Search Results for: jay clayton 8 out of 10

Wall Street’s Banksters Are Clandestinely Trading the “Digital Gangster” Stock of Facebook

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Testifies Before Congress on April 10, 2018 on His Company's Technology Failings

By Pam Martens: February 19, 2019 ~ Being called a “digital gangster” by an investigative committee of the United States’ closest ally, the United Kingdom, might have been expected by the rational among us to do some serious damage to the share price of Facebook when it opened for trading this morning. The U.K. report was released yesterday when U.S. markets were closed for Presidents’ Day. But by this morning’s opening bell, it was business as usual for the serially investigated Facebook. Facebook closed Friday at $162.50 per share and opened this morning at $160.50. After a half hour of trading, Facebook’s stock was off a mere 63 cents. America is now the political dystopia ruled by Wall Street banksters and digital gangsters so the stock market no longer punishes corporate criminality. In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that it rewards it. Just look at how the stock … Continue reading

A Closer Look at Why Mnuchin Called the Big Wall Street Banks to Check on Liquidity

By Pam Martens: January 7, 2019 ~ On Sunday, December 23, 2018, the sitting U.S. Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, lit up the airwaves with the announcement on his Twitter page that he had “convened individual calls with the CEOs of the nation’s six largest banks.” The Tweet went downhill from there. The Tweet attached a press release from the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Public Affairs which named the six banks and their CEOs involved in the calls. They were Brian Moynihan, Bank of America; Michael Corbat, Citigroup; David Solomon, Goldman Sachs; Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase; James Gorman, Morgan Stanley; and Tim Sloan at Wells Fargo. Mnuchin said he asked the bank CEOs about their liquidity to fund regular operations and they told him they had “ample liquidity.” Let’s pause right there for a moment. These are the same Wall Street banks that brought the U.S. financial system to its knees … Continue reading

In 2019, Wall Street Banks Will Determine the Future of America

By Pam Martens: January 2, 2019 ~  Inevitably, investors get the kind of Wall Street they demand and deserve. That’s a paraphrase of the French philosopher Joseph de Maistre’s view on an engaged or unengaged citizenry: “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” As groggy Americans arise this morning to face the reality that their holiday escapism is over and it’s back to the grind of work and daily doses of White House tyranny and dysfunction, at 8:00 a.m. Dow futures were pointing to an approximate 300 point drop at the open of trading in New York following the worst December for stocks since the Great Depression. In short, Americans have gotten both the stock market and the government they deserve for failing to meaningfully reform both following the epic 2008 financial crash which pointed so clearly to unprecedented corruption on Wall Street and within the corridors of power in … Continue reading

Merrill Lynch Fine Renews the Question: Can You Trust Your Broker?

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 13, 2018 ~  Yesterday the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) quietly dropped a bomb on the relationship that the behemoth Wall Street firm Merrill Lynch has with its institutional clients. For those willing to skip past the timid press release from the SEC and dig carefully through the Administrative Proceeding Order, there was this startling revelation: Merrill Lynch had charged obscene markups (profits for the house) on bond trades over a three and a half-year period that were in two cases cited 23 times and 3 times the industry prescribed legal limit of less than 5 percent. Merrill Lynch agreed to settle the charges by paying $10.5 million in disgorgement to its ripped-off customers and to pay penalties of $5.2 million to the SEC. Merrill Lynch is best known as a firm with 15,000 brokers (financial advisors) in branch offices across the United … Continue reading

Elizabeth Warren Gets Wall Street Runaround on #MeToo Probe

Senator Elizabeth Warren Questions SEC Chair Jay Clayton During Senate Banking Committee Hearing, September 26, 2017

By Pam Martens: April 17, 2018 ~  As women in careers as disparate as Hollywood movie stars, television news anchors and members of Congress have fueled the #MeToo movement and spoken out against America’s workplace culture that tolerates sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, the silence from women on Wall Street has been deafening. Some reporters who have written about the silence have speculated that Wall Street has cleaned up its act, owing to the big class action lawsuits that were brought in the 1990s against some of the largest and oldest Wall Street brokerage firms. (See my Editor’s Note below.) Wall Street women’s detailed court complaints in the 90s described lewd acts during the workday (such as the hiring of strippers) or at company-sanctioned holiday parties (like having a camera shoved under a skirt to take a picture). There was also the endless degradation of women on Wall … Continue reading

Wall Street’s Regulators Move Deeper Into Darkness Under Trump

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 16, 2018 In towns across America there are laws that prevent government officials from meeting secretly. Typically, the officials must first publish a notice to the public with the date and time of the meeting; circulate the notice in a widely read publication and post the notice on the official website in order to give the public advance notice and the ability to attend the meeting or hearing. The ability of the U.S. public to attend government meetings; hear firsthand what is being done with taxpayers’ dollars; ask questions about any perceived conflicts that might exist; and file Sunshine law requests for documents is how citizens hold government officials accountable. When we lose that, we lose the entire concept of America as a country of the people, by the people and for the people. Thus, any effort at all to whittle away at … Continue reading

As SEC Chair’s Family Grows Rich from Corporate Secrecy Firm, U.S. Named #2 Facilitator of Illicit Money

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 1, 2018 Yesterday we reported that the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton – the man ostensibly in charge of providing financial transparency to the American people – has tens of millions of dollars in family net worth tied to a Delaware company specializing in providing secrecy to corporate entities. (This actually makes sense for an administration packed with billionaires with lots of tax haven accounts.) On the heels of that confidence-draining news comes the Financial Secrecy Index for 2018 which names the United States the 2nd worst country for facilitating financial secrecy and illicit money flows, just behind Switzerland. The accompanying report from the Tax Justice Network on the U.S. specifically calls out the state of Delaware, noting the following: “The U.S. provides a wide array of secrecy and tax-free facilities for non-residents, both at a Federal level and … Continue reading

Wall Street’s Top Cop Can’t Shake Money Ties to Mysterious Firm

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 31, 2018 When Jay Clayton, President Donald Trump’s pick to head Wall Street’s top cop, the Securities and Exchange Commission, was preparing for his Senate confirmation in March of 2017, the watchdog nonprofit, Public Citizen, requested in a formal letter that the Senate Banking Committee investigate Clayton’s family ties to a mysterious company called WMB Holdings. On the day of the confirmation hearing, March 23, 2017, David Dayen penned this breathtaking assessment at The Nation: “Clayton’s family gets millions of dollars in annual dividends from a private company named WMB Holdings, some of which Clayton plans to retain even if confirmed. This company and its affiliated partners (Delaware Trust Co and CSC) are conduits for creating shell corporations and other sketchy vehicles used in tax evasion and money laundering. Public Citizen found apparent links between these companies and Mossack Fonseca, the notorious Panamanian … Continue reading

Shhh! Trump’s Wall Street Regulators Keep Public in the Dark

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 8, 2018 Under the Obama presidency, a key executive of the scandalized Wall Street bank, Citigroup, was secretly in charge of selecting the people who would fill top administration posts in Obama’s White House and cabinet, while the bank was in the midst of the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history. The staffing recommendations included top posts at the Justice Department, which would fail to prosecute any major Wall Street executives for the crimes leading up to the financial crash of 2008.  (See our prior reporting on this here and here.) Under Trump, who ran on a populist platform, the top cop of Wall Street at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, is a lawyer who had represented 8 of the 10 largest Wall Street banks prior to his nomination by Trump and confirmation by the U.S. Senate to become SEC Chairman. The U.S. Treasury … Continue reading

Transparency on Wall Street: SEC Chair Raises Weak Defenses

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 4, 2017 On November 8, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman, Jay Clayton, delivered a speech at the Practising Law Institute’s 49th Annual Institute on Securities Regulation. His focus was transparency on Wall Street and he had this nugget of wisdom to share with the audience: “Looking back at enforcement actions, a common theme emerges – where opacity exists, bad behavior tends to follow. As Joseph Pulitzer said: ‘There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.’ The remainder of my remarks will concentrate on topics that have proven over time to be fertile ground for fraud on investors. The SEC may not yet have policy or rulemaking answers in these areas, but we are on the lookout for ways … Continue reading