Search Results for: Federal Reserve

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 7, 2017 Last Monday, Thomas Hoenig, the Vice Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), sent a stunning letter to the Chair and Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. The letter contained information that should have become front page news at every business wire service and the leading business newspapers. But with the exception of Reuters, major corporate media like the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, the Business section of the New York Times and Washington Post ignored the bombshell story, according to our search at Google News. What the fearless Hoenig told the Senate Banking Committee was effectively this: the biggest Wall Street banks have been lying to the American people that overly stringent capital rules by their regulators are constraining their ability to lend to consumers and businesses. What’s really behind their inability to make more loans is … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 16, 2016 The only thing standing between the American people and another apocalyptic financial collapse among by the biggest banks on Wall Street is the Federal Reserve’s stress tests and capital requirements. After Wall Street laid waste to the U.S. housing market and economy from 2008 through 2010, while propping itself back up with a feeding tube from the taxpayers’ pocketbook, the Obama administration passed the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in 2010.  It wasn’t so much legislation as it was an illusory 2300 pages of rules that might someday get implemented in a meaningful way if President Obama appointed tough cops to his financial regulatory bodies – which he decidedly did not do. One of the promises in Dodd-Frank was that the Federal Reserve would annually assess whether the biggest and most dangerous banks have adequate capital to withstand a severe recession and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 9, 2015 Those complaining that Senator Elizabeth Warren went too far in her complaints against Mary Jo White’s leadership at the Securities and Exchange Commission obviously didn’t see yesterday’s Federal court decision coming. It now appears that Senator Warren would have had good grounds to also charge Mary Jo White with replicating the judicial practices of King George III – against whom the Declaration of Independence was drafted. U.S. District Court Judge, Leigh Martin May, ruled yesterday in Atlanta that the SEC’s system of selecting in-house judges to hear and decide SEC cases brought against individuals charged with securities violations was “likely unconstitutional.” The Judge imposed a preliminary injunction in an SEC insider-trading case until she issues her final decision in the matter. During the tenure of Mary Jo White at the SEC, the agency has increasingly used its own in-house judges to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: April 19, 2013  President Obama has promised Americans greater transparency in their government and a crackdown on wrongdoing on Wall Street. What Americans have received instead is a dark curtain drawn around how Federal banking regulators settle cases against Wall Street and zero criminal prosecutions by the U.S. Justice Department against any major Wall Street executive. Both of those realities share a common factor: the powerful Wall Street law firm, Covington & Burling.  On January 9 of this year, it was announced that Julie Williams, the Chief Counsel of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) who had stepped down the prior summer, was taking a job as a Managing Director at Promontory Financial Group. The OCC is the regulator of national banks which, along with the Federal Reserve Board, had announced two days prior that it was abruptly dropping its discredited Independent Foreclosure Review … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: February 28, 2013  In several respects, Occupy Wall Street reminds me of the feminist movement. Corporate funded media has declared the women’s rights movement dead ad nauseam for four decades — and yet it thrives and reinvents itself. Similarly, corporate funded media has eulogized Occupy Wall Street from almost the moment of its nascent birth in the Fall of 2011.  If there is a common thread connecting these movements and the dire media prognostications of their demise, it is likely that when either one advances, entrenched power — and its iron grip on the wealth of a nation — loses.  Now, similar to the early court battles for women’s rights, Occupy Wall Street has tossed aside its encampments and bullhorns and donned its legal garb and pro hac vices. Occupy Wall Street’s brain trust, Occupy the SEC, just filed a Federal lawsuit that encapsulates the crony capitalist … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: January 15, 2013  Yesterday, two of JPMorgan Chase’s regulators, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Reserve, released the details of their cease and desist consent orders with the mega bank over its lack of proper risk controls in its Chief Investment Office (CIO).  The lapses have led to $6.2 billion in losses thus far. JPMorgan, for its part, made sure its golden parachutes – outsized payments to departing executives –would not be limited by the consent agreement.  The debacle, known on Wall Street as the London Whale trades, stem from traders in London, particularly Bruno Iksil who is no longer at the bank, engaging in high risk derivatives trading in a thinly traded corporate bond derivatives index. The nickname, “Whale,” derives from the bank making trades so large that it effectively became the market in that index and could not quickly exit the positions.  Congress held … Continue reading →