Search Results for: Federal Reserve

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 23, 2019 ~ There’s a troubling story out this morning at Bloomberg News indicating that the Federal Reserve “is examining how Deutsche Bank AG handled billions of dollars in suspicious transactions from Denmark’s leading lender [Danske Bank], according to people familiar with the matter, further intensifying what could be one of the biggest money-laundering scandals ever.” The story is troubling because (a) probing potentially criminal money laundering is the job of the Justice Department which can impose criminal charges, not the job of the Fed which cannot; and (b) the Fed is notorious for slapping knuckles and imposing small fines. The Fed’s New York regional bank, which plays an outsized role in the Federal Reserve system, is a deeply conflicted regulator. And, let’s not forget that it was the Fed that secretly funneled $16.1 trillion of almost zero interest loans to the global banks … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: January 15, 2019 ~ If you’ve ever mucked horse stalls full of smelly manure, you’re better prepared for this week. Yesterday, the inscrutable Citigroup ushered in the week of mind-numbing fourth-quarter earnings reports from the financial supermarkets/commercial banks/insurance companies/brokerage firms/investment banks/derivative warehouses that have combined under one highly combustible roof, using the simple moniker Wall Street bank. There is so much going on under one roof that you’d need your own team of 100 accountants to have any clue as to whether the bank is doing well or not. JPMorgan Chase, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, was out with its disappointing earnings this morning. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America report on Wednesday, followed by Morgan Stanley on Thursday. Citigroup’s big reveal was that it had missed analysts’ revenue expectations by half a billion dollars – not exactly small change. The bank reported $17.1 … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: January 9, 2019 ~ A group of nine financial firms, including an admitted felon and two high-frequency trading powerhouses, announced this week that they plan to open a national stock exchange to compete head on with the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. We’ll detail those players shortly but first some necessary background to explain why this plan must never come to fruition. Yes, our two major stock exchanges are a viper’s nest of conflicts of interest and in desperate need of reform, but this motley crew can only make matters worse. Following the 1929 stock market crash, the U.S. Senate conducted three years of hearings into the brazen self-dealing and rigged trading by the major Wall Street firms that resulted in an epic crash that eventually erased 90 percent of the stock market’s value, led to the collapse of thousands of banks, and brought on the … Continue reading →

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 →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 8, 2018 ~ Last week when Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a new banking bill to break up the mega banks on Wall Street, he had this to say: “In our nation today, we are moving toward an oligarchic form of society where a small number of very wealthy individuals and large corporations have enormous control over our economic and political life. Today, we are in a country where three people, three of the wealthiest people, own more wealth than the bottom half of American society and 52 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent.” Sanders made this statement on October 3. Just three days later, on October 6, a thoroughly discredited nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, who had the financial backing of a front group funded by billionaires Charles and David Koch, Americans for Prosperity, … Continue reading →

  By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 4, 2018 ~ Yesterday’s Treasury market was a mess. So was the front page of the New York Times, which featured a montage of tax records evidencing tax scams by the Trump family. We think there’s a connection. The New York Times’ 14,000 word expose and exhibits effectively render Trump a lame-duck president. That means that the country is left with the unprecedented national debt created under his big tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy along with a billionaire Emperor devoid of either clothes or the aura of a self-man man. The outlook for mounting U.S. debt pushing up Treasury yields comes at the same time that the Federal Reserve is scaling back its crisis-era purchases of Treasuries and as the European Central Bank begins this month to halve its bond purchases. The Federal Reserve, using a previously released schedule, began … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 3, 2018 ~ On August 14, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, tweeted that an African-American woman he had previously hired to work in the White House, Omarosa Manigault Newman, is a “crazed, crying lowlife” and a “dog.”  In any other executive job in America, those published words would be grounds for immediate dismissal. Yesterday, while attending a political rally in Mississippi, that same President mocked Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the courageous professor who gave sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27 that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when she was 15 and he was 17. Dr. Ford also submitted to the Senate the results of the lie detector test that she had passed and affidavits from four people she had told about the assault in earlier years. Trump mocked Dr. Ford’s sexual assault testimony … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 20, 2018 ~ Michael Bloomberg served three terms as New York City’s Mayor from January 2002 to January 2014. In 2009, the New York Times reported that Bloomberg had spent “$261 million of his own money” in order to get elected to those three terms as Mayor. When Bloomberg took office, there was a two-term limit in place which had been voted on in public referendums in 1993 and 1996. But two years before Bloomberg’s second four-year term ended, he asked the City Council to repeal the two-term limit to allow him to serve a third term. Because voters had already expressed their will in a public referendum twice, numerous members of the City Council felt it would be unethical for them to repeal that decision and that the matter should be determined by another voter referendum. But the City Council went forward … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 12, 2018 ~ There is now a growing chorus of people trying to legitimize the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, having the option of buying stocks in the next financial crisis. This is such a stunning and dangerous development that it deserves to be on the front page of every newspaper in America – before President Donald Trump attempts to sign an Executive Order authorizing it. (We’re only half-joking about that.) This is the highly suspicious timeline of the clamor to give the Fed carte blanche to do as it pleases when Wall Street blows itself up again: Tuesday, September 4, 2018: JPMorgan Chase sends a research report to its clients which includes this statement from Marko Kolanovic, a Senior Analyst at the bank:  “It remains to be seen how governments and central banks will respond in the scenario of a great liquidity … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 11, 2018 ~ The reverberations from the New York Times OpEd last week, where an anonymous “senior official” in the Trump administration effectively described a coup taking place to stop the President’s mad impulses, are still shaking the nation. But President Donald Trump, from the day he took office, has been little more than a titular figure head for the fossil fuels industry – with Koch Industries in particular calling the shots. The Trump administration took the unthinkable step of removing the United States from the Paris Climate Accord and there is breaking news that the Environmental Protection Agency will ease rules on methane gas emissions for oil and gas companies like Koch Industries. The only real difference between this coup and past coups is that Koch Industries and its front group, Freedom Partners, are so much more in your face than Wall … Continue reading →