Wall Street on Parade

The article assumes knowledge of facts surrounding the financial crisis. There's plenty written elsewhere about that. Here's a sampling of books and blogs to comprehend what led to the Great Financial Crisis. * Griftopia by Matt Taibbi * https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-9-billion-witn… * https://jpmadoff.com/ * https://wallstreetonparade.com

There's always the "VICE news" of wall street... https://wallstreetonparade.com/

First, the usual disclaimers about 'do your own research' and all that. Also, people come into econ for different reasons, have different focuses, and expect different things from their news. Some people read news about the economy because they have specific decision making responsibilty, and some people read it because they're just curious. I'm somewhere in the middle depending on what is specifically being talked about. Here are some random links that I check from time to time when I have the time. https://wallstreetonparade.com/ https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/ https://mattstoller.substack.com/ And then many mainstream ones like newspaper sites and the like.

"...Between March 10 and May 1 of this year, three of the largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred. On March 10 the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) seized Silicon Valley Bank after $42 billion in deposits had exited the bank the day prior with another $100 billion queued up to leave the next day – meaning it was possible for a federally-insured bank to lose 85 percent of its deposits in the span of 48 hours in the digital age. (For a closer look at what was going on at Silicon Valley Bank, see our report: Silicon Valley Bank Was a Wall Street IPO Pipeline in Drag as a Federally-Insured Bank; FHLB of San Francisco Was Quietly Bailing It Out.) Two more bank failures followed in short order: Signature Bank on March 12 and First Republic Bank on May 1. Both banks were experiencing bank runs as a result of a loss of confidence by their customers. First Republic Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank were the second, third and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history, respectively. (The largest failure was Washington Mutual during the financial crisis of 2008.) The Fed’s answer to this crisis of confidence was to allow JPMorgan Chase, officially the riskiest U.S. bank with a string of felonies, to buy the failed First Republic Bank. At the time, First Republic was the 14th largest bank in the U.S. and JPMorgan Chase was the number 1 largest bank with $3.3 trillion in consolidated assets. (Is there any logic, whatsoever, in allowing the riskiest…

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-21/tiger-global-s-now-… > Bain & Co. was among consulting firms that helped conduct due diligence for Tiger Global Management’s investment in now-defunct crypto exchange FTX, according to people familiar with the matter. Tiger Global, which pays Bain more than $100 million a year to research private companies, has now written down its $38 million FTX stake to zero. https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/11/ftxs-latest-casualties-federall… > As of September 30, 2022, Silvergate’s total deposits from all digital asset customers totaled $11.9 billion, of which FTX represented less than 10% ... The stock has lost 28 percent since FTX filed bankruptcy on November 11 ... We know of four FDIC-insured banks whose share prices have already been hit: Silvergate Bank, Customers Bank, Signature Bank and Metropolitan Bank.

Why is this hyperbole? My understanding is that the Fed has set aside $454 billion of taxpayers’ money via the CARES act to absorb the losses in the bail out programs set up by the Fed. And this has more detail, from an earlier article [1] Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania asked Quarles to clarify if the taxpayers’ money ($454 billion handed over by the Treasury to the Fed, which will then be used as equity in Special Purpose Vehicles set up by the Fed and leveraged up to $4.54 trillion to make loans and purchases of toxic assets on Wall Street banks’ balance sheets), is in fact going to be used to absorb losses on what the Fed is taking off the balance sheets on Wall Street. Quarles responded as follows: “The Treasury has the fiduciary responsibility, if you will, to the Congress for the use of the funds that are appropriated to it. So I wouldn’t want to speak for them as to how that equity should be handled. But it is true that in the construction of the 13(3) facilities [Fed’s emergency programs] that use Treasury equity, the Treasury equity is there to insure the Fed, which statutorily cannot take losses, has to be sure that it won’t, is there to insure that that cushion exists for the funding portion of the facility.” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has already admitted that the $454 billion is to be used to absorb losses that it anticipates it will take. [1]…

Thats the national fed. The regional feds are privately owned by 'member banks' https://www.stlouisfed.org/in-plain-english/who-owns-the-federal-reser… It's actually a really ambiguous topic to research, as ownership stakes are basically never published. Someone supposedly did a FOIA and got the list of ownership shares for the NY fed, but its sourcing was dubious though it seemed legit enough. The names made sense and it lined up with a lot of verifiable historical facts. Banks of ownership for the NY Fed were systemically important banks like Citi, JP Morgan and BNY Mellon, few others iirc. Read and evaluate for yourself: https://wallstreetonparade.com/2019/11/these-are-the-banks-that-own-th…

"In the fall of 2019 there was no war in Ukraine, there was no pandemic. But for still undisclosed reasons, the Fed decided to funnel trillions of dollars in cumulative repo loans to the trading units of U.S. megabanks and their foreign counterparties. The Fed’s repo loans stretched from September 17, 2019 through July 2, 2020." >> https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/04/global-megabanks-are-tanking-th…

This is a start because they read court filings. https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/11/u-s-justice-department-steps-in… Everyone can get a PACER logon and use the free tier to read the court filings for themselves. https://pacer.uscourts.gov

No, the Central Banks give banks cash in return for garbage mortgages. Look at the giant bump in 2008 in Fed assets. Most of that is mortgages. And then in 2019 an even bigger calamity. Those massive jumps represent the finantialization of the USA, a massive form of economic shift. [1] https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/06/fed-data-shows-a-half-century-o…

I’m no economist but I’m fairly certain the recent inflation is the fallout from this https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/01/these-charts-are-the-smoking-gu…

Here is the article being referenced: https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/01/theres-a-news-blackout-on-the-f… Note, there are some strange comments about how "these big banks own the New York Fed". Here [0] is an article talking more about that. Keep in mind: the banks are investors in the regulatory agency that oversees them - the banks have skin in the game, the banks buy shares which are non-voting shares, the banks can place members on the board of the fed - which is different than "owning" the fed All in all, this site appears to use inflammatory language and doesn't look too credible, buy ymmv [0]https://wallstreetonparade.com/2019/11/these-are-the-banks-that-own-th…

Banking looks easy till there's the regular credit crunch. In the last credit bubble that ended in 2008 there were lots of disruptors. However, when there's a crash, who gets saved is a matter of politics. In the last crash, Lehman got sacrificed[1]. Meanwhile, Goldman got it's credit default swaps paid out 100 cents on the dollar when AIG failed by the grace of the federal government.[2] Many of the disruptors crashed and burned though. [1]https://dealbreaker.com/2018/09/hank-paulson-killed-lehman-brothers-ca… [2]https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/08/meet-the-two-congressmen-who-fa…

The website isn't always responsive on first attempt but Wall Street on Parade ran a piece on Keith Gill over the past weekend. Point being from all these pieces, this isn't some total amateur who just made bets and videos in casual attire--he did have a day job in the industry and knew the professional rules of conduct. The aftermath of this whole incident will be far more interesting than the actual unfolding. https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/01/gamestop-promoter-keith-gill-wa…

What I’m curious about is whether the SEC is going to sue DeepFuckingValue and require him to disgorge all of his gains. He’s not just a Joe Schmoe on Reddit, he’s a licensed broker with like four active Securities licenses which prohibit publicly pumping a stock exactly like he did. He’s had to sign numerous agreements and passed numerous exams detailing these responsibilities, I don’t understand how he didn’t try to cover his tracks better. Source: https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/01/gamestop-promoter-keith-gill-wa…

Citadel hedge fund (not the market maker) has a large short bet on GameStop and profits from short selling https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/02/citadel-didnt-just-bail-out-a-g…

Did that happen after the LIBOR scandal? https://wallstreetonparade.com/2012/12/why-was-libor-rate-rigging-comm… > What the complaint makes clear is that it should not have taken five years to bring these charges. The traders effectively handed the Justice Department a slam dunk case by documenting each maneuver to rig the international interest rate benchmark known as Libor via instant messages recorded on a Bloomberg computer terminal.

Here's what your "democratically-legitimized PhD filled institutions" have cleverly orchestrated. https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/03/fed-announces-program-for-wall-… I'll take the disinterested algorithm please.

I initially found the article’s attitude against the Fed’s noted actions surprising, but slowly a bias from the author surfaced, particularly after I started seeing phrases like “toxic waste” and “a secret from the American people”. I am not saying Wall St. and/or/nor the Fed’s actions (or lack thereof) were correct for the time (2008), but this seemingly personal vendetta does not make for a valuable, objective piece of journalism. The author even notes herself as “an outspoken critic“ on the About page [1]. [1]: https://wallstreetonparade.com/about-3/about/

Url changed from https://wallstreetonparade.com/2019/12/new-york-fed-plans-to-throw-2-9… which points to this. If you see comments complaining about how misleading the article and headline are, they were probably about that one, not this one.

It seems that some banks just decided to stop funding the overnight and short term repo needs of some other banks. There's lots of speculation about why. [1] 1. https://wallstreetonparade.com/2019/12/bis-drops-a-bombshell-four-u-s-…

> But on the other hand, JPMorgan for whatever reason really does seem to want to be that quasi-lender of last resort at the right price. They did it last year. I think Kaminska in my linked article has a pretty fair view that post-crisis regulation changed the game in ways we might not fully acknowledge or be aware of. More like, they realize there is too much risk of intraday bankruptcy: https://wallstreetonparade.com/2019/11/intra-day-bankruptcy-a-2008-ema…

There was a discussion of this company the other day and the suggestion that unlike the other outperforming hedge funds that turned out to just be insider trading, this one is real and they are just that smart. I am skeptical; they do not have a monopoly on brains. What they do have is some shadiness in their history: http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/07/senate-renaissance-hedge-fund-av… I am sure there is more like this waiting to be uncovered.

Trump has prohibited Musk from being involved in any reviews where he was a material conflict (FAA for example). You keep saying things that are blatantly untrue, people give you massive evidence they aren't true, then you keep saying them. Why is that? Elon Musk’s Companies Were Under Investigation by Five Inspectors General When the Trump Administration Fired Them and Made Musk the Investigator https://wallstreetonparade.com/2025/02/elon-musks-companies-were-under… https://www.levernews.com/trump-purges-inspectors-general-investigatin… Agency sent a memo to all agency staff notifying them that “all election security activities” would be paused pending the results of an internal investigation. The memo also stated that the administration was cutting off all funds to the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center—a Department of Homeland Security–funded organization that helps state and local officials monitor, analyze, and respond to cyberattacks targeting the nation’s election hardware and software. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/trump-doge-layoffs-project… FDA staff were reviewing Elon Musk’s brain implant company. DOGE just fired…

I'm pretty skeptical of the reporting of this. The writing itself is quite subpar and the sourcing is touchy to say the least. I just picked a blurb at random. > Despite his massive personal financial conflicts, Chair Powell has acted with impunity to advantage the Wall Street firms managing his investment fund holdings both before and after the pandemic. Indeed, in late 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Powell directed the Fed to engage in an unprecedented emergency repo program that provided nearly $20 TRILLION in cumulative loans to Wall Street, including ~$3.7 trillion to Japan’s Nomura Securities and ~$1.4 trillion to Germany’s Deutsche Bank trading arms. Industry experts have opined that the program was in direct violation of the Dodd-Frank Act.24 > 24 https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/01/a-nomura-document-may-shed-ligh… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens > Mr. Martens’ career spans four decades in publishing and printing management, including magazine and music publishing and the non-profit sector. Mr. Martens has received numerous awards in publishing and graphic design. > Ms. Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years. The last decade of her career was spent as an outspoken critic of Wall Street’s corrupt practices, its private justice system and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. Except there's no listed institutions / non-profits / publishers of note. If this is their bombshell article,…

Lending money is always a transaction between two parties. Both should be responsible. The financial state of a country is easier to evaluate than that of a person, they shouldn't have faller for the tricks of Goldman Sachs. > According to investigative reports that appeared in Der Spiegel, the New York Times, BBC, and Bloomberg News from 2010 through 2012, Blankfein, now Goldman Sachs CEO, Cohn, now President and COO, and Loudiadis, a Managing Director, all played a role in structuring complex derivative deals with Greece which accomplished two things: they allowed Greece to hide the true extent of its debt and they ended up almost doubling the amount of debt Greece owed under the dubious derivative deals. source: http://wallstreetonparade.com/2015/06/goldman-sachs-doesnt-have-clean-… So, EU and IMF didn't catch that, they lent money in a stupidly criminal way and now they want it back at any cost to Greece. They lent Greece money when Greece didn't need it, and now request it back when they are down. Of course Greece bears the brunt of blame here, but collective punishment at the level of a country is cruel. There are lots of innocents paying now for the financial dealings of the older generation. It's sad to see EU reduced to this kind of relationships between us. Maybe EU isn't ready to exist as it is. They allowed countries into the union and Eurozone that didn't need to be there. Instead of having a corruption-reducing effect, corruption was…