Search Results for: koch

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 20, 2024 ~ Last Thursday, in a stunning 7-2 win for the little guys and gals in America, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau et al v Community Financial Services Association of America, Ltd., et al. Making the decision all the more stunning, it was written by Clarence Thomas, the sitting justice who has been under withering attack in the press for selling out to special interests. (There is speculation that the Thomas name is on the decision to quiet the media uproar against him.) The two dissenting votes came from Justices Samuel Alito (target of a ProPublica investigation in 2023) and Neil Gorsuch, around whom conflicts of interest controversy is also swirling. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been the target of Wall Street lobbyists since before its birth under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 31, 2024 ~ Smart Americans have found two ways to outwit the wealth extraction machinery on Wall Street. They buy a home and build its value over time with sweat equity; and/or they start their own small business. A very large number of Americans who are living comfortably in retirement today built their wealth through one or both of these avenues. Wall Street banks, on the other hand, typically extract wealth from the little guy in a multitude of insidious ways – from high interest credit cards to excessive fees, tricked-up mortgages and outright frauds. Nothing better illustrated this wealth stripping than the 2013 PBS program from Frontline called The Retirement Gamble. The program documented the following: If you work for 50 years and receive the typical long-term return of 7 percent on the stock mutual funds in your 401(k) plan, and your fees are 2 … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 26, 2023 ~ Most people in America have never heard of the newly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana. Billionaire Charles Koch, the fossil fuel kingpin and self-anointed head of the right-wing political money machine, probably likes it that way. Koch is likely hoping that Americans will just breathe a sigh of relief that the House of Representatives finally has a leader and not look any deeper into who was handed the reins. According to OpenSecrets.org, the nonprofit watchdog of campaign money, the largest industry supporting Johnson since his first federal campaign in 2015 is the oil and gas industry, which has infused $338,000 into Johnson’s campaign coffers. Of that amount, $30,000 came from the Koch Industries PAC, where Charles Koch has sat as the Chairman and CEO for 56 years. Within hours of the news that Johnson was … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 1, 2023 ~ After the public interest news outlet, ProPublica, revealed more grifting by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in April, the Supreme Court finally released the much delayed financial disclosure form for calendar year 2022 for Thomas yesterday. Thomas grudgingly provided details of some of that grifting involving billionaire Harlan Crow. But this latest grifting saga is just the tip of the iceberg for Thomas and his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas. In 2011 the watchdog group, Protect our Elections, filed a bar complaint with the Missouri Supreme Court. At the time, Thomas was admitted to practice law in the State. The complaint asked for the disbarment of Thomas on the following grounds: “Clarence Thomas breached his legal duty and violated the Rules of Professional Conduct by knowingly and willfully failing for 20 years to state truthfully on required AO 10 Financial Disclosure Forms that … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 28, 2023 ~ At the Republican Primary Debate for President last Wednesday evening, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie referred to presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy as “ChatGPT,” the artificial intelligence chatbot. The moniker struck a bell when the bellicose Ramaswamy with a too-perfect broadcaster voice and a too-perfect permanent smile showing off perfect sparkling teeth, bellowed out on the stage that climate change is “a hoax.” We immediately headed to the Federal Election Commission (FEC.gov) website to see if Big Oil or its attached-at-the-hip Charles Koch network was behind this candidate. Ramaswamy wants to stroll into the highest office in the United States despite no prior public office experience. (Because that worked out so well for all of us the last time.) Thus far, the big money trail has not led directly to Big Oil or the Koch network, but just give it time. Ramaswamy … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 25, 2023 For years Wall Street On Parade saluted the work of the Office of Financial Research (OFR) in sounding the alarms about the risks building up in the U.S. banking system – even when it was politically unpalatable for the OFR to do so. Then the Trump/Koch administration took over and gutted OFR and put a crony in charge. It does not appear that the damage to staffing and talent under the former Trump/Koch administration has been adequately repaired under the Biden administration. The OFR was created after the near collapse of the U.S. financial system in 2008. It derives its statutory role from the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010. Its key job is to issue timely alerts and research reports to keep the Financial Stability Oversight Council (F-SOC) informed of emerging financial threats or weaknesses that have the potential to crater … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 15, 2022 ~ If you are an average American without insider knowledge of how Congress works these days, you might have felt that you had stepped onto the set of Alice in Wonderland while watching the Senate Banking Committee hearing yesterday. The hearing was convened to examine the sudden collapse of the crypto exchange, FTX; its tentacles that reach into the federally-insured banking sector; and legislation that may be required to rein in the mushrooming risks that crypto poses to U.S. financial stability. Given that more than one million customers of FTX cannot get access to the money or crypto “investments” in their potentially worthless accounts; that the kingpin of this operation, Sam Bankman-Fried, was indicted on Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Justice on eight criminal counts; and that a federally-insured bank, Silvergate Bank, that held FTX customer deposits, has seen its publicly … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 8, 2022 ~ Increasingly, Americans are telling us that they no longer listen to the news – because they feel it is a threat to their peace of mind and wellbeing. That might be a short-term fix but working diligently each day to make one’s society less dystopian is likely a better long-term plan. Everything crazy and corrupt and Orwellian about life in the United States in this era of corporate and billionaire control feels like it is coming to a head today – for better or worse. Crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, who has sluiced tens of millions of dollars into this year’s elections (hoping to make crypto more dangerous than it already is) is today watching a major run on his crypto exchange, FTX. According to analytics firm, Nansen, in the past 24 hours FTX has witnessed an outflow of $653 million. Reuters … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 1, 2022 ~ Life in the United States of America increasingly feels like a bad translation of a Kafka novel. We are specifically referring today to the arbiters of justice in our society – the men and women appointed as lifetime judges on the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appellate courts and federal district courts. These courts have now become Kafkaesque with no apparent means for the public to hold these judges accountable for their actions. There is Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court making rulings in matters impacting Donald Trump while his wife, Ginni Thomas, was one of the people plotting to help Trump overturn the election of President Joe Biden. (Also see our report: The Money Trail to the Ginni Thomas Emails to Overturn Biden’s Election Leads to Charles Koch.) We have Judge Aileen M. Cannon, appointed by Donald Trump, who … Continue reading →

“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” – Matthew 25:40 By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 28, 2022 ~ This morning, the words “catastrophic” and “dangerous” and “life threatening” are being used to describe Hurricane Ian, a category 4 hurricane that is expected to make landfall this afternoon on Florida’s Gulf Coast, then rip through the central and northern parts of the state. Those words are weighing heavily on the minds of Floridians this morning, as well as the words above from Matthew 25, verse 40. It was exactly two weeks ago to the day that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis lured desperate migrants, including children, who were seeking asylum in the United States after a treacherous journey from Venezuela, to board two charter planes that dumped them on Martha’s Vineyard … Continue reading →