Search Results for: is the new york fed too conflicted

By Pam Martens: November 29, 2021 ~ For more than two decades, the general counsels of Wall Street’s mega banks have been meeting together secretly once a year at ritzy hotels and resorts around the world. This would appear to be a clear violation of anti-trust law but since Wall Street’s revolving door has compromised the U.S. Department of Justice over much of that time span, there has been no pushback from the Justice Department to shut down these clandestine meetings. Wall Street insiders say that among the top agenda items at this annual confab are strategy sessions on how to keep Congress from enacting legislation that would bring an end to Wall Street’s privatized justice system called mandatory arbitration. This system allows the most serially corrupt industry in America to effectively lock the nation’s courthouse doors to claims of fraud from its workers and customers. This private justice system also … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: November 3, 2021 ~ Yesterday, President Biden stunned moderates in his party by formally sending his nomination of Cornell Law Professor Saule Omarova to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to the Senate. The OCC regulates national banks, those operating across state lines, which include some of the largest banks in the nation, such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup’s Citibank. Many folks believed that after Omarova’s recent law journal article became widely analyzed, she would remove herself from consideration or Biden would quietly ask her to step aside. As Wall Street On Parade revealed last week, Omarova’s 69-page paper published in the Vanderbilt Law Review in October, proposed the following: (1) Moving all commercial bank deposits from commercial banks to so-called FedAccounts at the Federal Reserve; (2) Allowing the Fed, in “extreme and rare circumstances, when the Fed is unable to … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 3, 2021 ~ The House Financial Services Committee is showing a decidedly gutsy streak under the Chairmanship of Congresswoman Maxine Waters. No less than four hearings this month will take a deep dive into the underpinnings of an out of control Wall Street. The kickoff begins this Thursday with the Committee’s third hearing on the wild trading action in shares of GameStop and other meme stocks. GameStop trades on the New York Stock Exchange but its trading pattern has looked more like that of a penny stock operated out of a boiler room – raising serious questions about the integrity of U.S. markets. On January 28, 2021 GameStop hit an intraday peak of $483, bringing its run from a share price of $18.84 on December 31, 2020 — a gain of 2,465 percent for a struggling brick and mortar retail outlet that sells video … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 31, 2021 ~ On March 9 Morgan Stanley announced that it had been “recognized for industry-leading risk management technology.”  Three weeks later it has landed in the middle of one of the biggest hedge fund blowups since the financial crisis of 2008, raising serious questions about how it manages risk. Adding to the embarrassment for both Morgan Stanley and its bank holding company supervisor, the Federal Reserve, the Chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley, James Gorman, sits on the Board of Directors of the New York Fed, to whom the Fed has outsourced much of its oversight of the Wall Street banks. A look at Morgan Stanley’s $647 billion in stock portfolio holdings that it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the quarter ending December 31, 2020 explains why Morgan Stanley has been so strangely silent as the Archegos scandal has played … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 9, 2021 ~ Front groups with long-term histories of funding from billionaire Charles Koch and his related entities have taken a keen interest in Congressional hearings into the manipulative trading action in the shares of GameStop, a struggling brick-and-mortar video game retailer. The Cato Institute maneuvered a seat for itself at a House Financial Services Committee hearing on the matter in February and the Mercatus Center will have a seat at today’s Senate Banking Committee hearing. Shares of GameStop soared from $18.84 on December 31 of last year to an intraday high of $483 on January 28 – an unprecedented run of 2,465 percent in four weeks. The stock price then quickly plunged and is now making a second comeback rally, closing yesterday up 41.21 percent at $194.50. Behind the scenes of this wild trading action has been a decidedly perverse trading model. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 15, 2020 ~ President-elect Joe Biden’s nomination of Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary is being viewed cautiously in some progressive circles. As the post-financial crisis Chair of the Federal Reserve under President Obama, Yellen had the opportunity to interpret the rules of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation in a manner that would rein in the risks of the mega banks on Wall Street. She failed in that regard while attempting to reassure a skeptical public that the Fed’s stress tests on the banks were adequate to prevent another crisis. Yellen famously stated at a London conference in 2017 the following: “Would I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis? You know probably that would be going too far, but I do think we are much safer, and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes and I don’t believe … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 1, 2020 ~ Five days before Congress passed the CARES Act on March 25 of this year, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Memorandum giving U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin complete discretion to use $50 billion in the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) as Mnuchin solely saw fit. The Memorandum was dated Friday, March 20. On the prior Tuesday and Wednesday of that same week, Mnuchin had already used $20 billion of the Exchange Stabilization Fund to bail out Wall Street. As Mnuchin’s letter of November 19 to Fed Chair Jerome Powell confirms, he gave (or committed) $10 billion from the ESF to the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility on March 17 and another $10 billion to another Fed emergency lending program, the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, on March 18. Most Americans have never heard of the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 19, 2020 ~ It’s starting to feel like Goldman Sachs has an insatiable appetite for scandal. Thanks to Matt Taibbi, Goldman is already known around the world as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Most recently, Goldman jammed its blood funnel into the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund of Malaysia, resulting in a criminal indictment by the Malaysian government followed by a settlement with Malaysia for $3.9 billion. In October criminal charges were brought in the same matter by the U.S. Department of Justice against Goldman, resulting in another $2.9 billion in fines by U.S. and foreign regulators. The heavily publicized 1MDB scandal has filled headlines for the past five years. The Justice Department just settled its 1MDB charges against Goldman four weeks ago. Now Goldman is already back … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 5, 2019 ~ Maxine Waters, the Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, has announced a roster of hearings coming this September. Two of the hearing topics particularly caught our eye as both timely and critical. On Tuesday, September 24, the Committee will hold a hearing titled: “Oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission: Wall Street’s Cop on the Beat.” If Chair Waters wants to really open eyes as to what the SEC has become – Wall Street’s bad cop on the beat – she will invite the following individuals to give testimony that day: James Kidney, Darcy Flynn, Gary Aguirre, and Harry Markopolos. Testimony from these individuals will show that while the SEC has, throughout its history, had dedicated and honest career attorneys who want to stop the crimes and corruption on Wall Street, there always seems to be a roadblock thrown … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 1, 2019 ~ The current fragmented, opaque, and deeply conflicted structure of the U.S. stock market as well as the structure of the giant Wall Street banks that interact in every imaginable way with capital formation in America, is not in the public interest, the national interest or in the interest of capitalism itself. Let’s start with the structure of the stock market. Those quaint video clips that you see on television of traders mulling about on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at 11 Wall Street in Manhattan, as executives from some new company that just listed its shares ring the bell to begin stock trading, is meant to lull the public into a sense of confidence that humans are still in charge and looking out for your retirement investments in your 401(k) or public pension plan. But 11 Wall … Continue reading →