Search Results for: Federal Reserve

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 13, 2017 Jamie Dimon became Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase on December 31, 2005. An inordinate amount of frauds have been perpetrated inside his bank since that time, none of which the eagle-eyed Dimon spotted. But Dimon says he knows a fraud when he sees one outside of his bank. Yesterday, he took on the cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin, calling it a fraud. At a banking conference on Tuesday, Dimon said that “Bitcoin will eventually blow up. It’s a fraud. It’s worse than tulip bulbs and won’t end well.” We’re not saying Dimon is wrong about Bitcoin. In fact, more than three years ago Wall Street On Parade compared Bitcoin to the tulip bulb bubble and explained in crystal clear terms how it differs from a real currency, such as the U.S. dollar. But we are saying that Dimon’s super sleuth nose … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 8, 2017  Wall Street On Parade is something of an historian when it comes to the shifting sands of the New York Times Editorial Board and its position on riding herd on one of its richest and serially corrupt hometown industries – Wall Street. The Times has vacillated over the decades between truculent finger wagging at Wall Street (typically after the public is already wielding pitchforks) to irrational indulgence of its excesses, to outright egging on of its wealth transfer schemes. The Times is out with a new editorial today which is peculiarly titled: “Why the Return of Bigger Banks Means Bigger Risks for Everyone Else.” The title makes it seem like the Trump administration has had something to do with “the return of bigger banks.” In fact, it was the failure of the eight year Democratic administration of Barack Obama to enact … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 5, 2017 As if someone had quietly turned on a light bulb last month illuminating the corporate takeover of America, a series of articles from multiple outlets chronicled the demise of American democracy under the jackboot of the corporate state. David Dayen at the New Republic wrote: “Far from selfless arbiters of right and wrong, CEOs are as responsible as anyone in America for skyrocketing inequality, climate crisis, waves of consumer fraud, and the biggest financial meltdown since the Depression. Condemning the unpopular views of an unpopular president whom they see as an inferior businessman is no sacrifice, especially when they are simultaneously plotting with administration officials to win as many perks as possible. CEOs aren’t ‘finding their voice’; they’re finding a way to control government like a marionette, while hiding the strings.” Last week, Don Kopf, writing for Quartz, provided more clarity. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 22, 2017 As summer draws to a close and the Wall Street titans enjoy the last of their lazy long weekends in the Hamptons, summering next door to the army of lawyers that keep them out of jail, it’s a curious time to be reading about a major new lawsuit that has the potential to shake Wall Streeters right down to their Gucci loafers. The charges include conspiracy to restrain trade in violation of the Sherman Act and unjust enrichment in a $1.7 trillion market. Since the Senate hearings of the early 1930s, which examined the Wall Street practices and conspiracies that led to the 1929-1932 stock market collapse and Great Depression, there have been rumblings that Wall Street’s system for lending stock for traders to short is a viper’s nest of ripoffs. Now two major law firms, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 16, 2017  According to continuing reports from the trenches, buttressed by a Bloomberg News article out today by Neil Weinberg, Wall Street’s largest firms are still firing whistleblowers for having the temerity to bring corrupt conduct to their superiors’ attention — despite whistleblower protection statutes embedded in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. One Dodd-Frank provision expressly prohibits retaliation against whistleblowers and provides whistleblowers legal remedies if they are discharged or retaliated against. Another section provides potentially hefty awards through the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) if the whistleblower provides original information leading to a successful enforcement action that results in sanctions of over $1 million. Just this past April, the Board of Barclays, a big player on Wall Street, had to admit that it had hired an outside law firm to investigate its own CEO’s handling of a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 15, 2017 When there is an epic financial crash in the U.S. that collapses century old Wall Street institutions and brings about the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, one would think that the root causes would be chiseled in stone by now. But when it comes to the 2008 crash, expensive corporate media real estate is happy to allow bogus theories to go unchallenged by editors. What is happening ever so subtly over time is that the unprecedented greed, corruption and unrestrained manufacture of fraudulent securities by iconic brands on Wall Street that actually caused the crash are getting a gentle rewrite. The insidious danger of this is that Wall Street is never reformed or adequately regulated – that it remains a skulking financial monster with its unseen tentacles wrapped tightly around every economic artery of American life, retaining its ever … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 10, 2017 On April 7, 2011 the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 12,409.49. Yesterday, it closed at 22,048.70, an increase of more than 9600 points over the six-year span. A bull market of this magnitude lasting more than half a decade would have been expected by Wall Street experts to have sucked in even the most cynical Wall Street naysayers. It hasn’t. Each April, the polling firm, Gallup, conducts its annual Economy and Personal Finance Survey. It asks U.S. adults whether they personally or jointly have money invested in the stock market, either in individual stocks or stock market funds, including through vehicles such as 401(k)s and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). Gallup began its 2011 survey on April 7, 2011, the day that the Dow closed at 12,409.49. That year’s survey found that 45 percent of Americans owned no stocks. Despite a … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 9, 2017 On August 7 the Federal Reserve released an updated report on consumer debt. It raises more questions about how the big Wall Street banks are making all those billions of dollars in profits. Since 2012, the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note has yielded below 2.5 percent for the majority of that period. But according to the Federal Reserve chart above, on all consumer credit card accounts assessed interest, the interest rate charged to consumers has moved from 12.96 percent in 2012 to 14 percent as of May 2017. (The 14 percent figure is defined as follows by the Fed: “The rate for accounts assessed interest is the annualized ratio of total finance charges at all reporting banks to the total average daily balances against which the finance charges were assessed (excludes accounts for which no finance charges were assessed).” From 2012 … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 8, 2017 Yesterday, Neel Kashkari, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, spoke to the Rotary Club of Downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota and then opened up the mic to questions from the audience. One question concerned today’s lack of true innovation rather than just innovations in social media. Kashkari responded as follows: Kashkari: “This is a big complicated topic. A big question mark in the economics profession is why is productivity growth in the U.S. economy so low. It’s much lower than it has been in prior decades. And, we think, you pull out your iPhone or Twitter or Facebook – you think, wow, all this stuff is happening. Well, some experts say the things that we’re creating now – that we’re innovating now – just aren’t that impactful. They don’t really move the needle very much. So if you compare … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 2, 2017 There seems to be an unlimited supply of methods in which the rich in America keep getting richer and the average Joe picks up the tab. (Think about the $16 trillion secret bailout of Wall Street by the Federal Reserve from 2007 to 2010 for the quintessential example.) Yesterday, Fortune Magazine ran this sobering headline: “The Wealth Gap in the U.S. Is Worse Than In Russia or Iran.” The article quotes Richard Florida, author of The New Urban Crisis, as follows: “Inequality in New York City is like Swaziland. Miami’s is like Zimbabwe. Los Angeles is equivalent to Sri Lanka. I actually look at the difference between the 95th percentile of income earners in big cities and the lower 20%. In the New York metro area, the 95th percentile makes $282,000 and the 20th percentile makes $23,000. These gaps between the rich … Continue reading →