By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 22, 2021 ~ It’s starting to look very swampy again in the nation’s capitol. President Biden pushed forward a law partner from the law firm that notoriously represented Donald Trump and the Trump Organization on tax matters for 15 years, right up to January of this year, to be the head of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Astonishingly, on Tuesday, the Senate confirmed that nominee, Kenneth A. Polite, for the position. The Trump Organization and its CFO, Allen Weisselberg, were indicted earlier this month on tax evasion charges. Polite, a law partner with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, will now preside over the criminal division of DOJ, which holds the reins on whether to bring criminal charges against the well-connected and powerful in corporate America – his law firm’s former clients, and more than likely, his future clients if past precedent … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 21, 2021 ~ The only time that tens of millions of Americans typically hear anything about the stock market on the evening news is when the S&P 500 Index sets a new high. That’s been happening a lot this year. For example, on June 30 it was widely reported that the S&P 500 had clinched its sixth record close for the year. But beneath the surface of that cheerful sound bite, major deterioration in the underpinnings of the market has been taking place. For example, recently there have been more stocks on the New York Stock Exchange setting 3-month lows than setting three-month highs. The same is true for the Nasdaq stock market and dramatically so for the smaller companies that trade Over-the-Counter (OTC). These measurements gauge the “breadth of the market.” When new lows consistently trounce new highs, it can be a forewarning of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 20, 2021 ~ Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 725.8 points out of fear that there will be renewed business restrictions to deal with spiking COVID cases in all 50 states in the U.S. On July 8 the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention jointly released an unequivocal statement on the COVID-19 vaccines that are in use in the United States. The statement read in part: “People who are fully vaccinated are protected from severe disease and death, including from the variants currently circulating in the country such as Delta. People who are not vaccinated remain at risk. Virtually all COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths are among those who are unvaccinated.” That statement is now coming under growing scrutiny as evidence mounts of fully vaccinated Americans getting COVID-19, with hundreds ending up in the hospital. (An individual is … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 19, 2021 ~ “Will he” or “won’t he” has become the favorite chatter among the Wall Street elites, progressives, and the business press. We’re talking about whether President Biden will, or will not, give Fed Chair Jerome Powell a second term at the helm of the Federal Reserve. Powell’s current four-year term as Chair ends in early February, 2022. The debate heated up last week. On Wednesday, Robert Kuttner, co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School, wrote this about Powell: “As a Republican, he partly bulletproofs Biden against the charge of being soft on inflation, and serves as an administration olive branch to Republicans in Congress. “But Powell has been dismal on the Fed’s other job—financial regulation. My sources say the decision hasn’t been made yet, but Biden is likely to name a new Fed chair.” The … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 15, 2021 ~ Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) is the first woman from Wyoming to ever serve as a United States Senator and she has a coveted spot on the Senate Banking Committee. Lummis holds three degrees from the University of Wyoming — in Animal Science, Biology and Law. Today, during a Senate Banking Committee hearing with Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Lummis proved she knows a thing or two about economics and the money supply. Lummis came armed with the above oversized chart for her colleagues and Powell to ponder. Lummis told Powell the following: “M2 data shows that deposits and close substitutes held by households have generally averaged 51 percent of GDP from 1952 to 2021. But then data from the end of Quarter 1 of 2021 shows that households are sitting on deposits and close substitutes of approximately 79 percent of GDP today. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 15, 2021 ~ According to the Merger and Acquisition database at PitchBook, entities tied to JPMorgan Asset Management have been buying up energy and infrastructure assets around the world including solar power plants, wind farms,  airports, water companies and the 120-year old El Paso Electric which provides electricity to approximately 437,000 retail and wholesale customers in west Texas and southern New Mexico. The acquisitions can be traced back to an entity called the Infrastructure Investments Fund (IIF). When IIF is seeking regulatory approval, as in the case of buying El Paso Electric, it contends it is not controlled by JPMorgan. But when JPMorgan is pitching the fund to institutional investors around the globe, the bank points out that 50 of the bank’s employees are actively engaged in the fund – along with “70 independent portfolio company directors.” The brochures (flipbooks) for IIF are marked … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 14, 2021 ~ On Monday, the Federal Reserve (which includes no one elected to office by the American people) thumbed its nose at President Joe Biden, the man who received more than 81 million votes in the 2020 Presidential election, representing a 51.3 percent mandate from the American people who vote. On Friday, July 9, President Biden released a sweeping Executive Order warning federal agencies against actions that create “excessive market concentration” with specific mention of bank merger activity. One business day later, the Federal Reserve…wait for it…approved another bank merger. The Federal Reserve’s actions from January 1, 2006 through the latest data available on June 30, 2020, define the Fed as the quintessential “excessive market concentrator.” According to the Fed’s own data, it has approved 3,576 bank mergers, while denying zero merger applications, since January 1, 2006. (See data here and here.) At the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 13, 2021 ~ This evening, the PBS program, Frontline, will do something that corporate broadcast media has failed to do since the financial crash of 2008. Frontline will air the results of its year-long investigation of the most powerful financial institution in the world – the central bank of the United States – known as the Federal Reserve, or simply “the Fed.” The Fed’s radical makeover of itself began in December of 2007 when the Fed decided, on its own, that it had the authority to secretly pump out trillions of dollars in cumulative loans to prop up the mega banks on Wall Street, as well as to the foreign banks that were on the other side of Wall Street’s hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivative trades. The Fed secretly ran that program through at least July of 2010 according to the eventual … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 11, 2021 ~ Fed Chair Jerome Powell will take his seat before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday at noon and before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. for his semi-annual testimony on monetary policy. Some embarrassing questions may come up for Powell based on an investigative report on the Fed that’s airing earlier in the week. This Tuesday evening, the PBS investigative program, Frontline, will broadcast a documentary covering its year-long investigation of the Federal Reserve’s bailouts of Wall Street, from the financial crisis of 2008 to the present. According to the information about the program that Frontline has released, the documentary, titled “The Power of the Fed,” will include interviews with multiple people who believe that the Fed has been captured by Wall Street and is creating dangerous asset bubbles. Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham will tell viewers … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 9, 2021 ~ Donald Trump was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2017. But 16 days before Trump even took office, he sent the message to Wall Street that “I’ve got your back.” On January 4, 2017, Trump nominated Jay Clayton to Chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, ostensibly the top watchdog on Wall Street. But Clayton’s resume ensured that he would be doing a lot more recusing than watchdogging.  Clayton, a law partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, had represented 8 of the 10 largest Wall Street banks in the three years prior to his nomination. Clayton did not disappoint. He looked the other way as the Wall Street banks traded their own bank’s stock in their own Dark Pools. He wore blinders as the Wall Street banks flagrantly violated the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation’s Volcker Rule. He took no action to stop Wall … Continue reading →