By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 14, 2020 ~ The House Financial Services’ Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship and Capital Markets will convene a hearing at noon today that is titled: “Promoting Economic Recovery: Examining Capital Markets and Worker Protections in the COVID-19 Era.” You can watch the hearing live at this link. One of the topics for the hearing will be corporations buying back their own stock and paying dividends during the pandemic, actions which benefit shareholders rather than the overall economy. The House is considering legislation that would require that until all federal aid under the CARES Act has been repaid by the corporation, it cannot “pay bonuses to executives, may not pay executives in connection with their termination, may not engage in stock buybacks, and may not pay dividends to shareholders.” The Subcommittee has a very sound, and urgent, basis to explore this topic, particularly as … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 13, 2020 ~ Imagine if every bank customer was greeted this week with a big sign just inside their Chase Bank branch that said this: “Dear Customers: We lost $3.2 billion trading stocks and credit derivatives in the first quarter. We did that using your bank deposits. But don’t worry, that pales in comparison to the $6 billion we lost in 2012 in the London Whale mess.” JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States. Each and every week, millions of Americans write out a check on their account at one of the more than 5,000 branches of Chase Bank; or drop into a branch to open a savings account for a grandchild; or to put money into their own retirement account; or to seek financial advice. Everything looks very crisp, clean, consumer friendly and professional inside that individual bank branch. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 10, 2020 ~ Beginning on September 17 of last year, months before the first COVID-19 case had been discovered anywhere in the world, the Federal Reserve – for the first time since the financial crisis of 2008 – jumped into the repo loan market, where financial firms borrow from each other overnight, and began making tens of billions of dollars in loans a week to the trading houses of Wall Street. The Fed calls these 24 trading houses its “primary dealers.” For the vast majority of the Fed’s 107-year existence, it was limited to making loans to only commercial banks, which would assist the general U.S. economy by passing on those loans to businesses and consumers. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the Fed has become a money spigot to the Wall Street casino, based solely on its own interpretation of what it’s … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 9, 2020 ~ Jay Sekulow’s charities have been under a harsh glare for almost two decades for funneling vast sums to Sekulow and his family members. Now, one of those charities, the American Center for Law and Justice, has turned up on the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan database that was released this week by the Small Business Administration. PPP loans were part of the CARES Act passed by Congress to help small businesses with no other source of funding stay alive during the pandemic. According to the PPP database, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) received a loan of between $1 to $2 million. ACLJ is a nonprofit that lists Jay Sekulow as its CEO, Chief Counsel and Board Member, according to its 2018 public tax filing known as a 990.  Sekulow’s brother, Gary, is listed as Vice President of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 8, 2020 ~ As we reported yesterday, the U.S. Justice Department has been sitting on mountains of evidence against Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking operation and his co-conspirators since July of 2006 when the Palm Beach, Florida Police Chief, Michael Reiter, handed a deeply investigated case against Epstein and his co-conspirators over to the FBI. After crafting a cozy 18-month work-release deal with Epstein in 2008 based on only Florida state charges (and then releasing him from jail five months early) the Justice Department allowed Epstein to return to business as usual for another 10 years until his arrest by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in July 2019. That same Justice Department allowed Epstein to die with many of his secrets intact as a result of the negligence of the federal prison system to properly monitor him. That … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 7, 2020 ~  Outside of the Wall Street executives that did business with child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, his first lieutenant, Ghislaine Maxwell, knows more about his Wall Street secrets than any other living person. Maxwell was arrested and indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (part of the U.S. Justice Department) on July 2, less than two weeks after the head of that office, Geoffrey Berman, was abruptly fired from his job by Attorney General William Barr. Berman’s former Deputy, Audrey Strauss, conducted the press conference regarding the Maxwell arrest. (See video below.) We immediately noticed a peculiarity about the indictment document provided by Strauss. It covered only a brief 4-year period, running from 1994 through 1997. One of the main accusers of Maxwell, Virginia (Roberts) Giuffre, has credibly indicated in previous court filings that Epstein … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 6, 2020 ~ Three of the top men at the U.S. Department of Justice who have been involved in negotiations as to whether Goldman Sachs, for the first time in its history, will be charged with a criminal felony and hit with a multi-billion dollar fine, received large sums of money from the law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, before joining the Trump administration.  Kirkland & Ellis is the law firm defending Goldman Sachs in the criminal case. The top dog at the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr, worked as “Of Counsel” to Kirkland & Ellis prior to joining the Justice Department. Barr’s financial disclosure form shows that Kirkland & Ellis paid him $1,188,257 and a $50,000 bonus for 2018. In addition to the money from Kirkland & Ellis, Barr made another $2.6 million in fees and from cashing out stock options for … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 2, 2020 ~ The first thing you need to know about Citibank and its parent, Citigroup, is that they have an extensive rap sheet. (See here). The second thing you need to know is that Citigroup is a serial predator that perpetually promises its regulators that it’s going to reform, but never does. The third thing you need to know is that Citigroup has made a sap out of the Federal Reserve – not once, but twice. During the last financial crisis of 2007 to 2010, Citigroup somehow induced the Fed to secretly give it $2.5 trillion cumulatively in below-market rate loans for 2-1/2 years to prop up its sinking carcass. Citi got the cheap loans (often at below one-half of one percent) and then went right on charging its struggling credit card customers high double-digit interest rates. Citi played a major role … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 1, 2020 ~ Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin apparently fear unleashing more angry protesters across the country screaming “no justice, no peace” into an air increasingly filled with COVID-19 droplets, more than they fear Trump Tweeting reprisals against them in the wee hours of the morning. Both Powell and Mnuchin raised their hands yesterday during the House Financial Services Committee hearing to agree to work with a proposed Department of Reconciliation to deal with the country’s history of slavery, segregation and ongoing “invidious discrimination” of people of color. The hearing had been called by the Chair of the Committee, Maxine Waters, to take testimony on “Oversight of the Treasury Department’s and Federal Reserve’s Pandemic Response.” That topic was frequently framed around questions of racial discrimination and inequality. The raised hands from Powell and Mnuchin came in response to questioning … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 30, 2020 ~ On May 2 of last year, the Chief Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York wrote a decision finding that the U.S. Department of Justice had outsourced a criminal investigation to the target of the investigation – Deutsche Bank – and Deutsche Bank’s outside law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. (Paul Weiss is a big defender of alleged crimes by Wall Street banks, particularly those of Citigroup.) A larger, more critically important question would be: has the U.S. Department of Justice outsourced the entire U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York to Wall Street’s favorite law firms? No matter how many times the New York Times tells its readers that the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York is known for its “independence,” the cold, hard facts … Continue reading →