By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 24, 2024 ~ The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) typically receives high praise from Wall Street On Parade for leveling the playing field between the pillagers on Wall Street and the hardworking poor and middle class of America. But yesterday’s announcement of the CFPB’s settlement with Goldman Sachs and Apple over some of the most abusive conduct we have observed against consumers in decades left us with the impression that Goldman Sachs’ lawyers had browbeat the CFPB into a watered-down deal. The enforcement action by the CFPB pertained to years of abuses by both Apple and Goldman Sachs involving the Apple Credit Card. Under the CFPB’s settlement, Goldman Sachs will pay $19.8 million in redress to victims and a $45 million civil money penalty, bringing Goldman’s total settlement to $64.8 million. Apple will pay a $25 million civil money penalty for a combined $89.8 million … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 22, 2024 ~ Four researchers at the University of Westminster School of Finance and Accounting in London have taken a hard look at the much-touted Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in the U.S. that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010. The voluminous 848-page bill followed the greatest financial crash in the U.S. since the Great Depression. Unfortunately, it was big on word count and short on iron-clad reforms, leaving the implementation of final rules to be negotiated by revolving-door regulators and an army of Wall Street lobbyists and lawyers. (For how that has played out over the ensuing 14 years, see here, here, here and here.) The authors of the study are Dr. Julie Ayton; Professor Abdelhafid Benamraoui; Dr. Huyen (Trang) Ngo; and Dr. Stefan van Dellen. They define the purpose of the study as follows: “The research paper tests two critical … Continue reading →

Commentary Next to Arrows Has Been Added by Wall Street On Parade. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 21, 2024 ~ According to its own FRED data, the last time the central bank of the United States – the Federal Reserve – operated in the green was September 14, 2022, more than two years ago. Since then, it has been consistently losing over $1 billion a week with its cumulative operating losses now topping $204 billion as of the last reporting by the Fed on October 16, 2024. Operating losses of this magnitude are unprecedented at the of Fed, which was created in 1913. If a publicly-traded company had been bleeding operating losses of more than $1 billion a week for more than two years, there would very likely be a change of leadership at the top. But Fed Chair Jerome Powell is no ordinary mortal. He survived the worst trading … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 17, 2024 ~ The risk of Big Tech firms like Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), and Microsoft getting an entrée into the federally-insured banking system by being allowed to buy or create a federally-insured industrial bank has raised alarm bells among three nonprofit watchdogs and the law professor who, literally, wrote the book on the mushrooming systemic risks in the U.S. banking system. Arthur E. Wilmarth, Jr., Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University Law School, joined with the Consumer Federation of America, Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, and the Center for Responsible Lending, to file an 18-page letter last Friday with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). (For background on Wilmarth’s seminal book, see our report: Everything this Book Predicted on Wall Street Megabanks Ruling their Regulators Is Now Unfolding.) Friday’s letter was in response to the FDIC’s proposal to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 15, 2024 ~ On Sunday, the Washington Post reported that it had obtained an email penned by a Forest Service official who was assisting in Hurricane Helene recovery response operations in Western North Carolina indicating that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “had advised agencies on the ground to relocate workers, noting that U.S. military personnel ‘had come across…trucks of armed militia saying they were out hunting FEMA.’ ” While the report of trucks of armed militia has yet to be confirmed, a North Carolina man armed with a handgun and AR-style rifle was arrested on Saturday after allegedly stating that he was going to “go mess up some FEMA personnel,” according to Captain Jamie Keever of the Rutherford County, North Carolina Sheriff’s Office. The arrested man, 44-year old William Jacob Parsons, has been released on bail. That decision will, no doubt, raise anxiety … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 14, 2024 ~ For years now, we have observed the digital front page of Bloomberg News treating JPMorgan Chase’s Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, as the wise, venerable statesman of Wall Street. (See here, here, and here for a quick background.) That reverential treatment has continued as the bank Dimon is charged with overseeing has admitted to the following: laundering money for the largest Ponzi scheme mastermind in history, Bernie Madoff; rigging foreign exchange markets; rigging trading in U.S. Treasury securities and the precious metals markets; using depositors’ money from its federally-insured bank to trade derivatives in London and lose at least $6.2 billion of its depositors’ money; bribing Chinese officials with jobs for their relatives in order to get business deals in China. Even worse, throughout much of last year, the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands built a comprehensive case in federal court … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 11, 2024 ~ The size, wind speed intensity, and devastating water impacts of hurricanes originating from the record hot waters of the Gulf of Mexico have sent a wake up call to local and state officials up and down the East Coast of the United States as well as to federal government officials engaged in disaster relief. Hurricane Helene made landfall on Thursday night, September 26, as a Category 4 hurricane near Perry, Florida. It then proceeded to unleash its wrath northward, plowing through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Decimated areas in Western North Carolina – cities and towns such as Asheville, Chimney Rock, Lake Lure, Fairview, Black Mountain and Swannanoa – are 485 miles north of where Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida. Unprecedented levels of rainfall from Hurricane Helene turned Western North Carolina rivers into raging torrents of water that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 7, 2024 ~ On September 24, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released its Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities for the second quarter of this year. The OCC is the federal regulator of banks that operate across state lines, which are known as “national banks.” The shorthand for this report should be the “Casino Report.” Increasingly, the report showcases how much dangerous trading activity the brokerage firms on Wall Street have been able to muscle into their federally-insured banking units where the deposits of millions of average Americans reside. Since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 under the Bill Clinton administration, Wall Street trading firms have been allowed to combine with federally-insured banks – creating an endless series of crises and bailouts. No bank has been able to blur the lines between a trading casino and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 3, 2024 ~ As desperate and traumatized residents of Western North Carolina have learned over the past week, everything Americans thought they knew about storm threats must now be reexamined. Some Western North Carolina counties located 485 miles north of where Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on September 26 in Florida’s Big Bend area have reported more deaths than the entire state of Florida. At yesterday’s press briefing in Buncombe County, North Carolina, Sheriff Quentin Miller reported that the death toll for his county from Hurricane Helene had reached 61; that’s four times the 14 Hurricane Helene-related deaths that the state of Florida is reporting. As of this morning, total deaths reported in all states impacted by Hurricane Helene is 190, making it the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. After wiping out communities on … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 1, 2024 ~ If you think you are safe from climate change, sea level rise, Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, storm surge and the like because you don’t live near an ocean or the Gulf of Mexico, the humanitarian crisis from Hurricane Helene that is playing out in Western North Carolina should quickly reorient your thinking on the matter. (You can be assured that it is doing just that in actuarial offices at insurance companies across the United States right now.) The worst hit areas of Western North Carolina – cities and towns like Asheville, Chimney Rock, Lake Lure, Fairview, Black Mountain, and Swannanoa – are 485 miles north of Perry, Florida, the town closest to where Hurricane Helene made landfall on Thursday night, September 26, as a Category 4 hurricane on the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. These decimated towns in Western … Continue reading →