Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 27, 2021 ~ For the past 19 years, China has been stonewalling U.S. regulators over access to the work papers of auditors of publicly traded companies that are based in China but listed on U.S. stock exchanges. China takes the position that these audit work papers hold state secrets and it prohibits audit firms from releasing the documents directly to U.S. regulators, effectively gutting U.S. law. Finally, last December, Congress addressed the long brewing problem. Both houses of Congress unanimously passed legislation called the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act. The legislation requires that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) identify companies that are listed in the U.S. which the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) cannot “inspect or investigate completely because of a position taken by an authority in the foreign jurisdiction.” The legislation also requires the listed companies to provide documentation showing that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 19, 2021 ~ When high risk derivatives start blowing up again at Wall Street’s mega banks and tanking the U.S. economy, be sure to send your thoughts along to these two men: former Congressman Randy Hultgren (R-IL) and former Congressman Kevin Yoder (R-KS). You can reach Hultgren at the Illinois Bankers Association where he now sits as President and CEO after losing his seat in Congress in the 2018 election. Yoder…wait for it…is a registered lobbyist at Hobart Hallaway & Quayle Ventures after also losing his seat in the general election of 2018. These two men were effectively the handmaidens of Wall Street in getting a critical derivatives provision in the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation repealed in 2014. We’ll get to the specifics of the role the two men played in a moment, but first some background. According to the official analysis and report … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 18, 2021 ~ Before daybreak on any business day in lower Manhattan, the glow of lights from Bloomberg terminals illuminate windows at 33 Liberty Street, home of the New York Fed. The New York Fed not only has its own trading floor with speed dials to the Wall Street trading houses, but it also has its own global markets intelligence gathering group, called simply the Markets Group. According to a previously released educational video featuring Karin Kimbrough, then the Director of Financial Stability Market Monitoring at the New York Fed – a position she held until November of 2014 — the traders at the New York Fed take turns coming in at 4:30 a.m. in order to get a jump on market intelligence by calling their contacts in London, Frankfurt and Japan. (See video below.) Kimbrough explains what kind of intelligence the traders and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 17, 2021 ~ President Joe Biden is tapping insiders from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for key financial posts in his administration. These insiders played key roles during the financial crash of 2008 or the repo loan crisis in the fall of 2019 or the pandemic-related financial crisis of 2020. One of them was around for all three. We’ll get to the specific names in a moment, but first some necessary background. The Federal Reserve Board of Governors is an independent federal agency whose Board members are appointed by the President of the United States. But the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks that are part of the Federal Reserve System are owned, outright, by commercial banks, thus making these Fed banks private entities. The New York Fed stands out because it is owned by some of the largest and most dangerous mega … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 16, 2021 ~ As millions of struggling Americans face eviction this fall; as children are dying in hospitals from a raging pandemic; as his political party is facing a brutal fight in the upcoming midterms — what does former President Barack Obama do? He throws himself a lavish, celebrity-studded birthday bash at his $12 million waterfront mansion on Martha’s Vineyard with a sprawling dining tent potentially creating a super-spreader event. The party was held on Saturday evening, August 7. New York Times columnist, and Pulitzer Prize winner, Maureen Dowd, gave it the scathing review it deserved in this past Sunday’s print edition of The Times. In the article, Dowd quotes André Leon Talley’s take on the over-the-top soiree. Talley said “the Obamas are in Marie Antoinette, tacky, let-them-eat-cake mode. They need to remember their humble roots.” The brutal truth is that the Obamas have been in tacky, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 13, 2021 ~ After stepping down as Fed Chair on February 3, 2018, Janet Yellen began a whirlwind of speaking engagements that netted her millions of dollars over the next two years. But when it came time to disclose those fees after she was nominated by President Biden to become Treasury Secretary, Yellen disclosed only the fees she had made in 2019 and 2020, not the millions she had made in fees in 2018. What Yellen did disclose showed more than $7 million in speaking fees, with the bulk of that coming from Wall Street banks, trading houses and hedge funds. As the news broke this past January about Yellen’s cash haul, Senior Reporter Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica Tweeted this: “Deeply troubling two-fisted money grab from banks by Janet Yellen. This is corruption, but isn’t called that because it’s so quotidian.” Eisinger added: “Sure, Yellen … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 12, 2021 ~ On July 29 the Federal Reserve released its Annual Report for 2020. The Appendix contains 13 statistical tables that would make most folks’ eyes glaze over. Table G.5A., however, is worthy of a glass of good wine, a comfy arm chair, and some serious musing. That table provides a 36-year history of, among other things, the Fed’s deployment of Repurchase Agreements (Repo Loans) at the outbreak of a crisis; its Loans and Other Credit Extensions; and its Securities Held Outright – which have exploded since the Fed adopted Quantitative Easing (QE) in 2008. QE is the Fed’s wonky expression for it buying up trillions of dollars in notes and bonds to push interest rates down to near zero, thus forcing money in search of a return into the stock market, which is majority-owned by the top 10 percent of the wealthiest … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: August 3, 2021 ~ Risky derivative bets made by the mega banks on Wall Street, offloaded onto inadequately capitalized counterparties, were at the core of the collapse of the U.S. financial system in 2008. That collapse left millions of Americans without jobs, which led to millions of families and traumatized children losing their homes to foreclosure. The bank bosses got their million-dollar bonuses from the taxpayer bailouts and the Federal Reserve secretly pumped in over $29 trillion over 31 months to shore up the failing trading houses on Wall Street and their foreign derivative counterparties. Wall Street banks have rebuilt that derivatives doomsday machine today – a $168 trillion monster concentrated at four mega banks on Wall Street. But as we read through dozens of pages of written testimony submitted by witnesses for today’s Senate Banking hearing, the word “derivative” did not appear once. At 10:00 a.m. the U.S. Senate … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 30, 2021 ~ The Swiss mega bank, Credit Suisse, lost $5.5 billion in late March and early April from the highly-leveraged, highly concentrated stock positions it was financing via tricked-up derivatives for Archegos Capital Management, the family office hedge fund of Sung Kook “Bill” Hwang. Archegos blew up on March 25 after it defaulted on its margin calls from its banks. U.S. mega banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, were also extending high levels of margin debt to Archegos at the time of its blowup, as were other foreign banks. Over $10 billion in total losses have thus far been acknowledged by the banks. To get out in front of an ongoing Department of Justice investigation of the matter, Credit Suisse decided to hire the BigLaw firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison,  to conduct an investigation. Yesterday, Paul Weiss issued a 165-page report … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 28, 2021 ~ You really can’t make this stuff up. A G30 Working Group Chaired by Tim Geithner, the former President of the New York Fed, that secretly sluiced $29 trillion to bail out the Wall Street banks from their hubristic collapse in 2008, released a report today calling for a Standing Repo Facility from the Fed that would be “open to a broad range of market participants….” The ink was barely dry on that report when the Fed issued a press release today saying it was doing just that. The Standing Repo Facility (effectively meaning that it is permanent until the Fed says otherwise) will be able to lend out $500 billion in overnight loans each day at below-market interest rates. If the $500 billion runs out, Fed Chair Jerome Powell has the discretion to increase it. The repo operations will be conducted … Continue reading →