Search Results for: jay clayton 8 out of 10

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 23, 2020 ~ There’s something unsettling about the top law enforcement officer in the United States telling a brazen lie to the American people late on a Friday night when most folks have called it quits for the week on the news. Shortly after 9 p.m. last Friday evening, the U.S. Attorney General, William Barr, released a statement indicating that the top federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, was “stepping down.” In his place, Barr said this: “I am pleased to announce that President Trump intends to nominate Jay Clayton, currently the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to serve as the next United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.” Two hours later, Geoffrey Berman released his own statement indicating that William Barr had just told a brazen lie to the American people. Berman’s statement … Continue reading →

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 →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 8, 2020 ~  The Office of Financial Research (OFR) was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to keep the Financial Stability Oversight Council (F-SOC) informed on emerging threats that have the potential to implode the financial system — as occurred in 2008 in the worst financial crash since the Great Depression. The Trump administration has gutted both its funding and staff. One of the early warning systems of an impending financial crisis that OFR was supposed to have created is the heat map above. Green means low risk; yellow tones mean moderate risk; while red tones flash a warning of a serious problem. On September 17, 2019, liquidity was so strained on Wall Street that the Federal Reserve had to step in and began providing hundreds of billions of dollars per week in repo loans. By January 27, 2020 (before … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 11, 2019 ~ It’s becoming clear that the reason so many Americans have their pockets picked by Wall Street scam artists year after year is that mainstream media simply won’t put the dangers of dealing with the mega Wall Street banks on their front pages. Yesterday’s Senate Banking hearing is yet one more example of mainstream media failing the interests of the American people. At yesterday’s hearing, Senator after Senator probed the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, on what were clearly intentional failings to hold Wall Street accountable. The scathing rebukes of the SEC came from both Republican and Democrats on the Senate panel. But you will find no reports about that hearing on the front pages of newspapers today — or in any section of leading newspapers. Particularly harsh in their appraisal of Clayton’s rein at the SEC … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 16, 2019 ~ Yesterday, the Public Investors Advocate Bar Association (PIABA) Foundation released a research study showing that Wall Street’s banks and brokerage firms are back to their old tricks again in gaming the private justice system that its crony self-regulator, FINRA, has carved out for the benefit of Wall Street to the detriment of Main Street. PIABA previously exposed how FINRA, when it was called NASD, rigged the selection process for picking arbitrators so that the croniest ones kept getting selected. PIABA released this statement on July 20, 2000: “In direct and flagrant violation of federal law, the NASD systematically evaded the Securities and Exchange Commission approved ‘Neutral List Selection System’ arbitration rule requiring arbitrators to be selected on a rotating basis. Instead, the NASD secretly programmed its computers to select some arbitrators on a seniority basis – just what the rule was … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 26, 2019 ~ Editor’s Note: We have a news flash for our reporting colleagues at mainstream media – you are missing high drama and great quotes by failing to cover the Wall Street-related hearings being held regularly by the House Financial Services Committee. This Committee is dead serious about holding Federal regulators and Wall Street banks’ collective feet to the fire. After more than 30 years of watching congressional hearings covering Wall Street, we have to commend the Chair of this Committee, Maxine Waters, and the individual Congressmen and Congresswomen who serve on this Committee for their outstanding knowledge of how Wall Street has erected an elaborate and highly efficient wealth transfer system from the poor and middle class of America to the pockets of the one percent. ~~~ On Tuesday, September 24, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee, chaired … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 4, 2019 ~  On July 29, those savvy market watchers at Themis Trading posted a report on their blog about how a Republican Senator from Louisiana (about 1400 miles from Wall Street) had taken a peculiar interest in the long-delayed system that would shine a bright light on who might be rigging stock trading on any particular day. The system is called the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) and the Securities and Exchange Commission has been stalling its creation for the entire 85 years the SEC has existed and been charged with investor protection. The idea of the CAT is to spot illegal and manipulative trading and pinpoint exactly what firms and individuals are placing the trades by looking at real-time data. A stock market without a CAT is nothing more than a thinly disguised wealth transfer system for the one percent and, apparently, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 6, 2019 ~ By the closing bell of yesterday’s broad stock market selloff, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which had been down over 900 points in the afternoon, closed with a loss of 767 points or 2.90 percent. The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index closed even deeper in the red with a loss of 2.98 percent. But those losses looked mild compared to what happened to four of the biggest banks on Wall Street yesterday. Bank of America, parent of the giant retail brokerage chain, Merrill Lynch, closed with a loss of 4.42 percent. Morgan Stanley, which had been pummeled in the big bank selloff in December, lost 3.87 percent while Goldman Sachs was not far behind with a loss of 3.67 percent. The bank with the most foreign exposure and a monster bailout in 2008, Citigroup, which in a fair and efficient … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 6, 2019 ~ The long-awaited final rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission called Regulation Best Interest, which grew out of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation and was intended to require that the nation’s stockbrokers put their clients’ interests ahead of their own, was voted on by the SEC yesterday. Three Republican Commissioners voted for it while the sole Democrat, Robert Jackson, voted against it and issued a detailed statement on why it sells out Main Street. SEC Chairman, Jay Clayton, was one of the three who voted in favor of passing the rule. Prior to joining the Trump administration as SEC Chair, Clayton was a law partner at one of Wall Street’s go-to law firms, Sullivan & Cromwell, where he had represented 8 of the 10 largest Wall Street banks within the prior three years. (See related articles below for how … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 14, 2019 ~ A crony Federal regulator, or one perceived to be captured by the industry it polices, will eventually doom consumer confidence in the products and services of the industry to which it provides oversight. President Obama appointed Mary Jo White to serve as his Securities and Exchange Commission Chair for the final term of his presidency. White and her husband both worked for large law firms that together had represented every major Wall Street bank – the same ones that had created the largest financial collapse since the Great Depression in 2008. White’s supervision of Wall Street was so derelict that Senator Elizabeth Warren sent her a scathing 13-page critique of her performance. Warren called out the SEC’s practice of settling the vast majority of cases without requiring meaningful admissions of guilt and White’s repeated recusals from investigations because of her prior employment (and her husband’s … Continue reading →