Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 6, 2023 ~ You may recall reading a burst of headlines during the banking crisis in March of this year about depositors fleeing small banks for the perceived comfort of the largest banks. Unfortunately, those headlines were never put in context or updated to reflect a broader picture. In fact, using deposit data that is updated weekly from the Federal Reserve’s own H.8 releases, it becomes crystal clear that the large banks are bleeding deposits at the fastest pace in 40 years. As the Federal Reserve data in the chart above indicates, deposits at the largest 25 commercial banks in the U.S. peaked at $11,679,758,700,000 on April 13, 2022. The most recent H.8 release shows that the deposits of the 25 largest banks as of June 21 stood at $10,758,977,000,000. That’s a percentage decline of 7.88 percent or $920,781,700. The Fed’s H.8 data defines … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 27, 2023 ~ Between March 10 and May 1 of this year, three of the largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred. On March 10 the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) seized Silicon Valley Bank after $42 billion in deposits had exited the bank the day prior with another $100 billion queued up to leave the next day – meaning it was possible for a federally-insured bank to lose 85 percent of its deposits in the span of 48 hours in the digital age. (For a closer look at what was going on at Silicon Valley Bank, see our report: Silicon Valley Bank Was a Wall Street IPO Pipeline in Drag as a Federally-Insured Bank; FHLB of San Francisco Was Quietly Bailing It Out.) Two more bank failures followed in short order: Signature Bank on March 12 and First Republic Bank on May 1. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 21, 2023 ~ On March 17, 2022, the Federal Reserve began its interest rate hiking cycle, which has, thus far, evolved into 10 consecutive rate hikes, making it the fastest rate increases in 40 years. The Fed’s actions to tame inflation included four consecutive interest rate hikes of an aggressive 75 basis point hike (three quarters of one percent) on June 16, July 28, September 22, and November 3 of last year. At that point, every trading veteran on Wall Street was scratching their head and asking themselves the same question: why aren’t we hearing about interest rate derivatives blowing up and taking down either a U.S. mega bank or its counterparty on the wrong side of the trade? According to the quarterly derivative reports released by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulator of national banks, as of December … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 5, 2023 ~ The second, third, and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred this year. And yet, none of the banks that blew up were on the “Problem Bank List” that is prepared quarterly by the federal bank regulator that is supposed to be on top of these things – the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). When the FDIC released its quarterly Problem Bank List for the quarter ending December 31, 2022, it showed just 39 banks were a problem with combined assets of a meager $47.5 billion. Given that rosy picture, one can understand the shock to the American people when Silicon Valley Bank blew up on March 10 with $212 billion in assets and had to be put into FDIC receivership. Two days later, on March 12, Signature Bank failed and was put into FDIC receivership. As of December 31, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 1, 2023 ~ After much delay and legal protests by JPMorgan Chase, its Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, was forced by a Manhattan federal court to testify under oath in a deposition about what he personally knew about the bank’s long-term customer relationship with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. (Epstein died in a Manhattan jail on August 10, 2019. His death was ruled a suicide by the medical examiner.) The deposition was held last Friday, May 26, at the offices of JPMorgan Chase in Manhattan. In a surprise move, opposing counsels agreed yesterday to release the transcript of the deposition, with some segments marked as sensitive and redacted. The deposition arose as a result of two lawsuits being heard by Judge Jed Rakoff in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. One lawsuit is on behalf of an alleged sexual … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 31, 2023 ~ Last Friday, at the start of Memorial Day weekend, researchers at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released an analysis of where they think the U.S. economy is headed and the headwinds (read gale force winds) that can, potentially, be expected along the way. Folks on Wall Street who were hoping that the Fed was at the end of its rate-hiking cycle, with a more dovish Fed juicing stock market returns later this year, likely had their holiday weekend ruined with this projection from the IMF: “Achieving a sustained disinflation will necessitate a loosening of labor market conditions that, so far, has not been evident in the data. To bring inflation firmly back to target will require an extended period of tight monetary policy, with the federal funds rate remaining at 5¼–5½ percent until late in 2024.” The Fed’s inflation target is … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 25, 2023 ~ Unlike his three immediate predecessors who chaired the Federal Reserve (Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan), who all had doctoral degrees in economics, the current Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell, has a law degree from Georgetown University. Given his legal education, one might have expected that when Fed Chair Powell became aware of the largest trading scandal in the Fed’s history in September of 2021, he would have done his legal due diligence to determine where to refer the matter for investigation. While multiple Wall Street watchdogs called for Powell to refer the investigation to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission – which conduct all legitimate insider trading investigations involving publicly-traded stocks — the Fed instead referred the investigation on October 4, 2021 to the Federal Reserve Board’s own Inspector General, who is appointed by the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 23, 2023 ~ The Fed has been under non-stop scandals for the past two years. It pumped out trillions of dollars in repo loans to Wall Street’s casino banks beginning on September 17, 2019 and then made up a hokey excuse to cover up its massive bailout of banks it is incompetent to supervise. After former Dallas Fed President, Robert Kaplan, was caught trading like a hedge fund kingpin while sitting on confidential Fed information, the Fed’s Board of Governors had the audacity to refer the matter to its own Inspector General, who reports to the Fed’s Board of Governors and can be fired by it. Not surprisingly, 19 months later there’s still no word on this investigation. Then there was the President of the St. Louis Fed, James Bullard, who was caught giving a private meeting with Citigroup clients. The New York Fed … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 22, 2023 ~ Pretty much everything the average American has read about the banking crisis is wrong. And there is at least a prima facie case that could be made that Big Media is responsible for that misinformation. Let’s start with the dozens of mainstream media reports that small banks were bleeding deposits and these deposits were flooding into the biggest banks in the U.S. as a safe haven. Those reports gave the distinct impression that the mega banks on Wall Street are viewed by Americans as a safe place to stash money, never mind that they blew up the U.S. financial system in 2008 and still have more than $200 trillion in derivatives lurking in the shadows. According to FRED data compiled by the St. Louis Fed (see chart above), bank deposits at the 25 largest U.S.-chartered commercial banks peaked at $11.556 trillion … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 18, 2023 ~ On Wednesday, March 8 of this year, the holding company for the federally-insured Silvergate Bank announced it was winding down the bank. It had little choice but to do so. It was experiencing a bank run and had incinerated its reputation by focusing on deposits from crypto companies, including those majority-owned by indicted crypto kingpin, Sam Bankman-Fried. According to testimony from the Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Martin Gruenberg, before the Senate Banking Committee on March 28, “in the fourth quarter of 2022, Silvergate Bank experienced an outflow of deposits from digital asset customers that, combined with the FTX deposits, resulted in a 68 percent loss in deposits – from $11.9 billion in deposits to $3.8 billion.” Silvergate Bank’s primary regulator was the San Francisco Fed. Two days later, on Friday, March 10, Silicon Valley Bank was put … Continue reading →