Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 13, 2019 ~ Dark Pools are opaque stock trading platforms operated by the largest Wall Street banks and other firms. They are, effectively, stock exchanges but have been given exemptions by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from having to register as a stock exchange or to submit to more rigorous oversight by the SEC. The rationale for the existence of Dark Pools owned by the mega banks has escaped the public since these are the same banks that are serially fined for abusing the public’s trust and rigging other markets like foreign exchange, Libor, and the Nasdaq stock market in the 1990s. Their conduct was so bad in the Nasdaq matter that they were forced to submit to having their trading phone calls taped and reviewed by regulators. Wall Street On Parade has written extensively about the highly suspect transactions that are … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 10, 2019 ~ On Friday markets digested the nonfarm payrolls report from the U.S. Labor Department showing a weak job growth in May of just 75,000. That news adds to a myriad of other economic data, including a slowdown in durable goods orders, that suggest a deceleration of the U.S. economy. The Atlanta Fed’s closely watched GDPNow indicator is showing a very weak 1.4 percent forecast for the second quarter of this year. The 10-year U.S. Treasury note has duly noted the deceleration in the economy and has fallen from a yield of 2.9 percent since the middle of December to 2.08 percent at Friday’s close. The yield of the U.S. Treasury has an inverse relationship to its price. That is, as the market value of the Treasury note rises, the yield declines. Thus, as the perception grows that the U.S. economy is … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 30, 2019 ~  Thanks to former FBI Director James Comey, there are now acceptable times when the 19th century word “Lordy” can be demonstrably exclaimed in public settings. For example, it can be used with pretty much anything to do with the President of the United States or, as we are now suggesting, when referring to the management of Trump’s serially-charged banking establishment, Deutsche Bank. After setting an historic intraday low of $6.82 yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange, shares of Deutsche Bank mustered a tiny rally in the last half hour of trading today to eke out a close of $6.91. Just 12 years ago, this was a $120 stock. The bank now has a market capitalization of $14.18 billion supporting assets of $1.6 trillion. (Perhaps “supporting” is not the right word. Lordy!) According to the bank’s 2018 annual report, it … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 28, 2019 ~  Wall Street is the only industry in America that is allowed, in broad daylight, to operate its own private justice system while making its employees and customers sign binding contracts to take their complaints to that venue to seek justice. That’s like sticking your arm into the mouth of an alligator that just grabbed your purse and expecting to come out whole. Endless reports by journalists on how rigged this private justice system is have done nothing to reopen the nation’s courthouse doors to claims against Wall Street. Not only do the general counsels of Wall Street’s biggest global banks get to fashion their own system to hear claims against the banks but they get to meet in secret for two decades to strategize on other topics impacting their common interest. In 2016, Bloomberg reporters Greg Farrell and Keri Geiger broke … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 20, 2019 ~ Yesterday, every U.S. television network carried the New York Times bombshell that Deutsche Bank employees had flagged suspicious activity in the bank accounts of President Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, involving foreign money flows, but their superiors at Deutsche Bank did not allow the reports to be filed with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a unit of the U.S. Treasury that is mandated under law to receive and investigate such reports. From there the news went viral around the globe, landing on cable news, Reuters and in European newspapers. (Shortly after trading opened this morning on the New York Stock Exchange, Deutsche Bank’s stock traded at an all-time low of $7.39. This was a $120 stock in 2007.) There is no disputing the fact that this is a critical development, for the following key reasons that we will … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 16, 2019 ~ What the United States desperately needs is less Financial Stability Reports and actual financial stability – rather than the Wall Street Casino in drag as Federally-insured banks. The Office of Financial Research (OFR), created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010, publishes a Financial Stability Report; the Financial Stability Oversight Council (F-SOC), also created under Dodd-Frank legislation, publishes an annual report to call attention to any emerging threats to financial stability; and, not to be left out, the Federal Reserve has decided it needs to have its own say in its own Financial Stability Report – ostensibly to make it appear that it’s on top of the threats emanating from its charges on Wall Street – which it decidedly is not. Another reason the Fed may want its own Financial Stability Report is to create the illusion that things … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 15, 2019 ~ The House Financial Services Committee, Chaired by Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, has been doing the heavy lifting for Congress when it comes to oversight of the mega banks on Wall Street. After grilling the CEOs of these banks on April 10, the Committee will convene again tomorrow to grill the Federal regulators of these serially charged mega banks. The witness list includes: Rodney Hood, Chairman, National Credit Union Administration; Jelena McWilliams, Chairman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC); Joseph Otting, Comptroller, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC); and Randal Quarles, Vice Chairman of Supervision, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The Committee has released a very impressive Memorandum, which lays out the Frankenbank framework that exists in the United States today. For example, consider this one sentence from the Memorandum: “U.S. G-SIBs [Global Systemically Important Banks] made … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 14, 2019 ~ Allow us to set the stage for what happened in yesterday’s market rout which saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 617 points. The easy answer is that the market is unnerved by the ongoing trade war between the Trump administration and China. And, clearly, that’s part of the problem. But the market is also keenly aware that there are a handful of mega banks on Wall Street that have monster exposure to derivatives and are systemically interconnected to the counterparties on the other side of those trades. The problem is that nobody, including the regulators, has clarity on which counterparty is in over their head and may have failed to reserve adequate capital if it has to pay out on too many losing derivative trades. That’s what happened in 2008 when a unit of the giant insurer, AIG, had … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 8, 2019 ~  For years now, Wall Street On Parade has been pointing out to our readers that the Wall Street mega banks remain dangerously interconnected, despite the fact that those interconnections stopped banks from lending to one another in 2008; resulted in the largest government bailout of Wall Street in U.S. history; and ended up taking down the U.S. housing market and global economy. Whenever there is a major selloff in the broader stock market, the Wall Street mega banks typically bleed far more than the major stock indices. Yesterday, however, something curious and potentially noteworthy happened. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 473.3 points or 1.79 percent and the following Wall Street banks traded in line with that decline: JPMorgan Chase actually lost a little less than the Dow with a decline of 1.63 percent. Bank of America and Goldman Sachs … Continue reading →