Search Results for: citadel

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 21, 2015 On October 23, 2008, with much of Wall Street lying in ruins and the U.S. economy rapidly heading toward a 1930s type of collapse, Henry Waxman, Chair of the House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee, attempted to elicit answers from Alan Greenspan, the former Chair of the Federal Reserve for an unprecedented 18 years who had pushed for the deregulation of Wall Street that had left the country teetering. After enumerating a series of  recent financial collapses occurring from either deregulation or corrupted business principles, Waxman said: “Each of these case studies is different, but they share common themes. In each case, corporate excess and greed enriched company executives at enormous cost to shareholders and our economy. In each case, these abuses could have been prevented if Federal regulators had paid more attention and intervened with responsible regulations.” In those three sentences, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 9, 2015 There are theories floating around Wall Street that Barron’s Senior Editor and award-winning investigative reporter with a law degree from Columbia, Bill Alpert, has been kidnapped by evil forces on Wall Street and replaced with a look-alike. How else to explain this wacky story under his byline on February 28. Alpert’s article was quickly discredited by Eric Hunsader of Nanex in an article titled “Robber Barrons.” (We don’t think Hunsader meant to say “Barons” either.) Themis Trading, whose owners literally wrote the book on Broken Markets, weighed in with a detailed debunking. Alpert’s article starts out with this subhead: “Small investors actually get good prices from brokers and market makers.” It then moves to debunk the Michael Lewis book Flash Boys, which is effectively debunking 60 Minutes as well, since it vetted and aired the same material. Alpert writes: “In the furor … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 27, 2014  The contrast between Wall Street’s continuity government in Washington under another Clinton in the White House and the charismatic populist voice of Senator Elizabeth Warren as she stumps for Democrats in the midterms, is awakening millions of Americans to the idea that there may be choices after all in the 2016 presidential election. Columnist Eugene Robinson said it best last Monday in the Washington Post, writing that Senator Warren’s “swing through Colorado, Minnesota and Iowa to rally the faithful displayed something no other potential contender for the 2016 presidential nomination, including Hillary Clinton, seems able to present: a message.” What Robinson really means is “a message of hope” – that Wall Street’s wealth transfer system, institutionalized under a protection racket by members of Congress who keep their seats using Wall Street’s campaign dough, could come under serious challenge with Warren in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 9, 2014 Wall Street awoke to a big problem this morning. Their army of physicists designing artificial intelligence algorithms to skim money from millions of trades undertaken by the pensions and mutual funds owned by the average American may not be smart enough for a brand new form of competition. That brand new competition is a group of Senators whose brains are rapidly gathering asymmetric information on the dirty dealings of Wall Street by clustering key Wall Street executives and experts into hearing panels and then drilling down for how things are really operating today at the stock exchanges, in the dark pools, and in the “casinos” run by the high frequency traders. Equally important, by taking first-hand testimony at this series of hearings, the U.S. Senate is acknowledging two things: the Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped the ball and the Senate … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: June 24, 2014 It’s gotten to the point that to maintain an account on Wall Street you have to surrender to a no-law zone. Wall Street is the only industry in America that can force its customers’ claims into its own private justice system, effectively closing the nation’s courts to its customers, while imposing a system where case law and legal precedent can be ignored and the public and press are barred from observing the proceedings. Under that shield from the courts and the full measure of the law, Wall Street rules itself much of the time. Just yesterday it was reported that after Wall Street firms pummeled their self-regulator with angry letters, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) withdrew a proposed rule that would force brokerage firms to tell customers what financial incentives they had paid a broker to switch firms. Often those incentives require reaching … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 19, 2014 Outside of the Washington Times, there was a virtual corporate media blackout on the high frequency trading hearing held yesterday by the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment – which came one day after Senator Carl Levin’s hearing on the same topic. The media blackout did a deep disservice to the brilliant perspectives brought to the table by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Mark Warner and two witnesses who deal every day of their lives with the corrupted and disfigured trading venues the SEC has allowed to evolve in what used to be the most trusted stock market in the world. On the Senate’s witness panel were Jeffrey Solomon, CEO of Cowen and Company, an investment bank with roots dating to 1918 and Andrew Brooks, Head of U.S. Equity Trading for T. Rowe Price (who has been a trader for … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: July 19, 2013 Hedge Hogs, the Barbara Dreyfuss book that hit number 9 on the Washington Post’s Hardcover Bestseller List last week, should have a cautionary logo: “Don’t Start Reading This Book Late In the Day: It Could Be Hazardous To Your Sleep.” If you are an avid follower of Wall Street, you’ll read it in one sitting.   Sales of the book may soar if, as reported yesterday, JPMorgan reaches an estimated $500 million settlement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission shortly for rigging energy markets and we learn the details of just what its traders were doing to manipulate energy prices.  What does this have to do with Hedge Hogs? The Dreyfuss book is the fast moving and riveting account of Amaranth Advisors LLC, the hedge fund that went from holding $9.668 billion in client assets in August 2006 to flaming out in losses exceeding $6 billion … Continue reading →