By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 24, 2024 ~ Eleven days after an assassination attempt was made on a presidential candidate’s life at a mass gathering in Pennsylvania, the U.S. Secret Service will face added strains and risks by the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, allowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come to Washington, D.C. and address a joint session of Congress today. (Numerous seats at the session will be empty as a number of progressives have indicated that they will boycott the event over Netanyahu’s conduct of Israel’s war in Gaza which has resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe.) Netanyahu arrived in D.C. on Monday. One day later, protests were occurring outside his hotel and a building that houses Congressional offices, according to the Associated Press. A mass protest attracting thousands is expected during his speech to the joint session of Congress today. In addition to protecting … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 22, 2024 ~ Today, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is scheduled to conduct a hearing on the conduct of the Secret Service in preparing for the Donald Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday, July 13. At the rally, a 20-year old sniper was able to fire on the President and the crowd from a nearby rooftop, resulting in one death and two serious injuries requiring hospitalization. The President sustained a reported grazing of the ear, but was able to walk away. The sniper was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper team on a nearby rooftop. Right wing Republicans on the House Oversight Committee have a widely-reported agenda. They want the Director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, to resign in disgrace. If past is prologue, Director Cheatle will be subjected to a barrage of insults and indignities by MAGA Republicans … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 19, 2024 ~ Congressman Mike Kelly (R-PA) was present at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday, July 13, and gave an interview to Bob Costa of CBS News on the same evening that the shootings occurred. Costa quoted Kelly as telling him: “I believe a lady who was next to me was hit; other people were hit.” In a far more detailed interview, Dr. Joseph Meyn, an OB-GYN who was present at the rally, spoke to Dasha Burns of NBC News, telling her the following: “I was attending the rally, I was in the set of bleachers to the very far left of the podium where Donald Trump, President Trump, was speaking. I was there with friends. I heard several gun shots. The man beside me suffered a gunshot wound to the head; was instantly killed; fell to the bottom of the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 17, 2024 ~ We can’t remember a time when the Chairman and CEO of the largest, most complex and scandal-ridden bank in the United States, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, was too busy to squeeze in an appearance at the company’s heavily-scrutinized quarterly earnings call with analysts. That happened last Friday. When something happens for the first time at a bank that has racked up five felony counts, has been doled out non-prosecution and deferred-prosecution agreements by the U.S. Department of Justice in a steady drumbeat since 2014, and spent most of last year in the headlines for a decade of sluicing tens of thousands of dollars per month in hard cash to the international sex trafficker of children, Jeffrey Epstein, it pays to sit up and pay attention. Reuters’ reporter John Foley also found it “unusual” that Dimon had missed the earnings call … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 15, 2024 ~ Dave McCormick, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, was sitting in the front row at Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday and narrowly missed being in the line of fire according to an interview he gave to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday morning. McCormick told Tapper that Trump had called out from the podium, asking McCormick to join him on the stage and he “started to walk up onto the stage” when Trump said: “No, no, I will have you up in a little bit. And then the shooting started a minute or two later. And so, had he not changed his mind, I think I would have been up on that stage.” According to the PBS video of Trump’s opening remarks at the rally, which also capture the gunfire, Trump called McCormick a “great, great … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 11, 2024 ~ Last week, Wall Street On Parade published an article with this title: The Supreme Court Crowns a King, Immunizing Future Criminal Acts Under Project 2025 – a Right Wing Manifesto. We began the article with this: “In the span of two business days, six of the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have radically altered American democracy. On Friday, those six right-wing justices gutted the ability of federal government agencies to protect the waters Americans drink, the air they breathe, their ability to impose food and drug safety rules and worker protections. On Monday, the same six effectively crowned the President of the United States a king by immunizing the President from criminal prosecution for any conduct that can be construed as official acts.” This unprecedented action by six of the right-wing Supreme Court Justices appears to be laying the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 9, 2024 ~ Last week the American Banker published an opinion article by Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr., the Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University. Wilmarth is the man who wrote the seminal book on the continuing threat to financial stability posed by U.S. megabanks – the same ones that blew up Wall Street and the U.S. economy in 2008. The title of Wilmarth’s article (paywall) is: “The FDIC’s resolution plan for failed megabanks is an empty promise.” The thrust of the article is this: the Dodd-Frank Act was passed by Congress and signed into law in 2010 – 14 years ago. One of its primary goals was to prevent taxpayers from having to rescue megabanks, as occurred in 2008. A key component of that goal is Title II of Dodd-Frank, which provides an Orderly Resolution Plan to unwind failing megabanks that does … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 8, 2024 ~ When we heard that the scrappy, independent Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, was going to appear on “Face the Nation” yesterday, we figured he might have something to say about the New York Times’ unprecedented and relentless drumbeat to force President Joe Biden to step down as a Presidential candidate. We weren’t disappointed. Sanders said this: “I will tell you this, whether you’re a Republican, Democrat or Independent: the American people are disillusioned, they are angry, they think that government is busy paying attention to the rich and wealthy campaign donors. And by the way, I find it personally insulting that the New York Times and all these media organizations go out front page ‘This is what the billionaire campaign donors feel.’ Well, to hell with the billionaire campaign donors. Let’s worry about the working class of this country and what … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 3, 2024 ~ On Monday, the transcript of the July 19, 2006 grand jury proceedings involving sexual assaults and rape by Jeffrey Epstein against underage girls in Palm Beach County, Florida was released by a Circuit Court. The Palm Beach Post newspaper had sued in that court for release of the transcript in 2019 in order to shine more light on how Florida State Attorney, Barry Krischer, had ignored a powder keg of evidence against Epstein that had been developed by the Palm Beach Police and cut a sweetheart deal under pressure from Epstein’s attorneys. Florida legislation, signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis, called for the transcript to be released on or after July 1, in response to the extensive public interest in the case. Despite police evidence that Epstein had sexually assaulted dozens of underage school girls, Krischer and the U.S. Department … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 2, 2024 ~ In the span of two business days, six of the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have radically altered American democracy. On Friday, those six right-wing justices gutted the ability of federal government agencies to protect the waters Americans drink, the air they breathe, their ability to impose food and drug safety rules and  worker protections. On Monday, the same six effectively crowned the President of the United States a king by immunizing the President from criminal prosecution for any conduct that can be construed as official acts. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a scathing dissent. (Scroll down to her dissent at this link.) To drive home the hubris of the majority’s decision, she read her dissent aloud in the courtroom, boldly enunciating her weightiest words. In her dissent, which was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji … Continue reading →