Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 13, 2019 ~ Where did the U.S. stock market actually close yesterday? It’s pretty much an open question. To give you an idea of just how bad the so-called “glitch” was yesterday, Bill Griffeth, the co-anchor of the CNBC show, the Nightly Business Report, had to deliver this warning to his viewers before reporting the prices of the closing stock market indexes yesterday. “By the way, toward the close, there was a technical issue with trading computers. It’s not clear if all of the volume was reported or if some of the prices of the indexes were affected. You might see different numbers elsewhere but these were the numbers we had of the close today.” (See video below of the program.) Griffeth’s quaint phrase “technical issue with trading computers,” is not accurate. It was not a problem with trading computers but rather the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 8, 2019 ~ The Chairman and CEO of L Brands, Leslie (Les) Wexner, came out yesterday with a statement accusing Jeffrey Epstein of swindling “vast sums of money” from Wexner and his family. L Brands is the parent of retail chains Victoria’s Secret, Bath and Body Works, and Pink. Epstein is the accused sex trafficker and assaulter of dozens of underage girls who has mansions in multiple locations but is currently occupying an 8′ x 8′ jail cell in Manhattan while he awaits trial. Pretty much anyone who was closely connected to Epstein is under some form of investigation, including his sex trafficking co-conspirators who solicited underage girls for him; the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office that allowed his private limo and driver to pick him up six days a week from his jail cell for a so-called daily 12-hour “work release” program … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 6, 2019 ~ By the closing bell of yesterday’s broad stock market selloff, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which had been down over 900 points in the afternoon, closed with a loss of 767 points or 2.90 percent. The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index closed even deeper in the red with a loss of 2.98 percent. But those losses looked mild compared to what happened to four of the biggest banks on Wall Street yesterday. Bank of America, parent of the giant retail brokerage chain, Merrill Lynch, closed with a loss of 4.42 percent. Morgan Stanley, which had been pummeled in the big bank selloff in December, lost 3.87 percent while Goldman Sachs was not far behind with a loss of 3.67 percent. The bank with the most foreign exposure and a monster bailout in 2008, Citigroup, which in a fair and efficient … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 2, 2019 ~ On April 3, 2008 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Tim Geithner, appeared on a panel of witnesses before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. The subject of the hearing was the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented actions the prior month to bail out the collapsing investment bank, Bear Stearns, and facilitate its purchase by JPMorgan Chase. Putting Bear Stearns into the hands of JPMorgan Chase, now a three-count felon, was like returning a garden snake to a pet store and walking out with a python. The New York Fed had crafted a deal where $30 billion of toxic assets were going to be purchased from Bear Stearns to prevent JPMorgan from bearing the risk of sizeable losses when it took over the firm. The New York Fed put up $28.82 billion in … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 1, 2019 ~ On July 21, 2011 the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), released the first-ever government audit of the Federal Reserve in its 98-year history. The audit came about as a result of the determined efforts of Senator Bernie Sanders to force transparency on the secretive Wall Street bailout actions of the Federal Reserve during the 2008 financial crash and the years that followed. Sanders successfully tacked an amendment on the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 that mandated a top-to-bottom audit of how much the Fed had spent on its bailout and the financial institutions to whom it went. Sanders issued a statement saying this on the day the findings were released: “The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 25, 2019 ~ If you are buying stocks based on what your stockbroker (a/k/a “financial advisor”) is telling you the research analysts at his brokerage firm are recommending, our headline above should provide a cautionary warning. On July 21, Philip Van Doorn, a reporter for Dow Jones’ MarketWatch, published a chart showing that 82 percent of bank research analysts on Wall Street have a “buy” rating on the stock of Citigroup. According to MarketBeat.com, among the stock analysts making “buy,” “outperform,” or “overweight,” recommendations on Citigroup are those receiving a paycheck from Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, UBS, and Bank of America – all of whom have a vested interest in wanting Citigroup – and each other — to stay strong because they are all interconnected as derivative counterparties. All of these banks are in a unique position to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 24, 2019 ~ On Monday, Democratic presidential contender Senator Elizabeth Warren posted a column on Medium that carried the provocative headline: The Coming Economic Crash — And How to Stop It. Warren’s column came just 11 days after we titled our own article: Is There a Stealth Financial Crisis? Alarm Bells Are Ringing. Warren wrote about economic trends like the fact that the U.S. manufacturing sector is already in recession and the staggering amount of household and corporate debt. We wrote about the striking similarities to the early warning signs that ushered in the 2008 financial crash and those happening right now: like being locked out of withdrawing money from a mutual fund because of a run on the fund and an inability to find a buyer for its illiquid investments; and a major international bank firing a big chunk of its labor … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 21, 2019 ~  According to a database created by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists containing files leaked from the law firm Appleby, Jeffrey Epstein, who is under indictment as a sex trafficker and assaulter of underage girls, was the Chairman of Liquid Funding Ltd. from November 9, 2001 to at least March 19, 2007. The offshore business had been incorporated in Bermuda on October 19, 2000 and according to the Fitch ratings firm, it had $6.7 billion in outstanding liabilities in 2006. In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in February 2003, Bear Stearns, the Wall Street investment bank that Epstein had resigned from under murky circumstances in 1981, confirmed that it was a 40 percent owner of Liquid Funding Ltd., writing as follows: “At November 30, 2002, the Company had an approximate 40% equity interest in Liquid Funding, Ltd. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 15, 2019 ~ Jeffrey Epstein is variously called a “billionaire,” a “hedge fund manager,” or a “financier” in the hundreds of articles that have appeared in print this month. But no one can say with any certainty how Epstein obtained his wealth or exactly how much wealth he actually has. We’ve located a highly interesting ledger from one of his nonprofit tax filings which shows he was able to get his hands on highly preferential hot IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) and flipped them on their first day of trading. We’ll explore that in detail shortly, but first some background. Jeffrey Epstein is due in Federal Court in Manhattan this morning to argue his case for being allowed to serve his time until trial under house arrest in his opulent $77 million mansion on the upper East Side rather than the drab confinements of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 9, 2019 ~ As of early this morning, Deutsche Bank’s restructuring plan is looking a lot like the lifeboat plan for the Titanic. Research analysts have expressed skepticism that the plan will work and the bank’s stock performance is backing up that assessment. In overnight trading in Frankfurt, the stock had cumulatively lost 10 percent of its value in less than two days of trading since the details of its restructuring were made public. Deutsche Bank’s shares also trade on the New York Stock Exchange, which opens at 9:30 a.m. Deutsche Bank is widely known to be a major derivatives counterparty – meaning its fate could have a spillover effect on other major banks which have taken the opposite sides of its derivatives trades. Notably, every major Wall Street bank closed in the red yesterday with two, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, outpacing … Continue reading →