Catch and Kill Protection Rackets: Trump, Weinstein, Epstein and Wall Street

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 26, 2024 ~ Editor’s Note: This article has been edited and updated from an earlier version, published in 2020. Trump and Catch and Kill: Yesterday, David Pecker, the former Chairman and CEO of American Media Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the National Enquirer tabloid, testified for a third day in the 34-count criminal trial of former President Donald Trump in New York. Pecker continued to expand on the sordid details of a catch and kill operation he had agreed to operate with the active involvement of Trump and his then attorney, Michael Cohen. The operation involved buying up stories about Trump’s salacious affairs with women and then killing them from publication in order to help Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2016. There was also an understanding that Pecker would run negative articles about Trump’s political opponents in the National Enquirer. During opening … Continue reading →

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Wall Street’s Judge Shopping Continues: It’s Trying to Stop the FTC’s Ban on Worker Handcuffs Known as Non-Compete Agreements 

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 25, 2024 ~ Sullivan & Cromwell, the go-to law firm for Wall Street in the past, has become a case study in how not to manage one’s corporate reputation. (See Wall Street’s Go-To Law Firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, Got in Bed with Crypto; Now Its Reputation Is Being Hammered.) Apparently, having previously represented FTX fraudster, Sam Bankman-Fried, and then grabbing FTX’s bankruptcy proceeding and billing $180 million, is not enough shame for Sullivan & Cromwell to heap on its reputation. It is now listed as the Big Law firm that filed a federal lawsuit yesterday on behalf of the corporate front groups, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and others, to stop the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) new rule banning non-compete agreements for most workers. (An 8-attorney law firm in Texas, Potter Minton, is also listed on the filing for the plaintiffs.) Sullivan … Continue reading →

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The Fed Tallies Up a Big Threat to Financial Stability in the U.S.: “Runnables” at $21.3 Trillion

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 23, 2024 ~ Last Friday, the Federal Reserve released its semi-annual Financial Stability Report. In the prior five years, the spring edition of the Fed’s Financial Stability Report was released in May. This year, for reasons we can only guess at (nervously), the Fed released the spring edition early, in April. Given that last spring the second, third and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history occurred, handing over $30 billion in losses to the federal Deposit Insurance Fund, and one of those banks (Silicon Valley Bank) experienced the fastest run on its deposits in U.S. history, one particular item in the new report that caught our attention was this: “Overall, estimated runnable money-like financial liabilities grew 8.8 percent to $21.3 trillion (75 percent of nominal GDP) over the past year, as a decline in uninsured deposits was more than offset by an increase in assets under management … Continue reading →

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Billionaire-Owned Media Has Gone Full Throttle to Save Fellow Billionaire, Jamie Dimon

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 22, 2024 ~ The Washington Post Editorial Board appears to have sipped the same kool aid as Bloomberg News. As we’ve frequently reported in the past, Bloomberg News has spent the better part of the last decade attempting to brainwash the public into believing that the head of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, is a respected statesman of Wall Street. (See here, here, and here.) In reality, JPMorgan Chase has admitted to an unprecedented five criminal felony counts with Dimon at the helm and paid fines in the tens of billions of dollars for an additional crime wave that rivals an organized crime family. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York, is the majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the owner of Bloomberg News. In 2016, Michael Bloomberg even co-authored an opinion piece with Dimon. The same year, the New York Post reported that JPMorgan Chase was … Continue reading →

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