Search Results for: JPMorgan

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 6, 2017 Hillary Clinton’s Excuses Tour continues in the form of her new book, What Happened, set for release on September 12. Enough photos of pages with text from the book have been leaked by media outlets to get a reliable feel for what Hillary hopes to accomplish with her latest tome. For starters, Hillary portrays herself as the mature politician who understands what can and cannot be accomplished in Washington while Senator Bernie Sanders (the wildly popular candidate who opposed her in the primary race; has survived for a quarter of a century in Congress without a scandal; and was secretly targeted for defeat by the Democratic National Committee) was irrationally promising ponies to get votes. Hillary provides a passage for how this pony-promising-strategy by Sanders derailed her message: Bernie: I think America should get a pony. Hillary: How will you pay … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 23, 2017 In 1996 the U.S. had 845 Initial Public Offerings. Last year, after twenty passing years of research and budding new technologies should have fueled growth in the IPO market, the U.S. had a paltry 98 IPOs. According to a study by the law firm, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, gross proceeds from IPOs in 2016 were $18.54 billion while the “average annual gross proceeds for the 12-year period preceding 2016 were $35.73 billion — 93 percent higher than the corresponding figure for 2016.” Not only has the U.S. seriously lost ground in IPOs but the total number of publicly traded companies in the U.S. is down by almost half in the same 20 year span. Last September, Jim Clifton, the Chairman and CEO of Gallup, the polling company, explained why he thinks this is happening. Clifton wrote: “The number of publicly … 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 17, 2017 As the stock market repeatedly set new highs this year, confidence in the President was eroding among the general public. That erosion of confidence now extends to dozens of the top corporate leaders in America. There is apparently a new social standard in America. When it was revealed in the final weeks of Trump’s Presidential bid that he had stated on video that he could sexually assault women (“grab ‘em by the p*ssy), it was not a serious impediment for the top executives of the largest corporations in America to continue to pander to Trump, take top posts in his administration and serve on his business advisory councils. Even though it is generally accepted that women “drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing, through a combination of their buying power and influence” the male executives that sit atop the most famous brands … 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 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 7, 2017 Last Monday, Thomas Hoenig, the Vice Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), sent a stunning letter to the Chair and Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. The letter contained information that should have become front page news at every business wire service and the leading business newspapers. But with the exception of Reuters, major corporate media like the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, the Business section of the New York Times and Washington Post ignored the bombshell story, according to our search at Google News. What the fearless Hoenig told the Senate Banking Committee was effectively this: the biggest Wall Street banks have been lying to the American people that overly stringent capital rules by their regulators are constraining their ability to lend to consumers and businesses. What’s really behind their inability to make more loans is … Continue reading →

  By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: August 3, 2017 The Federal Reserve Board of Governors is supposed to have a roster of seven Governors. It currently has four. Equally alarming, it lists just two members serving on each of its eight committees. One Fed Board Governor, Lael Brainard, is listed as one of the two members on six of the eight committees, or 75 percent of all committees. Governor Jerome Powell sits on five of the eight committees, or 63 percent of all committees. The Fed’s Committee on Supervision and Regulation consists of just Powell and Brainard. And yet, this is what the Fed’s 2015 Annual Report describes as the institutions the Fed supervises: 4,922 Bank Holding Companies 442 Domestic Financial Holding Companies 470 Savings and Loan Holding Companies 839 State Member Banks 154 Foreign Banks Operating in the U.S. Along with other entities per the graph above. There … Continue reading →