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Recent Posts
- Hurricane Helene Dumped 20 Trillion Gallons of Rain, Destroying Entire Towns in Western North Carolina, Hundreds of Miles from any Coastline
- Half of All Deaths from Hurricane Helene Occurred 485 Miles North of Where It Made Landfall
- What Did Madoff, Jeffrey Epstein and Sanctioned Russian Mercenary Group, Wagner, Have in Common? They All Banked at JPMorgan Chase
- Deadly, Exploding Pagers Force the U.S. to Get Serious About Malware from China in U.S. Products that Are Potential National Security Threats
- Wall Street Has Moved Vast Sums of Its Trading to Its Federally-Insured Banks
- The Stock Market Had a Psychotic Episode After the Fed Rate Cut Yesterday, Plunging 479 Points from the Day’s High
- As Trump Launches a Crypto Firm, FBI Reports Crypto Fraud Has Exploded to $5.6 Billion; Representing Almost 50 Percent of All Financial Fraud
- Everything this Book Predicted on Wall Street Megabanks Ruling their Regulators Is Now Unfolding
- The Fed Just Kicked the Capital Increases for the Dangerous Megabanks and their Derivatives Down the Road for Years
- Intel, Boeing and U.S. Steel May Hold the Secrets to What’s Behind All the Talk of a U.S. Sovereign Wealth Fund
- Trump and Paulson’s Proposal: U.S. Sovereign Wealth Fund (or Another Grifter Bailout)
- A Wall Street Regulator Is Understating Margin Debt by More than $4 Trillion – Because It’s Not Counting Giant Banks Making Margin Loans to Hedge Funds
- After JPMorgan Threatens to Sue, the Fed Cuts Its Capital Requirement on the 5-Count Felon from a Planned 25 Percent Hike to Less than 8 Percent
- Three Megabanks Had Loans Outstanding of $1.832 Trillion to Giant Hedge Funds on March 31
- Jamie Dimon’s Washington Post OpEd Gets Pummeled at Yahoo Finance
- In the Span of 72 Hours, Four People Tied to a Hewlett-Packard Criminal Case Died in Two Separate Events
- Crypto Took Down Another Federally-Insured Bank and Just Handed Its CEO a 24-Year Prison Sentence
- All the Devils from 2008 Are Back at the Megabanks: Leverage, Off-Balance-Sheet Debt, Over $192 Trillion in Derivatives, Shaky Capital Levels
- New Study Says the Fed Is Captured by Congress and White House — Not the Megabanks that Own the Fed Banks and Get Trillions in Bailouts
- Data from the Fed’s Emergency Funding Program Shows Spring 2023 Banking Crisis Was Far Deeper than Americans Were Told
- These FDIC-Insured Banks Have Lost 69 to 40 Percent of their Market Value Year-to-Date
- Exposure at Hedge Funds Has Skyrocketed to Over $28 Trillion; Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Are at Risk
- We Charted the Plunge and Rebound in the Nikkei Versus Nomura and Citigroup; the Correlation Is Frightening
- Former U.S. Labor Secretary Says Billionaires Have No Right to Exist Because their Wealth Comes from Five Illegal or Bad Practices
- Citigroup Is Having a Helluva Summer: A Protest on Thursday Will Turn Up the Heat
- Nikkei Has Biggest Drop in History: Here’s What’s Causing the Global Market Selloff
- JPMorgan Is Tapping Illiquid Assets in its Global Collateral Program; the New York Fed Is Paying for Its Services
- Bank Regulators Issue Warnings on Fintech and Banking as Disasters Pile Up
- Donald Trump Gives a Speech on Not Letting China Win the Crypto Race – Not Realizing China Banned Crypto Mining and Transactions Four Years Ago
- The New York Fed Has Contracted Out Key Functions to JPMorgan Chase; We Filed a FOIA and Got These Strange Invoices
- On the Eve of Netanyahu’s Address to Congress, Senator Bernie Sanders Delivers a Breathtaking Assessment of His War Crimes
- Trump’s Sit-Down with Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago Will Cost U.S. Taxpayers Millions While Profiting Trump’s Business
- Protecting Trump and His Jet-Setting Adult Children During His Presidency Cost Taxpayers Over $1 Billion
- A Congressman and a Doctor Reported a Woman Being Shot at Trump Rally: She’s Vanished from Official Reports
- Jamie Dimon Goes Missing from Earnings Call, After Dumping $183 Million of His JPMorgan Chase Stock Earlier this Year
- U.S. Senate Candidate Backed by Hedge Fund Billionaires Was Sitting in Front Row at Trump Rally as the Sniper Fired into the Bleachers
- Project 2025: The Fossil Fuel and Banking Money Behind the Madness
- The Fund Created to Unwind a Failing Megabank Has a Problem: There’s No Money in It
- Joe Biden Versus the New York Times
- Grand Jury Transcript in Jeffrey Epstein Case Is Released, Raising Questions about Epstein’s Darkest Secrets Being Protected in JPMorgan Cases
- The Supreme Court Crowns a King, Immunizing Future Criminal Acts Under Project 2025 – a Right Wing Manifesto
- The Debate Disaster and the Supreme Court’s “Chevron” Repeal Have a Money Trail Leading to Charles Koch
- Congressman Andy Barr Stacks a Hearing on the Fed’s Stress Tests with Lobbyists for Megabanks
- The Fed Posts Historic Operating Losses As It Pays Out 5.40 Percent Interest to Banks
- Goldman Sachs’ Bank Derivatives Have Grown from $40 Trillion to $54 Trillion in Five Years; So How Did Its Credit Exposure Improve by 200 Percent?
- The Fed and FDIC Wake Up Suddenly to the Threat of Derivatives, Flunking the Four Largest Derivative Banks on their Wind-Down Plans
- Is the Stock Market Setting Investors Up for a Tech Bust Similar to the Dot.com Bust?
- Chase Bank Customers Are Reporting a Wave of Wire Fraud in their Accounts; the Bank Won’t Make Good on the Looted Funds
- The Senate Race in Ohio Is the Sickest in U.S. History in Terms of Billionaire Money from Outside the State
- Sullivan & Cromwell’s Legal Work for Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto House of Fraud Is Getting a Closer Look in Two Federal Court Cases
Search Results for: Federal Reserve
The Fed Tried to Give Away $1 Trillion to Wall Street Today and Failed, Suggesting Specific Banks Are In Trouble
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 16, 2020 ~
What is the world coming to when the New York Fed can’t mix up $1 trillion of almost-free money in its punch bowl and get the mega Wall Street banks to drink freely?
The New York Fed handed out $129.60 billion this morning at an average interest rate of 0.112. That was for a one-day loan to one or more of Wall Street’s trading firms. The specific names of which firms are doing the borrowing are a closely-guarded secret at the Fed – just as they were during the financial crisis in 2008 until media lawsuits and a legislative amendment forced the banks’ names out into the open. All that the public is allowed to know today is that any of the Fed’s 24 primary dealers (Wall Street trading houses) are allowed to borrow from the facility. (See list below.)
The New York Fed also offered $500 billion in a 28-day loan this morning and, stunningly, it only had offers for $18.45 billion of the $500 billion, which was loaned at an average interest rate of 0.151 percent.
Despite that poor showing at its money spigot party this morning, the New York Fed made a surprise announcement and said it was throwing another money giveaway of $500 billion at 1:30 p.m. today. Again, only takers for $19.40 billion of the $500 billion showed up. The loans were made at the incredibly low average interest rate of 0.102 percent.
There was this same lack of demand last Thursday and Friday when the Fed tried to give away, almost for free, $1.5 trillion over the two-day span.
What could possibly account for this lack of greed from the typical pigs at the trough?
The reason that jumps to mind to anyone who has been following the Fed’s money spigot closely, is that there are only a handful of Wall Street banks that are in desperate need of this cash. Since the beginning of this program last fall, the New York Fed has imposed caps on how much any one of the 24 Wall Street firms could borrow at each offering. It refers to this limit as a “proposition.”
So, for example, on the latest $500 billion loans, firms can make a “proposition” up to $20 billion on loans backed by U.S. Treasury collateral and up to $20 billion on loans backed by government-backed mortgage securities. It’s not clear if the Fed would provide an individual bank with a total of $40 billion on that specific loan or just $20 billion for both propositions.
It’s also not clear if the Fed has, without the public’s knowledge, imposed an overall cap on how much any one bank can borrow within a specific period of time.
But what today’s unscheduled afternoon loan operation suggests is that a bank that borrowed last Thursday or Friday or this morning, may have been in need of more assistance this afternoon.
We looked at how the Fed’s primary dealers were trading today to see which banks were showing the most distress. At approximately 2:30 today, these banks were showing large percentage declines on the day: Citigroup was down a scary 18.24 percent; Morgan Stanley was down 14.35 percent; Bank of America was down 14.38 percent; and JPMorgan Chase was down 13.64 percent.
Deutsche Bank had earlier in the day traded at a new all-time low of $4.99 before bouncing back to $5.39 for a percentage decline of 9.67 percent. That leaves the bank with just $11.5 billion in common equity capital versus tens of trillions of dollars (notional) in derivatives exposure.
Federal Reserve’s 24 Primary Dealers (Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York)
The Fed Has Pumped $9 Trillion into Wall Street Over the Past Six Months, But Mnuchin Says “This Isn’t Like the Financial Crisis”
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 14, 2020 ~ On February 12, 2020, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 29,551.42. Yesterday, March 13, the Dow closed at 23,185.62 -– a loss of 6,365.80 points in one month’s time, or 21.54 percent. In 2008, the greatest financial calamity since the Great Depression, the Dow had lost 2,339.60 points or 21.4 percent one month after the frightening events of September 15, 2008 when Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch had to be taken over by Bank of America, and one day before the U.S. government seized the giant insurer, AIG, because it couldn’t pay the tens of billions of dollars in derivative bets it had made with the mega banks on Wall Street. On this past Friday morning, in what appeared to be an effort to restore confidence on Wall Street, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin gave an interview on … Continue reading
The Fed Has 233 Secret Documents about JPMorgan’s Potential Role in the Repo Loan Crisis
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 13, 2020 ~ The Federal Reserve Board of Governors has acknowledged to Wall Street On Parade that it has 233 documents that might shed some light on why JPMorgan Chase was allowed by the Fed to draw down $158 billion of the reserves it held at the Fed last year, creating a liquidity crisis in the overnight loan market according to sources on Wall Street. After taking four months to respond to what should have been a 20-business day turnaround on our Freedom of Information Act request, the Federal Reserve denied our FOIA in its entirety. (Our earlier request to the New York Fed resulted in the same kind of stonewalling. See The New York Fed Is Keeping JPMorgan’s Secrets Close to Its Chest.) The Wall Street liquidity crisis forced the Federal Reserve, beginning on September 17 of last year, to begin making … Continue reading
Another Dangerous Virus Hits the U.S. – Wall Street Bank Contagion
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 12, 2020 ~ There has been a lot of delusional talk about the strong capital levels of the mega banks on Wall Street, not only from the Federal Reserve, but also from Wall Street analysts spreading fantasies about the banks on cable news programs. We took an afternoon off last Friday to hear what was being said about the banks on CNBC. We were stunned to hear Mike Mayo, a long-tenured bank analyst on Wall Street, who currently works for Wells Fargo Securities, deliver a huckster-like assessment of the mega Wall Street banks. Mayo said this: “The banking industry has the strongest balance sheet in a generation. Now think about this: the banks have added $1 trillion of additional capital – that’s $1 trillion with a T; $2 trillion of additional cash; $3 trillion of additional deposits. You have a Federal Reserve stress … Continue reading
There Was a Bloodbath in Wall Street Banks and Insurers Yesterday
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 10, 2020 ~ President Donald Trump is bringing a pea shooter to a gunfight. If you look carefully at the charts on this page from yesterday’s trading bloodbath, it’s clear that there is a deep financial crisis playing out. The idea that this can be remedied with a payroll tax cut is the stuff of tooth fairies. And this crisis didn’t begin with the coronavirus. Headlines about the virus did not start appearing in the U.S. until January of this year. But the Federal Reserve began making hundreds of billions of dollars each week in cheap loans to Wall Street’s banks on September 17, 2019 — the first time it had done this since the 2008 financial crisis. You can earmark September 17, 2019 as the actual date that this Financial Crisis II got underway. All of the toothless financial reforms of the … Continue reading
What’s the End Game in the Saudi Oil Price War?
By Pam Martens: March 9, 2020 ~ In early afternoon trading, West Texas Intermediate, the domestic crude oil in the U.S., had lost over 20 percent on the day, 39 percent in the last 18 calendar days and 48 percent from its peak this year. The panic selling resulted from a failed OPEC meeting with its allies last week when Russia refused to go along with crude oil production cuts proposed by OPEC to shore up the price of crude. Following the failed meeting, Saudi Arabia began to dramatically discount its oil prices to customers to grab market share. It reminded me of an earlier Saudi oil price war in 1986 – without the coronavirus to add to the panic. In 1986 I was working at Shearson with newly acquired stock and commodity licenses. I had the good fortune of sitting next to a very savvy female oil trader who … Continue reading
Two Charts Explain Why Wall Street Banks Are Under So Much Selling Pressure
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 6, 2020 ~ Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 large cap companies closed with a loss of 969.5 points or 3.58 percent. That was bad enough but the losses among the biggest Wall Street banks outpaced the Dow losses by a significant margin. Typically, JPMorgan Chase is one of the better performers among the Wall Street banks in the midst of a big selloff. But not yesterday. It closed with a loss of 4.91 percent – a loss larger than Goldman Sachs (- 4.77 percent), which has a large criminal fine hanging over its head. The news that Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, had heart surgery on Thursday was not reported until after the stock market had closed. The losses among the other mega banks on Wall Street yesterday were equally unsettling. Morgan Stanley lost 5.86 percent; Citigroup … Continue reading
Demand for Fed’s Repo Loans Surges Past $100 Billion a Day as 10-Year Treasury Hits Lowest Rate in 149 Years
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 5, 2020 ~ Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell certainly has an odd notion of what constitutes an “orderly” market. At his press conference on Tuesday, following the announcement that the Fed was cutting its Fed Funds rate by a half point without waiting for its regularly scheduled meeting when rate cuts are normally deliberated, Powell said that “financial markets are functioning in an orderly manner and all that sort of thing.” Challenging Powell’s assessment of “orderly,” the Dow dropped 603 points in the span of less than 30 minutes while he was speaking at his press conference and trying his best to bolster confidence in the market. That didn’t seem very orderly. On top of that, at 8:45 a.m. that very morning, the New York Fed had pumped $100 billion in 1-day repo loans into the trading houses on Wall Street, $8.6 billion … Continue reading
Timeline of How Fed Chair Powell Knocked 603 Points Off the Dow Yesterday
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 4, 2020 ~ We write this with some trepidation that after this appears in print Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell will stop taking questions at his press conferences or that all media questions will have to be routed through Vice President Mike Pence’s press office, as is now occurring with matters pertaining to the coronavirus. (We say that with only some facetiousness.) However, in this age of spin, facts matter more than ever. First, a little background. After losing 3600 points the prior week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average staged a monster rally (more likely a short squeeze) on Monday, climbing 1293 points to close at 26,703. At 1:34 a.m. (the wee hours of Tuesday morning) President Donald Trump posted a tweet to his Twitter page stating, among other things, that the Fed should ease and “cut rate big” adding that “Powell led … Continue reading
Central Bankers Can’t Save Us This Time
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 3, 2020 ~ There is a time for scientists and carefully vetted facts and a time for men who tell the public that everything is great, nothing to see here. It’s clearly a time for the former and less delusional chatter from the latter. The latest magical thinking is that if Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin get on a phone call this morning with the other G7 finance ministers and central bank governors, they can seduce or strongarm the group to announce rate cuts or fiscal stimulus to keep stock markets from further steep declines and GDP from contracting. (For how this played out previously, we recommend Nomi Prins’ brilliant book, Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World.) Unfortunately, the Fed Chair and the U.S. Treasury Secretary are fighting the last war, the financial crisis of 2008, when … Continue reading
