy the stock. When BusinessWeek questioned Grubman on this new analyst model on May 14, 2000, here’s how the disruptor explained his redesign of his job:  “What used to be a conflict is now a synergy…Someone like me who is banking-intensive would have been looked at disdainfully by the buy side 15 years ago. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 12, 2015 Senator Richard Shelby, Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, is set to release details of his proposed financial reform legislation today which Wall Street hopes will have so much smoke and mirrors to appease the liberal and conservative factions on the Committee that no one will notice that it’s another big sellout to Wall Street. The bill will hold out the promise of reforming the Federal Reserve while failing to do anything material to reform it. It will promise to remove unnecessary regulatory burdens on community banks so that they can survive and compete while leaving intact the very financial structure that is killing off community banks faster than you can say Dodd-Frank. The biggest joke in the proposed legislation is that the Fed will somehow be tamed by allowing the President of the United States to nominate, with Senate confirmation, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 27, 2015  Last Monday, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker held a press conference at the National Press Club to release his nonprofit’s plan for reforming U.S. bank regulation. Volcker’s plan includes elevating the Federal Reserve to even greater heights as a super regulator of a consolidated system. That’s exactly the opposite of what Congress has in mind as it holds hearings on fatal conflicts of interests between the Fed and Wall Street. At the press conference, Volcker delivered a thoroughly discredited statement suggesting some deep-pocketed backers are putting words in his mouth. Volcker said: “The Federal Reserve is the best-equipped, the most independent and most respected financial agency of the United States government.” Volcker’s views on financial reform must be seen against the backdrop of Volcker’s myriad conflicts and ties with the global ruling elite. His non-profit organization, The Volcker Alliance, has multiplied … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 30, 2015 It’s tough to keep up with the conspiracy theories that run rampant from day to day in the hallowed halls of Congress. But one that is gaining traction is that the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Stability Oversight Council (whose acronym is pronounced F-SOC) is the handmaiden of an international finance cabal and is obediently marching to its beat instead of the mandates of Congress. These suspicions were on display at the Senate Banking Committee hearing last Wednesday and the House Financial Services Committee hearing the week before where U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who Chairs F-SOC, was pummeled with thinly veiled, and not so thinly veiled, accusations. F-SOC was created under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010. It is charged with the early identification of emerging risks to the financial system. Every major regulator of Wall … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 19, 2015 Hillary Clinton just can’t catch a break. As her self-inflicted imbroglio over erasing 30,000 emails involving her time as Secretary of State continues to command press attention, the April issue of Harper’s Magazine is focusing gasp-worthy attention on the “loan-sharking” business that Bill Clinton, as President, assisted in transforming into the too-big-to-fail Citigroup that played a leading role in bringing the country to the brink of financial collapse in 2008. Janet Yellen’s Fed can’t be too happy either about the revelations. The Fed just gave Citigroup a clean bill of health last week under its so-called rigorous stress tests and is allowing the bank to spend like a drunken sailor, raising its dividend 400 percent with permission to buy back as much as $7.8 billion of its own stock. The Fed’s qualitative portion of the stress test is said to look at both risk … Continue reading →