Search Results for: Federal Reserve

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 7, 2021 ~ Janet Yellen, the current U.S. Treasury Secretary, is also the Chair of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which includes every Wall Street regulator. Before coming to the Treasury Department, Yellen was the Chair of the Federal Reserve and had spent the bulk of her working career at the Fed or the San Francisco Fed. When Yellen was not reappointed as Fed Chair by Donald Trump when her Chairmanship term expired in 2018, she immediately cashed in her chips on Wall Street, collecting millions of dollars in speaking fees in 2019, and undisclosed millions more in 2018. (See Janet Yellen’s Cash Haul of $7 Million Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg; She Failed to Report Her Wall Street Speaking Fees from JPMorgan and Others in 2018.) Yellen was a Federal Reserve Board Governor when she was appointed Fed Chair. Her term … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 4, 2021 ~ The House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, chaired by Congressman Al Green of Texas, will hold a hearing on June 30 titled:  “America on ‘FIRE.’ Will the Crypto Frenzy Lead to Financial Independence and Early Retirement or Financial Ruin?” The announcement of the hearing came yesterday, the same day that Wall Street On Parade reported that the Federal Trade Commission was witnessing a skyrocketing increase in crypto scams. The FTC wrote on May 17: “Reports to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel suggest scammers are cashing in on the buzz around cryptocurrency and luring people into bogus investment opportunities in record numbers. Since October 2020, reports have skyrocketed, with nearly 7,000 people reporting losses of more than $80 million on these scams.” The Subcommittee has not yet posted its lineup of witnesses for the hearing. Republicans, who are the minority party … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 2, 2021 ~ The chart above has been compiled by the St. Louis Fed using the New York Fed’s data for its issuance of Reverse Repurchase Agreements, otherwise known as Reverse Repos. What’s a Fed Reverse Repo? According to the New York Fed, it is when counterparties loan the Fed money in exchange for collateral, which is typically Treasury bills. In the most recent action, we’re talking about the New York Fed, acting on behalf of the Federal Reserve, selling U.S. Treasuries to Wall Street banks, trading houses, mutual funds and government-sponsored enterprises in overnight and weekend deals and paying zero or next to zero as an interest rate when it buys back the securities. Why would the smartest guys on Wall Street, who never let a loose dime slip through their fingers in order to get a larger cut of the annual bonus pool, be … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 27, 2021 ~ Last evening, Bloomberg News, followed by the Wall Street Journal, reported that the U.S. Department of Justice has opened a probe into the late March collapse of the Archegos family office hedge fund. The Wall Street Journal reported that “Banks that lent to Archegos, including Credit Suisse Group AG, UBS Group AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley,” had been contacted for information by the Justice Department. According to media reports, Archegos is believed to have leveraged $20 billion of its own capital into more than $100 billion in stock and derivative exposure through margin loans from the banks named above, as well as others. Among the laundry list of items the Justice Department may be investigating, is whether the banks violated the Federal Reserve’s Regulation T, which would have limited the banks to an initial margin loan of no … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 26, 2021 ~ Below are selected remarks from Jamie Dimon’s prepared statement for the Senate Banking Committee hearing today, which will take testimony from a total of six Wall Street bank CEOs. Wall Street On Parade’s annotated remarks appear in brackets and italics. ~~~ “Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey and distinguished members of the Committee, I appreciate the invitation to appear before you to talk about JPMorgan Chase, the strength and resilience of the U.S. financial system, and the people, businesses and communities we serve.” [The strength of the U.S. financial system would, of course, be a lot safer and sounder if the largest bank in the U.S., at which Dimon serves as Chairman and CEO, had not been charged with five felony counts since 2014, all occurring under his leadership. The bank admitted to all five counts.] “JPMorgan Chase is a global financial services firm … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 20, 2021 ~ Yesterday, Bitcoin put on a display that should put to rest any lingering doubts that it is a stable currency that could be used to pay for products or services. The current month Bitcoin futures contract at the CME swung between a low of $30,250 to a high of $43,530 – a difference of $13,280 in one trading session. From its intraday high of $58,140 on Wednesday, May 12, to its close one week later on Wednesday, May 19, Bitcoin had lost 34 percent of its value. As we explained here at Wall Street On Parade on May 12, some of the smartest minds in the investment community think Bitcoin is very bad for America. One of the most iconic investors in America, Warren Buffet, stated in May 2018 that Bitcoin is “probably rat poison squared.” In January of the same … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 14, 2021 ~ Morgan Stanley has more than 15,000 financial advisors calling clients each day with investment recommendations that are frequently engineered inside the firm. (These are known as in-house or proprietary products.) For the past two decades, we have been reading about regulatory fines against Morgan Stanley for abusing its customers in these home-grown offerings. In November 2000, Morgan Stanley’s Dean Witter unit was charged by the National Association of Securities Dealers’ regulatory arm with selling over $2 billion of Term Trusts to more than 100,000 customers using an internal marketing campaign that characterized the investments as safe and low-risk. The NASD Regulation complaint said that Dean Witter targeted “certificate of deposit holders and other conservative investors, many of whom were elderly with moderate, fixed incomes…” The risky Term Trusts at one point had lost over 30 percent of their value and had … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 11, 2021 ~ When the motherlode of stock market bubbles finally pops, exposing the corrupt edifices on which it was built, you can count on one thing for sure – there will be lots of testimony before Congress that no one could have seen it coming. The simple chart above, that took us 30 minutes to prepare in an Excel spreadsheet, is proof that anyone among the legions of Wall Street bank regulators at the Federal Reserve, the OCC, the FDIC, and the SEC can see what’s coming. The chart compares U.S. GDP to the total stock market value at December 31, 1999, prior to the bursting of the dot.com bubble; at December 31, 2007, prior to the bursting of the subprime and derivatives bubble; and on December 31, 2020, prior to the bursting of whatever the bailout boys decide to call this bubble. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 10, 2021 ~ You know there’s a problem when the media relations office at the Federal Reserve will not turn over the bio for one of its employees that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen just tapped to be the acting head of a key Wall Street banking regulator. After days of media rumors that Yellen was set to appoint Michael Hsu, an Associate Director of the Federal Reserve’s Division of Supervision and Regulation, to be the acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Yellen made the announcement official on Friday. Hsu is set to assume that position today. We had attempted to obtain Hsu’s bio from the Federal Reserve for days. We were told they had no official bio. We asked for the resume Hsu provided when he was hired. We received no response. We then asked the Treasury Department’s … Continue reading →