By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 22, 2021 ~ Nine days ago we cautiously reported that Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio who holds a critical view of Wall Street’s serial bent toward fraudulent activities, was set to take the Chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee. This would endow Brown with the power to set the agenda for hearings, call witnesses and put them under oath, and issue subpoenas. We wrote this at the time: “We get the feeling that Senator Brown took the very wise and preemptive step of getting mainstream media to announce his Chairmanship yesterday because he clearly understood that Wall Street’s mega banks would be fighting behind the scenes in an effort to prevent him from advancing to Chair.” With the addition of the two new Democratic Senators from Georgia’s special runoff (Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff) and Vice President Kamala Harris as the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 21, 2021 ~ The mood among Democrats in Washington was captured at the Senate Finance Committee’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday for former Fed Chair Janet Yellen to become the new Treasury Secretary. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and the Ranking Member of the Committee (who is expected to become the new Chair), said this in his opening remarks: “This is the second time in 12 years that a Republican President leaves office with the economy in ruins. Today there’s also a surging pandemic and armed troops guarding our Capitol from far-right insurrectionist attack. The Biden administration isn’t going to begin with inaugural balls; it’s going to begin with all-out triage.” Wyden also made clear that he doesn’t intend to be bullied into the same failed strategy that governed the response to the Wall Street implosion of 2008. Wyden stated: “My top economic … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 20, 2021 ~ The FBI has asked the public for help in collecting evidence surrounding the siege at the Capitol on January 6 — an insurrection that left five people dead, dozens injured, and Congressional members’ offices ransacked and laptops stolen. The violent scenes at the Capitol played out live on TV, humiliating the United States around the world. The world will watch President-Elect Joe Biden’s inauguration today, surrounded by 25,000 National Guard Troops in Washington, D.C. These images will further undermine the standing of the United States among world leaders. Because the FBI seems to have ignored for decades the serial warning signs regarding Charles Koch, Koch Industries and their intrusions into  elections, we’re providing the FBI a simple and clear roadmap today. Charles Koch is the billionaire Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, one of the largest private corporations in the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 19, 2021 ~ Last Tuesday, Wall Street was stewing over the Reuters report that President-Elect Joe Biden was likely to name Gary Gensler, the former Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), as the new Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The CFTC oversees the futures market. The SEC oversees the trading of stocks; the stock exchanges; the broker-dealers and investment banks that underwrite and trade stocks; and how all of these firms interact with investors. The SEC also oversees Wall Street’s dubious Dark Pools – which Wall Street On Parade has challenged as engaging in potentially illegal behavior. By Friday, January 15, Wall Street’s banks ended in a sea of red with Citigroup losing a whopping 6.93 percent on the day. All of the mega banks posted losses far exceeding the meager 0.57 percent decline in the Dow Jones … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: January 18, 2021 ~ At 10 a.m. tomorrow morning, one day ahead of President-Elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, the Senate Finance Committee will hold the confirmation hearing for Janet Yellen to become the next U.S. Treasury Secretary. In that role, Yellen sits atop a sprawling federal agency that includes the IRS; the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks and reports on their hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives; the Bureau of Engraving and Printing; the U.S. Mint; the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) which is tasked with combating money laundering but has failed miserably in the job; and numerous other units. In addition, legislation passed by Congress puts Yellen in charge of the slush fund known as the Exchange Stabilization Fund; makes her the Chair of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and, thanks to stealthy legislation passed during the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: January 15, 2021 ~ I sat behind a trading terminal at two Wall Street firms from 1986 to 2006. I can assure you that if the President of the United States was refusing to accept the outcome of a presidential election and urging a coup d’é·tat by his civilian militia, the stock market would have sold off by double digits. This era’s stock market has yawned at the spectacle. I can further assure you that if an actual, violent coup d’état did occur inside the halls of Congress and played out in real time on every television network and cable news program in the country and around the world, there would have been a crash in the stock market. (I was sitting behind my trading terminal on October 19, 1987 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average crashed 22 percent by the end of the trading day and … 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 13, 2021 ~ On January 7, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee, released a statement indicating that he is to become the new Chair of that Committee. The announcement came as the Democrats are set to take control of the full Senate from Republicans as a result of the Georgia runoff. Yesterday, Brown went a step further and held a conversation with major media outlets to discuss the agenda he will set as the new Chair of Senate Banking. The formal appointment process making Brown the official Chair has yet to occur, thus Brown is the “presumed” Chair. We get the feeling that Senator Brown took the very wise and preemptive step of getting mainstream media to announce his Chairmanship yesterday because he clearly understood that Wall Street’s mega banks would be fighting behind the scenes … 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: January 11, 2021 ~ It is perhaps the height of irony that the groups behind the event that led to the worst battle in the U.S. Capitol building since the British attempted to burn the place down in 1814 (during the War of 1812) call themselves Peaceably Gather, Moms for America, and the Rule of Law Defense Fund. Those names stand right alongside a group that acknowledges what it expects to go down: WildProtest.com. Many of the web pages for the nine groups listed as Coalition Partners for the January 5th and 6th event have quietly disappeared from the Internet. Fortunately, the Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine has allowed us to reconstruct what these groups were doing and saying in the leadup to an event that has, thus far, resulted in dozens of serious injuries and the deaths of five people, including a Capitol Police … Continue reading →