Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 17, 2023 ~ Last year, newspapers across America were buzzing with the enticing yields available on U.S. savings bonds, Treasury bills and Treasury notes. It’s now apparent that millions of Americans got the message to move out of the meager yields being offered on savings accounts and money market at their bank and move to the free accounts and government-backed instruments offered by TreasuryDirect.gov. Investors, small and large, can buy directly from the U.S. Treasury at this site. According to data provided by TreasuryDirect, new account openings in 2022 surged to a total of 2,956,790 from a total of 460,057 in 2021 – an increase of 543 percent in one year. Even more impressive, the total par value of the savings bonds and Treasury securities purchased in those accounts went from $9,711,113,646 in 2021 to $87,775,900,168 in 2022 – an 804 percent increase. (See … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 16, 2023 ~ The pileup of conflicts of interests, ethical lapses, and overall moral turpitude at the Federal Reserve have resulted in a recent Gallup poll showing that confidence in the Federal Reserve Chair (currently Jerome Powell) has reached the lowest point in two decades of Gallup polling on this topic. Americans who have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of confidence in the Fed Chair stands at just 36 percent according to the poll. Tomorrow, the Senate Banking’s Subcommittee on Economic Policy plans to confront the ethically-challenged structure of the Fed head on. It is a given that there will be some fireworks during this hearing because the Chair of this Subcommittee is Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has labeled Fed Chair Powell “a dangerous man” and called out a “culture of corruption” at the Fed last August. (Warren, a former Harvard Law … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 9, 2023 ~ The systemic threats to the U.S. financial system were not remedied when Congress passed the watered-down Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in 2010. While that has been evident with each Federal Reserve bailout of the mega banks and their derivative counterparties, the threat has now gained increased urgency for Congress to confront as a result of a new academic study. A team of four highly-credentialed academics at four separate universities present compelling evidence that one of the four largest U.S. banks, with “assets above $1 trillion,” could be at risk of a bank run. The study is titled: “Monetary Tightening and U.S. Bank Fragility in 2023: Mark-to-Market Losses and Uninsured Depositor Runs?” Its authors are Erica Jiang, Assistant Professor of Finance and Business Economics at USC Marshall School of Business; Gregor Matvos, Chair in Finance at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 3, 2023 ~ President Joe Biden is putting the national security of the United States at risk by not suspending the short-selling of federally-insured banks. Concerns over the safety and soundness of the U.S. financial system could cause money flight out of the U.S., impacting the strength of the U.S. dollar and a loss of confidence by our foreign allies. This is also a matter that impacts the financial lives of every American, because every American – rich, poor or middle class – will suffer the consequences in terms of ability to access bank credit and higher fees on that credit as a result of rebuilding the rapidly depleting federal Deposit Insurance Fund that protects bank deposits. The second, third and fourth largest bank failures in the history of the U.S. have now occurred in the span of seven weeks (First Republic Bank, Silicon … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 2, 2023 ~ There are two critical things you need to know about JPMorgan Chase’s Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon’s ability to stabilize the banking crisis: (1) he’s tried twice and failed both times; (2) his bank is a key financier of hedge funds, some of which are undermining bank stock prices with short selling. The Financial Times reported on April 5 that “Hedge funds made more than $7bn in profits by betting against bank shares during the recent crisis that rocked the sector, their biggest such haul since the 2008 financial crisis.” Shares of First Republic Bank have lost billions of dollars more in market value since April 5, meaning the $7 billion haul for short sellers is now an understatement. The one thing that would help dramatically to stem the banking crisis is for President Biden (a man who derives his powers … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 27, 2023 ~ Ever since 11 banks on March 16 donned the garb of heroic fire fighters, rushing to extinguish an inferno at a competitor bank before it spread further, we have been asking ourselves the question – why just this group of 11 banks. We’re talking about the action on March 16 when 11 banks chipped in a total of $30 billion and bizarrely placed those funds as uninsured deposits into First Republic Bank – which was in full scale unraveling mode because of bond losses and – wait for it – too many uninsured deposits. Four banks contributed two-thirds of the total deposits with JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo ponying up $5 billion each. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs deposited $2.5 billion each; while BNY Mellon, State Street, PNC Bank, Truist and U.S. Bank each deposited $1 billion, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 26, 2023 The Board of Directors and shareholders at the largest bank in the U.S., JPMorgan Chase – which has more than 5,000 Chase Bank branches dotting the landscape from coast to coast – have ample reason to ask themselves where the loyalties of the bank’s Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon exactly lie. Dimon, who has come under withering negative publicity for the bank’s many years of catering to the cash payoff needs of child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, had an urgent incentive to want to change the subject. So a media blitz ensued around his role as rescuer of the sinking carcass of a much smaller bank, First Republic Bank – which has its own dubious distinction of being the bank that wired the hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels by Trump attorney, Michael Cohen. For just how broadly Dimon’s “rescue” of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 24, 2023 Give First Republic Bank an A+ for arrogance and an F for its ability to hold on to its customers’ deposits, despite all that incessant talk about how loyal they are. The A+ for arrogance comes from the bank’s refusal to take even one question from reporters or bank analysts on today’s first quarter earnings call. The call began at 4:30 p.m. ET and lasted approximately 12 minutes. It was heavy on spin. For example, a big effort was made to dress up the amount of deposits the bank still had on hand at the end of the first quarter, which is necessary if anyone is to believe the narrative that it has “retained 97 percent of client relationships” over the quarter. (The relationships may, indeed, still be there in some fashion but deposits have flown the coop.) The hard numbers for … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 24, 2023 All of those pundits who have written over the past two weeks that the banking crisis is over, have failed to persuade the big credit ratings agency, Moody’s. Last Friday, Moody’s downgraded the credit ratings of 11 banks and put another five banks on negative watch – all in one day. And, for good measure, it downgraded the entire U.S. banking system from “Very Strong –” to “Strong +.” While not mentioning the Federal Reserve directly, the Moody’s downgrade of the U.S. banking system seemed to point directly at the Fed’s unrelenting interest rate hikes. Moody’s wrote: “Moody’s has lowered the macro profile of the US banking system to ‘Strong +’ from ‘Very Strong –.’ The change in funding conditions reflects rising asset liability management challenges at US banks. Specifically, the banking system faces rising funding and profitability pressures related to the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 20, 2023 The official that oversaw the secret funneling of trillions of dollars of bailout money from the New York Fed to the grossly mismanaged mega banks on Wall Street during the financial crisis of 2008 to 2010, had the temerity yesterday to pen an opinion piece at Bloomberg News pointing his finger at current Fed officials for today’s banking crisis – without once mentioning his role in getting us here. The article was written by William (Bill) Dudley, who served as President of the New York Fed from January 27, 2009 to June 18, 2018. Prior to that Dudley was Executive Vice President of the Markets Group at the New York Fed, the group that runs its own trading floors in New York and Chicago and trades with the Wall Street mega banks it is also supposed to be supervising. The New York Fed … Continue reading →