Search Results for: rap sheet

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 26, 2021 ~ Below are selected remarks from Jamie Dimon’s prepared statement for the Senate Banking Committee hearing today, which will take testimony from a total of six Wall Street bank CEOs. Wall Street On Parade’s annotated remarks appear in brackets and italics. ~~~ “Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Toomey and distinguished members of the Committee, I appreciate the invitation to appear before you to talk about JPMorgan Chase, the strength and resilience of the U.S. financial system, and the people, businesses and communities we serve.” [The strength of the U.S. financial system would, of course, be a lot safer and sounder if the largest bank in the U.S., at which Dimon serves as Chairman and CEO, had not been charged with five felony counts since 2014, all occurring under his leadership. The bank admitted to all five counts.] “JPMorgan Chase is a global financial services firm … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 14, 2021 ~ Today is the 85th Day of the Joe Biden Presidency and his nominee to Chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, has yet to be confirmed by the full Senate. Apparently, the moneyed interests that control the corporate wing of the Republican party have put Senator Pat Toomey in charge of attempting to derail the nomination. A full Senate vote will take place on Gensler at 11:45 a.m. today, but that vote will be limited to Gensler serving out the balance of the term of Trump’s former SEC Chair Jay Clayton, which expires in – wait for it – 52 days. The Senate Banking Committee had cleared Gensler to not only fill Clayton’s remaining term but had also cleared his reappointment for a five-year term ending on June 5, 2026. That five-year term will not be voted on by the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 16, 2021 ~  Rewarding bad behavior with obscene pay is the sine qua non of Wall Street. Thus it’s a remarkable event to see a CEO of a mega Wall Street bank get punished with a 21 percent pay cut.  Michael Corbat is slated to retire this month as Citigroup’s CEO and be replaced by Jane Fraser, the first woman CEO of any major Wall Street bank. (The news would be more welcome if the areas that Fraser previously supervised at the bank did not have all those fines and sanctions.) The Board delivered an unusual kick in the pants to Corbat on his way out the door. It cut his compensation for 2020 by $5 million from what he had been awarded for 2019. Corbat’s total compensation went from $24 million in 2019 to $19 million for 2020. The announcement was made in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 29, 2021 ~ According to JPMorgan Chase’s 13F filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it moved from a net short position in GameStop shares as of December 31, 2019 to a big long position as of September 30, 2020, the date of its last 13F filing. As of the end of the third quarter of last year, JPMorgan Chase was long (owned) 368,196 shares of GameStop versus a put (short position) on a meager 19,300 shares. At the close of trading on September 30, 2020, GameStop was a $10.20 stock, making JPMorgan’s long position worth $3.8 million. At the intraday high yesterday, GameStop was a $483 stock. If JPMorgan had sold at the top, it would have made approximately $174 million on its long position versus where it was trading four months earlier. We’re dismissing what happened to the put that JPMorgan … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 14, 2021 ~ If there was ever a DEFCON 1 warning to Americans that campaign finance reform must be a top priority of the incoming President Biden administration, it is the cautionary tale of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) and their recruitment efforts of the mob that descended on the Capitol of the United States on January 6. Five people are now dead from that siege, including a Capitol Police officer, and dozens injured. The U.S. Attorneys office for Washington, D.C. has also confirmed that two live pipe bombs with timers were found in front of the Republican National Committee and Democrat National Committee, both located near the Capitol. When one thinks of a group with the word “Association” in their name, it invokes the idea that this is a fraternal organization or a trade association. What doesn’t come to mind is … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 12, 2021 ~ Five-count felon JPMorgan Chase is shocked – shocked! – that corporate financing of “the people’s House” has led to corruption and instability in Washington. The Board of Directors of JPMorgan Chase obviously did not see money as a corrupting influence because it has boosted the pay of its Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, to $31.5 million annually despite the fact that Dimon sat at the helm of this bank through its unprecedented five felony counts in a span of six years. The bank admitted to all five counts and got deferred prosecution agreements every single time from the U.S. Department of Justice. Not one of the myriad federal regulators of this bank demanded that Dimon step down as unfit to oversee a bank holding $2 trillion in depositors’ life savings as this six-year crime spree went unchecked. Now JPMorgan Chase, … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 25, 2020 ~ Maybe it’s because Wall Street On Parade has been shining a bright light on the serial crimes and rap sheets of Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. Or maybe it’s because the nonpartisan watchdog, Better Markets, published a report last year titled “Wall Street’s Six Biggest Bailed-Out Banks: Their RAP Sheets & Their Ongoing Crime Spree.” Or maybe it all comes down to what Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said after the financial crisis of 2008: “And the banks – hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created – are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” Whatever the reason, the darkness that started growing around the crimes committed by the big Wall Street banks during the Obama administration has now evolved into such a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 24, 2020 ~ Late yesterday afternoon, while the stock market was still open, three reporters at the Wall Street Journal penned an article with this opening statement: “President-elect Joe Biden plans to nominate former Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, an economist at the forefront of policy-making for three decades, to become the next Treasury secretary, according to people familiar with the decision.” Within the next half hour, every major newswire and many of the largest newspapers in the U.S. were repeating the Journal’s story. The Journal noted that the Biden camp wasn’t expected to make a “formal announcement” of the Yellen nomination until November 30. Nonetheless, the Journal decided it had the self-anointed right to stand in for the Biden transition team and make the announcement a week ahead of time. To induce a nice big stock market rally on the news (the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 18, 2020 ~ According to the 13F filing that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway made with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the quarter ending December 31, 2019, it held 59.5 million shares of JPMorgan Chase with a total value at that time of $8.29 billion. By June 30 of this year, that position had been trimmed by more than half, to 22.2 million shares. By September 30, one day after JPMorgan Chase had just admitted to its fourth and fifth felony count in the past six years, brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, Berkshire Hathaway’s position in JPMorgan Chase tallied up to just under 1 million shares, a 98 percent reduction from the beginning of the year, according to the SEC filing Berkshire Hathaway made on Monday. And it’s not like Buffett is simply getting out of all big bank stocks. According … Continue reading →