Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 17, 2019 ~ Yesterday, three traders at JPMorgan Chase, the bank headed by Jamie Dimon, got smacked with the same kind of criminal felony charge that was used to indict members of the Gambino crime family in 2017. The charge is racketeering and falls under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO. According to the Justice Department, the traders engaged in a pattern of rigging the gold, silver and other precious metals markets from approximately May 2008 to August 2016. One of the traders, Michael Nowak, was actually a Managing Director at the bank and the head of its Global Precious Metals Desk. The other two traders are Gregg Smith and Christopher Jordan. RICO is typically used to indict mobsters – which makes its use against employees of the largest bank in America a very disquieting event. But even more disquieting … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 13, 2019 ~  During last evening’s Democratic debate, Senator Bernie Sanders said this: “You’ve got three people in America owning more wealth than the bottom half of this country.” According to Politifact, Sanders is basing this claim on a 2017 study done by the Institute for Policy Studies which put the richest three Americans’ wealth as follows (based on the Forbes list of billionaires at that time): Bill Gates of Microsoft with $89 billion; Jeff Bezos of Amazon with $81.5 billion; and Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway with $78 billion — for a total of $248.5 billion. That wealth figure contrasts with the $245 billion owned by the bottom 50 percent of Americans according to the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances conducted by the Federal Reserve. (The Fed’s survey is conducted every three years and the 2019 study has not yet been released.) But … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 12, 2019 ~ Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets held an extremely timely hearing titled: “Examining Private Market Exemptions as a Barrier to IPOs and Retail Investment.” The thrust of the hearing was the negative impact that the ballooning private equity market is having on the dramatically shrinking pool of publicly traded stocks and the good of society in general. As the WeWork IPO train wreck plays out in the media, showing how two of the most sophisticated banks on Wall Street, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, were set to bring this 9-year old office rental company to the public markets via an IPO, despite outrageous conflicts of interest by WeWork’s founder and CEO and a proposed valuation that turns out to have been off the mark by tens of billions of dollars, it was … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 11, 2019 ~  On May 6 of this year, Wall Street On Parade predicted that Senator Elizabeth Warren, now rising rapidly in her bid for President, would be targeted by Wall Street in an effort to derail her campaign. Yesterday, that Wall Street campaign officially began. CNBC’s Jim Cramer and David Faber discussed on TV how they are hearing from Wall Street bank executives that Warren must be stopped. On the same day, September 10, 2019, Bloomberg News, which is majority owned by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, whose $52.4 billion net worth derives from leasing his data terminals to thousands of Wall Street trading floors around the globe, ran this headline: “Richest Could Lose Hundreds of Billions Under Warren’s Wealth Tax.” Obviously, that wouldn’t sit too well with Michael Bloomberg, who has frequently penned his own OpEds for his financial news empire. But the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 27, 2019 ~ Burford Capital Ltd. is a lawsuit funding company that trades on AIM, part of the London Stock Exchange’s international market for young, growing companies. Securities and Exchange Commission filings in the U.S. show tens of millions of dollars of the stock to be part of the portfolios of big-name mutual funds in the United States, despite a governance structure that takes cronyism to a whole new level. Since August 7 the stock of Burford has lost 44 percent of its value, as of intraday trading this morning. That’s the date that U.S. short seller, Muddy Waters, released a 25-page detailed and damning report on the company suggesting its accounting is Enron-esque. What stopped us in our tracks while reading the report was the paragraph revealing that the Chief Executive Officer of Burford Capital Ltd., Christopher Bogart, is married to Elizabeth … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 26, 2019 ~ The WeWork IPO is hype wrapped in subterfuge. It’s a money-losing commercial real estate company attempting to pass itself off as the Dalai Lama of office space rentals. The company has never made a dime of profits and its losses spiraled to $900 million in the first half of this year. Here’s a sample of the spin from its IPO prospectus: “We provide our members with flexible access to beautiful spaces, a culture of inclusivity and the energy of an inspired community, all connected by our extensive technology infrastructure. We believe our company has the power to elevate how people work, live and grow.” “We believe that individuals are more productive when they are able to express their full and authentic selves, so we aspire to be as inclusive as possible.” We’re going to have to strike out the “culture … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 23, 2019 ~   The WeWork IPO preliminary prospectus was filed last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the company has been getting savage reviews ever since. WeWork is a commercial real estate company leasing out office space but is attempting to mesmerize the public into believing it is some genius new-age thinker. JPMorgan Securities LLC, a unit of JPMorgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs & Co. are listed as lead underwriters on the IPO. Scott Galloway, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, wrote on his blog that “bankers (JPM and Goldman) stand to register $122 million in fees flinging feces at retail investors….” What has not been crystallized as yet, however, is how Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of the largest bank in the U.S., JPMorgan Chase, sits smack in the middle of this mess. Dimon should definitely … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 19, 2019 ~ From 1976 to 1981, Jeffrey Epstein worked for the Wall Street investment bank, Bear Stearns. Epstein was found dead in his jail cell on August 10 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking of underage girls, dozens of whom he allegedly sexually assaulted after grooming them first with “inappropriate touching.” Bear Stearns collapsed in the early days of the 2008 financial crisis and was purchased by JPMorgan Chase. One of the last acts of Bear Stearns’ CEO, Jimmy Cayne, was to make a $2 million payment to a woman who charged that the legendary Chairman of Bear Stearns, Ace Greenberg, had engaged in “inappropriate touching.” The young woman was said to have had a witness to her charges. In a 2017 report by the New York Times, a former Managing Director of Bear Stearns, Maureen Sherry, reported that “…it … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 16, 2019 ~ The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 99.97 points yesterday but the mega Wall Street bank, Citigroup, closed in the red, down 0.15 percent. That decline follows a dramatic loss of 5.28 percent on Wednesday,  a day that the Dow was down only 3.05 percent. Citigroup’s closing price yesterday was $61.32. The stock has lost more than 88 percent of its value since 2007, despite its attempt to dress up the share price with a 1-for-10 reverse stock split in 2011, which left its long-term shareholders with 1 share for each 10 shares previously held. Citi’s share price has also been dropping like a rock since July 24 of this year when it closed at $73.01. But that hasn’t triggered a rethink on the part of its competitor banks on Wall Street who have “Buy” or “Overweight” ratings on Citi’s stock … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 15, 2019 ~ As we’ve previously reported, five mega banks on Wall Street hold the fate of the entire financial system of the United States in their crony, frequently soiled hands. Yesterday’s trading action clearly showed the ugly warts between those banks and their derivative counterparties in the insurance industry. And even though their crony regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, allows the banks to trade their own stocks in darkness in their own internal Dark Pools, someone else clearly got the upper hand yesterday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost a whopping 800 points or 3.05 percent but each of the five mega banks outpaced the Dow’s losses on a percentage basis. That’s not a good thing when Congress has left the fate of a nation in such perilous hands – especially when those very same banks caused the greatest financial crash … Continue reading →