Search Results for: JPMorgan

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 13, 2017 If Goldman Sachs thinks this Russian computer genius is worthy of endless prosecution for the past eight years, despite two courts overturning their efforts, perhaps he’s just the man the Department of Homeland Security and FBI need to stop the Russian assault on the U.S. election system. This morning Bloomberg News is reporting that in the leadup to the Presidential election of 2016, Russian hackers hit voting systems in a total of 39 states, confirming other reports that the U.S. public has not previously been made aware of the extent of Russian hacking into state voting systems. In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8, former FBI Director James Comey stated in regard to Russian interference in our elections that “They’re coming after America,” adding that “They will be back.” This is where computer experts on Wall Street could help the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 9, 2017 President Donald Trump announced his nomination of Christopher Wray to take over James Comey’s job as Director of the FBI in a Tweet on June 7, the day before Comey’s much anticipated testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. In the Tweet, Trump called Wray a “man of impeccable credentials,” which, undoubtedly, he is. He is also a man with a maze of conflicts of interests. It appears that someone has tried to scrub some of those conflicts from the official web site of the Justice Department. For example, try this Justice Department press release link, which now turns up a dead page. www.justice.gov/criminal/pr/2004/02/2004_3631_FORMER_ENRON_CHIEF_E.htm Fortunately for our readers, Google has cached the press release which is dated February 19, 2004. The opening sentence includes all three names making headlines today – Comey, Wray and Robert Mueller, the newly appointed Special Counsel who … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 30, 2017  The 2017 Memorial Day weekend will inevitably go down in history as the three-day span when remembrances of our military veterans took a media backseat to President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and everything Russian. One of the key areas under multiple probes is a meeting Kushner held in December with Sergey Gorkov, the Chairman of Vnesheconombank (VEB), a Russian state-owned bank which has been under U.S. sanctions since July 2014 for Russia’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine. What this meeting was about has yet to be officially determined. Reuters reported on Saturday that “FBI investigators are examining whether Russians suggested to Kushner or other Trump aides that relaxing economic sanctions would allow Russian banks to offer financing to people with ties to Trump, said the current U.S. law enforcement official.” Financial dealings with a Russian bank that remains under … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 26, 2017 The majority of American citizens have never heard of the U.S. Treasury agency known as FinCEN – short for Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. But for those who work for Wall Street brokerage firms or the mega Wall Street banks like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup or German banking giant Deutsche Bank, just the mere mention of FinCEN can quickly produce beads of sweat dripping onto those expensive Canali suits. That’s because FinCEN is the Federal agency where suspicious financial activity that might turn out to be money laundering gets reported. All three banks, and numerous others, have had their share of scandalous run ins with money laundering. In recent weeks, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, Senate Intelligence Committee and the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee have all shown an interest in what FinCEN might have in its database that would shed sunshine … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 25, 2017 President Donald Trump’s demands for loyalty from the individuals in his administration have been a hot topic for weeks in U.S. media. But what the media has yet to explain is how so many law partners from global corporate law firms that were outsized donors to Hillary Clinton’s presidential run last year, giving crumbs by comparison to Trump’s campaign, now hold seats of power throughout the Trump administration. Let’s start with the weirdest example of all: Jones Day.  Wall Street On Parade reported earlier this year that on January 20, 2017 – the very day of Trump’s inauguration – Jones Day announced that a whopping 12 of its law partners were moving into the Trump administration. Among the 12, key slots went to Donald F. McGahn II as White House Counsel; Noel Francisco, first named as Principal Deputy Solicitor General and … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 23, 2017 Citigroup, the Wall Street mega bank that taxpayers were forced to prop up in the largest bailout of a financial institution in U.S. history from 2008 to 2010, is also a recidivist lawbreaker that the U.S. Justice Department fails to tame regardless of who occupies the Oval Office. Under the Obama administration, Citigroup was repeatedly fined by its Federal regulators for serious abuses of the law and its customers but only once was a felony count leveled against the bank. On May 20, 2015, Citicorp, a unit of Citigroup, pleaded guilty to a felony charge in connection with the rigging of foreign currency trading. (Three other banks, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays PLC and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) also pleaded guilty to felony charges in the same matter. UBS, at the same time, pleaded guilty to rigging the interest rate benchmark … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 18, 2017 Four of the largest Wall Street banks that were counting on a powerful President Trump to roll back Dodd-Frank financial reform regulations lost a combined $37.60 billion in their market capitalization yesterday. The worst hit in terms of percentage decline was Bank of America, parent of the giant brokerage firm Merrill Lynch, which fell 5.92 percent for a market cap loss of $14.14 billion. Goldman Sachs, which has become closely associated with President Trump as a result of a raft of its former partners and its immediate past President serving in his administration, fell an eyebrow-raising 5.27 percent yesterday for a market cap loss of $4.676 billion. JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup added to the carnage.  JPMorgan Chase fell 3.81 percent with a hit to its market cap of $11.87 billion while Citigroup fell 4.02 percent, losing $6.91 billion in market cap. … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 3, 2017 Andrew Ross Sorkin, the New York Times business writer who created a meme against breaking up the big Wall Street banks out of a mountain of grossly inaccurate facts, was pummeled by readers yesterday for doubling down on his out-of-touch position. Sorkin’s latest article was addressing the recent comments by President Trump and his Director of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, indicating that they are taking a look at restoring the Glass-Steagall Act – the depression era legislation that separated banks holding insured deposits from the high risk investment banks that underwrite and trade risky securities. The Glass-Steagall Act protected the nation’s banking system from its passage in 1933 to its repeal in 1999 during the Bill Clinton administration. It took just nine years after its repeal for Wall Street to implode in the same epic fashion as 1929 – … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: May 1, 2017 Back in 2014 New York Times columnist Paul Krugman embarked on a mission to defend President Obama’s reform of Wall Street’s biggest banks that had brought the country to the brink of financial collapse just six years earlier. In August of 2014 Krugman wrote that the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation that Obama had signed into law in 2010 “is a success story.” Krugman’s rubber stamp of Dodd-Frank came despite the fact that JPMorgan Chase, the country’s largest bank, had just two years earlier – long after the passage of Dodd-Frank – used hundreds of billions of dollars of its depositors’ money in its commercial bank, Chase, to make wild gambles in derivatives in London, losing at least $6.2 billion along the way. This so-called “London Whale” debacle correctly convinced millions of Americans that the only way to truly reform Wall Street … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 17, 2017 There are a few important things to know about Gary Cohn. Until Donald Trump tapped him to be the Director of the National Economic Council, he had worked at Goldman Sachs for a quarter century, rising to the position of President of the firm and second only to its CEO, Lloyd Blankfein. Cohn walked out of Goldman in December with approximately $285 million, comprised mainly of Goldman stock, some of which had been granted early vesting. Since his exit from Goldman, Cohn has wasted no time in selling large chunks of his Goldman shares according to his financial disclosures. While this serves to reduce his conflicts of interest with Goldman, it also provides a face-saving means of exiting a massive position in a Wall Street bank without the appearance of panic or disloyalty. Against this backdrop comes the widely reported news … Continue reading →