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Recent Posts
- Saudi Arabia’s Wealth Fund Dumps Its JPMorgan Chase Stock; Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Did the Same in 2020
- One of Jeffrey Epstein’s Protectors at JPMorgan Chase, Mary Erdoes, Has Sold $29 Million of Her Stock in the Bank Since Just Before Epstein’s Arrest in 2019
- Delinquencies on Office Property Loans at Banks Are at 8 Percent While Office Loans the Banks Sold to Investors Show 31 Percent in Trouble
- Goldman Sachs Shines Up Its Swamp Creature Reputation by Rehiring Robert Kaplan as Vice Chairman – the Guy Who Traded Like a Hedge Fund Kingpin While President of the Dallas Fed
- Cleary Gottlieb – Outside Counsel to Wall Street’s Serially Bailed Out Megabanks – Tarnishes the FDIC Chair in its So-Called “Independent” Report
- JPMorgan Chase and Its Regulators Are Hiding Dark Trading Secrets at the Largest and Riskiest U.S. Bank
- Campus Protests Over Gaza Open a Pandora’s Box for Wall Street Megabanks that Underwrote $8 Billion of Israel’s Bonds in March
- Wall Street’s Megabanks Have Trillions of Dollars Off-Balance Sheet, in a Replay of Accounting Hubris that Led to the 2008 Wall Street Collapse
- JPMorgan Remains the Second Largest Money Market Fund Manager, Despite Needing Billions in Money Market Bailouts from the Fed in 2020
- The First Bank Failure of 2024 Leaves a 1-Cent Stock for Investors and $667 Million in Losses for the FDIC
- Catch and Kill Protection Rackets: Trump, Weinstein, Epstein and Wall Street
- Wall Street’s Judge Shopping Continues: It’s Trying to Stop the FTC’s Ban on Worker Handcuffs Known as Non-Compete Agreements
- The Fed Tallies Up a Big Threat to Financial Stability in the U.S.: “Runnables” at $21.3 Trillion
- Billionaire-Owned Media Has Gone Full Throttle to Save Fellow Billionaire, Jamie Dimon
- The Professor Who Wrote the Seminal Book on Wall Street Megabanks Calls Today’s Financial System “Dangerously Unstable”
- Gold Has Set Historic Highs this Year as the Federal Reserve Has Reported Historic Losses
- Stanford Finance Professor Anat Admati Is Making Jamie Dimon Very Nervous – Again Calling His Bank “Dangerous”
- Jamie Dimon Dumped $150 Million of His JPMorgan Stock in February; Now He Says His Regulators Want 25 Percent More Capital at his Bank
- The Black Swan Rears Its Head: The Fed Has Negative Capital Using GAAP Accounting
- New York Fed Will Not Confirm or Deny that 5-Count Felon JPMorgan Chase Is Custodian of $2.4 Trillion of Its Securities
- For the First Time in History, the Fed Is Reporting Billions in Losses Weekly; It’s Still Paying High Interest Income to the Mega Banks on Wall Street
- There’s a Revival of the Dotcom-esque Froth in Today’s Markets; Cathie Wood Is Standing in for Henry Blodget and Jack Grubman; Nasdaq Is Playing Nasdaq
- Study Finds Wall Street Mega Banks Have Overstated Income for Years on Commercial Real Estate Loans They Sell to Investors
- Jamie Dimon Huddles in Private with Biden Bigwigs as His Bank Faces More Crime Charges
- Report: Five Banks Have a Combined Half Trillion Dollars in Commercial Real Estate Loans; Number 1 is JPMorgan Chase
- Billionaire Larry Fink of BlackRock, Which Grabbed Fed Bailouts in 2020-2021, Lectures Struggling Seniors on Making More Sacrifices
- Almost 10,000 U.S. Banks Have Disappeared Since 1985, Leaving 4 Mega Banks Controlling 39 Percent of Bank Assets
- Wall Street’s Go-To Law Firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, Got in Bed with Crypto; Now Its Reputation Is Being Hammered
- More Failed Banks and Office Building Demolitions Likely Before Real Estate Problems End, Warn Two Federal Agencies
- During Spring Bank Panic of 2023, Liquidity Advances from FHLBs Topped Those of Q4 2008, when Wall Street Was in Collapse
- JPMorgan’s Federally-Insured Bank Is Fined $348 Million for Losing Track of “Billions” of Trades
- Hedge Fund Titan John Paulson Made $1 Billion in an Illegal Goldman Sachs Deal; Trump Is Now Floating Him for Treasury Secretary
- Wall Street Mega Banks Have Drawn a Law-Free Zone Around Themselves – The Media Is Complicit
- A Financial Writer at New York Times Admits He’s Been Misrepresenting Bank Capital for 14 Years
- FDIC Data Contradicts Fed Chair Powell: Shows Real Estate Problems Have Skyrocketed at Largest U.S. Banks, Not the Smaller Regionals
- Senator Elizabeth Warren Calls Fed Chair Powell “Weak-Kneed”; Says He Is “Driving Efforts Inside the Fed” to Gut Higher Capital Requirements
- Steve Mnuchin, Trump’s Treasury Secretary/Foreclosure Kingpin, Joins with Hedge Fund Guys to Grab a Teetering, Federally-Insured Bank for $2 a Share
- Wall Street Mega Banks Have Created a Circular Firing Squad with Credit Derivatives and Capital Relief Trades – with the Fed’s Blessing
- New York Community Bancorp Was JPMorgan’s Top Regional Bank Pick for 2024; It’s Lost 73 Percent Y-T-D and Had Its Deposit Rating Downgraded to Junk
- Watchdog, Better Markets, Investigates the Bank that Has Lost 65 Percent of Its Market Value in Two Months and Was Downgraded to Junk by Moody’s
- The Fed Pretends to Send a Warning to Wall Street’s Mega Banks on Derivatives and Counterparty Risk
- $87 Million Buys This for Jamie Dimon: David Boies Can’t Utter the Words “JPMorgan Chase” in a Jeffrey Epstein Sex Trafficking Case
- Jamie Dimon and Nine of His Top Executives at JPMorgan Chase Have Dumped Over $150 Million of their JPMorgan Stock in Last Two Months
- These Charts Reveal Why the Fed Is Frightened about Capital Levels at the Wall Street Mega Banks
- Wall Street Law Firm Sullivan & Cromwell Gets Sued Over Allegations It Aided and Abetted the FTX Crypto Fraud
- JPMorgan Says Its “Trading Venues” Are Under Investigation While It’s Still on Probation for Prior Trading Crimes
- Jamie Dimon Is Desperate to Pin the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal on Jes Staley; Bloomberg News Is Carrying His Water — Again
- Citigroup Is Having a Very Bad Week; Regulators Are Breathing Down Its Neck
- Five Wall Street Banks Hold $223 Trillion in Derivatives — 83 Percent of All Derivatives at 4,600 Banks
- Jamie Dimon’s Statement Last Month that Trump “Was Kind of Right About NATO,” Sounds Even More Unhinged Today
Search Results for: blackrock
The Fed Rides to the Rescue of JPMorgan and Citi Again – This Time It’s Their Commercial Real Estate Mortgages
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 20, 2020 ~ Quietly, on July 13, the New York Fed published a list of asset-backed loans that it had approved for eligibility in one of its emergency lending programs, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, otherwise known as TALF. The New York Fed stuck a smattering of small business loans and one student loan product on the list. Everything else was securitized pools of mortgages on commercial real estate, much of it issued by JPMorgan and Citigroup. TALF was supposed to help the consumer by keeping interest rates down on consumer loans. It’s pretty tough to find a connection between the consumer and commercial real estate mortgages on hotels, shopping malls and office buildings. One thing notable about the New York Fed’s approved list is that the securitizations of these commercial mortgages by JPMorgan had occurred as far back as 2013 and … Continue reading
Powell and Mnuchin Agree to Work with a Proposed “Department of Reconciliation” to Deal with Effects of Slavery and Segregation
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 1, 2020 ~ Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin apparently fear unleashing more angry protesters across the country screaming “no justice, no peace” into an air increasingly filled with COVID-19 droplets, more than they fear Trump Tweeting reprisals against them in the wee hours of the morning. Both Powell and Mnuchin raised their hands yesterday during the House Financial Services Committee hearing to agree to work with a proposed Department of Reconciliation to deal with the country’s history of slavery, segregation and ongoing “invidious discrimination” of people of color. The hearing had been called by the Chair of the Committee, Maxine Waters, to take testimony on “Oversight of the Treasury Department’s and Federal Reserve’s Pandemic Response.” That topic was frequently framed around questions of racial discrimination and inequality. The raised hands from Powell and Mnuchin came in response to questioning … Continue reading
Fed Launches Corporate Bond Buying Program, Gobbling Up Fossil Fuels and Tobacco Bonds
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 28, 2020 ~ Taxpayers’ money under the CARES Act is going up in smoke — literally. As of today, there are more than 32,000 people in the United States hospitalized with COVID-19, with thousands struggling to breathe from a virus that attacks the respiratory system as well as other parts of the body. So what has the Federal Reserve decided to do to help out during this national health crisis? It’s propping up the prices of the bonds issued by fossil fuel corporations and Big Tobacco – two serial polluters of the air we breathe. The Fed decided to release its first list of individual corporate bond purchases in its Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility today – on Sunday – when folks are out taking a walk with face masks in an effort to avoid dangerous particles in the air. The same Fed … Continue reading
$340 Billion of the $454 Billion that Mnuchin Was to Turn Over to the Fed is Unaccounted For
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 22, 2020 ~ President Donald Trump has been sacking federal watchdogs at the speed of a bullet train. In just a six-week period in April and May, the President fired five Inspectors General of federal agencies. In last Friday night’s coup d’état, Attorney General William Barr, acting as consigliere for the President, ousted the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the federal prosecutor that oversees prosecutions of Wall Street banks in that district. The privately owned Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is in charge of the bulk of the Fed’s bailout programs, also resides in that district. Barr and the President want to put a man with zero experience as a prosecutor in charge of that office, Jay Clayton, who currently heads the Securities and Exchange Commission which has only civil enforcement powers. Clayton represented 8 of the … Continue reading
Fed Chair Powell Attempts to Blame U.S. Inequality on Globalization – Gets Smacked Down by Bloomberg Reporter
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 11, 2020 ~ Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s press conferences are typically snooze sessions. Yesterday’s virtual press conference got off to a similar start with mainstream media reporters asking about inflation and monetary policy instead of the more critical questions they should have been asking in the midst of the worst labor market and business closures since the Great Depression and food pantry lines that stretch for blocks. Fortunately, two reporters shook things up at the very end of the press conference. Nancy Marshall-Genzer of Marketplace, which airs on public media stations, bluntly asked Powell this: “Is there more the Fed could do to deal with inequality, for example, use the Black unemployment rate as a benchmark.” Powell’s answer was an abomination. First Powell stated that inequality is not related to monetary policy. Next, he decided to target a more specific villain – … Continue reading
The Fed Just Pulled Off Another Backdoor Bailout of Wall Street
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 10, 2020 ~ The Federal Reserve has authorized 11 financial bailout programs thus far. Despite Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s reassurances at his press conferences that these programs are to help American families, a full 10 of these programs are actually bailouts of Wall Street banks or their trading units. The latest Wall Street bank bailout to come out of hiding is the Fed’s Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF). This program was supposed to buy up corporate bonds in the secondary market in order to help corporate bond markets regain liquidity. Thus far, the only thing the SMCCF has bought up are Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) holding investment grade and junk-rated bonds. The SMCCF program began operations on May 12. By May 18 the Fed had spent $1.58 billion buying up ETFs. The ultimate goal of the facility, at this point, is to … Continue reading
Fed Admits Corporate Bond Buying Will Be at Least a 5-Year Debt Bailout
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 27, 2020 ~ On May 13 the House Financial Services’ Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions held a virtual roundtable with federal regulators. One of the regulators in attendance was the Vice Chair for Supervision at the Federal Reserve, Randal Quarles. At the very end of what evolved into a roundtable beset with static and inaudible passages, it was Utah Congressman Ben McAdams’ turn to ask questions. McAdams’ voice was sharp and crisp. He politely said he had a question about the corporate bond buying program that the Fed was launching (for the first time in its 107-year history). The exchange went as follows: McAdams: “Do you anticipate holding these investments through the life of the purchased bond or do you anticipate selling them at a date TBD [to be determined]? Quarles: “Our intention is to buy and hold.” That answer from … Continue reading
In Last Bailout, the Fed Outsourced Management to the Banks Being Bailed Out – then Paid them Huge Fees for their Work
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 21, 2020 ~ Many of the darkest secrets of the Federal Reserve’s bailout of Wall Street banks during the 2007 to 2010 financial crisis are cryptically contained in the government audit of the Fed’s emergency lending programs that was released to the public on July 21, 2011. A careful reading shows that some of the very same Wall Street mega banks that were in desperate need of, and receiving, bailout funds from the Fed were given assignments by the Fed to oversee parts of the bailout. Making the situation even more ludicrous, those same firms were paid huge fees by the Fed for their work. There is good reason to believe that the same plan is in the works for the Fed’s latest bailout. The audit by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the nonpartisan watchdog for Congress, shows that during the last financial … Continue reading
The Fed’s Chair and Vice Chair Got Rich at Carlyle Group, a Private Equity Fund with a String of Bankruptcies and Job Losses
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 18, 2020 ~ Private equity funds have been variously called “merchants of debt,” “vultures,” or “corporate raiders.” What a private equity fund typically does is to buy up companies by piling debt on the balance sheet, selling off valuable assets like real estate, extracting giant dividends for the private equity partners to the detriment of workers and customers, and then, frequently, letting the company collapse into bankruptcy while laying off thousands of workers or liquidating the whole company. It should give pause to every American that the two top men at the Federal Reserve who are implementing a new $4.54 trillion bailout fund for Wall Street, using $454 billion from taxpayers to absorb the losses, both got rich working for one of the world’s largest such private equity firms: the Carlyle Group. According to his official bio, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was a … Continue reading
The Fed Hasn’t Spent a Dime Yet for Main Street Versus $735 Billion for Wall Street
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 13, 2020 ~ The stimulus bill known as the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act) was signed into law by President Donald Trump on March 27. Among its many features (such as direct checks to struggling Americans and enhancing unemployment compensation by $600 per week for four months to unemployed workers so they could pay their rent and buy food) the bill also carved out a dubious $454 billion (or 25 percent of the total $1.8 trillion spending package) for the U.S. Treasury to hand over to the Federal Reserve. This was the Faustian Bargain the Democrats had to agree to in order to get the deal approved by the Wall Street cronies in the Senate. If you subtract the $454 billion from the $1.8 trillion total spending package, that left $1.346 trillion for other purposes. But the $454 billion … Continue reading