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After Being Criminally Charged for Rigging Precious Metals, JPMorgan Chase Controls 53 Percent of All Precious Metals Contracts Held by Banks
by Gunnar Larson 17 Dec '24

17 Dec '24

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/04/after-being-criminally-charged-for-r… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 3, 2023 ~ Jamie Dimon Sits in Front of Trading Monitor in his Office (Source -- 60 Minutes Interview, November 10, 2019) Jamie Dimon Sits in Front of Trading Monitor in his Office (Source: 60 Minutes Interview, November 10, 2019) According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), there were 4,706 federally-insured banks and savings associations in the U.S. as of December 31, 2022. Of those, according to the quarterly report released last Friday from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a little less than one-quarter found a reason to engage in derivative trading activities. As of December 31, 2022, just 1,139 FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings associations reported trading of derivatives in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the OCC. Ostensibly, instead of running a derivatives casino, the other three-quarters of taxpayer-subsidized banks were doing what taxpayers want federally-insured banks to do: make business loans; provide affordable mortgage loans to homebuyers; provide checking accounts devoid of hacking, identity theft and predatory overdraft fees; and not blow up the bank by getting in bed with derivatives, crypto or dodgy Wall Street IPOs. As it does each quarter, the OCC report rang this alarm bell: “A small group of large financial institutions continues to dominate trading and derivatives activity in the U.S. commercial banking system. During the fourth quarter of 2022, four large commercial banks represented 88.2 percent of the total banking industry notional amounts [of derivatives] and 62.5 percent of industry net current credit exposure (NCCE).” Those four banks are Goldman Sachs Bank USA with $52.6 trillion in notional (face amount) derivatives exposure; JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. with $49.5 trillion in notional derivatives exposure; Citigroup’s Citibank with $47 trillion in notional derivatives exposure; and Bank of America with $19.4 trillion in notional derivatives exposure. One area that particularly stands out in the current OCC report is data showing JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. held $200.12 billion in precious metals derivative contracts at its federally-insured bank as of December 31, 2022, versus a total of $378.12 billion for all banks in the U.S. holding derivatives. That’s one bank holding 53 percent of all precious metals contracts in the U.S. banking system. (See Table 21 on page 26 of the OCC report.) And there’s no guarantee that the OCC report captures the full picture of this highly concentrated derivatives market. (See our report: Wall Street Banks Are Dangerously Evading U.S. Derivatives Rules by Making Trades at Foreign Subsidiaries.) It is hard to understate the regulatory failure of allowing JPMorgan Chase to continue to have this outsized presence in the precious metals derivatives market. On September 29, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice charged JPMorgan Chase with rigging the precious metals market and hit it with a criminal felony count for its conduct, to which it admitted. According to the Justice Department, the rigging occurred for more than eight years, from March of 2008 to August of 2016, and involved “tens of thousands” of incidents. The Justice Department wrote that traders at JPMorgan Chase: “…knowingly and intentionally placed orders to buy and sell precious metals futures contracts with the intent to cancel those orders before execution (‘Deceptive PM [Precious Metals] Orders’), including in an attempt to profit by deceiving other market participants through false and fraudulent pretenses and representations concerning the existence of genuine supply and demand for precious metals futures contracts. By placing Deceptive PM Orders, the Subject PM Traders intended to inject false and misleading information about the genuine supply and demand for precious metals futures contracts into the markets, and to deceive other participants in those markets into believing something untrue, namely that the visible order book accurately reflected market-based forces of supply and demand. This false and misleading information was intended to, and at times did, trick other market participants, including competitor financial institutions and proprietary traders, into reacting to the apparent change and imbalance in supply and demand by buying and selling precious metals futures contracts at quantities, prices, and times that they otherwise likely would not have traded.” The trading conduct in precious metals was so bad at JPMorgan Chase that the Justice Department took the unprecedented step of charging some of the precious metals traders involved under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a statute typically reserved for organized crime figures. Last week, the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee held separate hearings on the bank runs and abrupt collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in March, the second and third largest bank failures in U.S. history. (The largest bank failure was Washington Mutual in 2008.) Those banks, respectively, held $175 billion and $88.6 billion in deposits as of December 31, 2022. As of the same date, JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. held $2.015 trillion in deposits in domestic offices, of which $1.058 trillion were uninsured. Uninsured deposits are at risk of flight if customers lose confidence in the management of a bank. The fastest way for depositors to lose confidence in a bank is a steady stream of scandals and criminal conduct while the Board of Directors of the bank fails to replace the Chairman and CEO who was at the helm of the bank throughout the endless series of scandals and criminal conduct. The Board of Directors of JPMorgan Chase Bank have allowed Jamie Dimon to remain as Chairman and CEO despite five felony counts (to which the bank admitted) and a rap sheet that is unprecedented in the annals of banking in the U.S. The Board kept Dimon in place when the bank was charged by the Justice Department with two criminal felony counts for its role in aiding and abetting the largest Ponzi scheme in history – Bernie Madoff’s looting of customer accounts. The Board kept Dimon at the helm when the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a 300-page report on the bank’s “London Whale” derivative trades, using bank depositors’ money to engage in reckless gambling and losing at least $6.2 billion. The bank received another felony count for its role in rigging the foreign exchange market and one felony count each for rigging the precious metals market and U.S. Treasury market. Now, a Federal Court has ruled that Dimon must sit for a deposition in a federal lawsuit brought by the U.S. Virgin Islands, charging JPMorgan Chase with, effectively, being the cash conduit for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring that victimized underage girls. (See our March 6 report here.) It’s long past the time for federal regulators to do their job and replace management and the Board at JPMorgan Chase and break up this dangerous trading behemoth that is masquerading as a federally-insured bank. Related Articles: JPMorgan’s Board Made Jamie Dimon a Billionaire as the Bank Rigged Markets, Laundered Money, and Admitted to Five Felony Counts If You’re Baffled as to Why JPMorgan Chase’s Board Hasn’t Sacked Jamie Dimon as the Bank Racked Up 5 Felony Counts – Here’s Your Answer JPMorgan’s High Risk Footprint; Bloomberg News as PR Agent for Jamie Dimon; and the Untold Story of the Failed “Rescue” of First Republic by the Mega Banks JPMorgan Chase Quietly Settles Whistleblower Case Involving Charges of Keeping Two Sets of Books and Improper Payments to Tony Blair FacebookTwitterWhatsAppLinkedInEmail

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The New York Fed Has Contracted Out Key Functions to JPMorgan Chase; We Filed a FOIA and Got These Strange Invoices
by Gunnar Larson 17 Dec '24

17 Dec '24

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2024/07/the-new-york-fed-has-contracted-out-… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 29, 2024 ~ The New York Fed, which has bank examiners engaged in supervising JPMorgan Chase, has also repeatedly provided bailout funds to JPMorgan Chase; was supervising JPMorgan Chase when it lost $6.2 billion of deposits from its federally-insured bank by gambling in derivatives on its London trading desk; allowed JPMorgan Chase’s Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, to previously sit on the New York Fed’s Board of Directors, even as he faced the $6.2 billion derivatives trading scandal; and the New York Fed has exclusively used JPMorgan Chase to hold, as custodian, more than $2.3 trillion of the Federal Reserve’s Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) for the past 15-1/2 years – despite JPMorgan Chase admitting to five felony counts brought by the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice during that time. If there was an admitted felon in your neighborhood, would that be your first choice for a house sitter? During the financial crisis of 2008, in an effort to restore liquidity to seized up markets, the Fed announced it planned to buy $500 billion of MBS that was backed by government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae. That was the first of what would become Quantitative Easing (QE) to infinity at the Fed. The Fed’s MBS holdings have grown from the planned $500 billion to $2.3 trillion as of last Wednesday. In a typical move, the Federal Reserve outsourced its MBS buying program to the New York Fed, which, in turn, farmed out one critical leg of the program (custodianship of the MBS) to the very Wall Street megabank that had corrupted a significant part of the MBS market: JPMorgan Chase. A little more than a month after the Fed’s 2008 MBS announcement, on December 31, 2008, the New York Fed signed a contract with JPMorgan Chase to be the sole custodian of the securities it bought under the MBS program. That contract with JPMorgan Chase was amended on April 1, 2010; April 26, 2011; April 17, 2014 and again on January 30, 2017. (As of today, the original contract and its amendments are available at the New York Fed’s website. Should those documents vanish, we have archived the same documents on our website here.) This spring, Wall Street On Parade became curious as to just how much JPMorgan Chase was reaping in revenues from serving as a vendor to the New York Fed. On April 18, via email, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the New York Fed, asking for the following: “Please provide copies of invoices that the New York Fed received from JPMorgan Chase (or any of its subsidiaries such as Chase Bank or JPMorgan Securities) during the 2023 calendar year. “We are particularly interested in invoices for custodial and cash management services related to MBS securities held in custody by JPMorgan Chase for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.” While the Federal Reserve Board of Governors is a federal agency and subject to FOIA, the 12 regional Fed banks are considered private corporations, not legally subject to FOIA. The New York Fed, however, regularly states that it “complies with the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act” in providing documents to the public. Under FOIA, Wall Street On Parade was entitled to a response in 20 business days. Since these invoices should have been easily obtainable in the Accounts Payable department of the New York Fed, and we were asking only for those from last year, 20 business days seemed to us like an adequate response time. Instead, on May 16 we received an email from the New York Fed telling us they needed more time and were planning to provide us the documents on July 1. When July 1 came around, the New York Fed told us the new projected date was July 12. When July 12 arrived, we were told to expect the invoices on or before July 26. On that date, we received a cover letter and 158 documents – with the amounts that JPMorgan Chase had billed to the New York Fed redacted behind blocks of black ink. Stalling on FOIA requests and providing journalists with useless information has become a favorite sport at both the Federal Reserve and the New York Fed. (See also: Reporters Who Ask Tough Questions at Fed Press Conferences Have a Habit of Being Disappeared from the Room.) Despite blacking out the very information we had requested – how much JPMorgan Chase had billed to the New York Fed in one year – after making us wait almost three months, we were able, nonetheless, to make some interesting findings from the sanitized documents. Per the invoice graphic above from the documents, covering the billing period of January 1, 2023 through January 31, 2023, JPMorgan Chase appears to be billing for a lot more than just providing custodianship of the MBS assets. There are menu tabs for the following services billed: “Custody Fee,” “Transaction Fee,” “Cash Management Fee,” “Security Lending Fees,” “Benefit Payment Fees,” “Other Fees,” and “Other Expenses.” Equally of note, there does not appear to be any significant documentation provided to the New York Fed to support how these fees were calculated. Another curiosity is that the New York Fed allows invoices from JPMorgan Chase to go unpaid for more than two months in multiple cases. (See the invoice below as one sample.) JPMorgan Chase Overdue Invoice to Fed And raising our eyebrows were invoices that we did not know existed. These are the invoices toward the end of the document that are marked as “Tri-Party Collateral Management Fees.” We’ll be reporting on that aspect of these invoices later this week. We will also be filing a formal complaint with the Federal Reserve Inspector General over how this FOIA request was handled, involving the largest federally-insured bank in the United States and its perpetually blind-folded supervisor, the New York Fed. Related Articles: The New York Fed Has Quietly Staffed Up a Second Trading Floor Near the S&P 500 Futures Market in Chicago These Are the Banks that Own the New York Fed and Its Money Button Is the New York Fed Too Deeply Conflicted to Regulate Wall Street? Former New York Fed Pres Bill Dudley Calls This the First Banking Crisis Since 2008; Charts Show It’s the Third New York Fed Stuns with New Report: At Year End Its Trading Desk Owned 38 Percent of All 10-30 Year U.S. Treasuries

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Crypto Victims’ Cries for Help Are Piling Up at a Federal Complaint Center
by Gunnar Larson 17 Dec '24

17 Dec '24

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/06/crypto-victims-cries-for-help-are-pi… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 22, 2022 ~ The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is the federal agency that was created under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 in response to Wall Street’s harrowing abuses to average Americans in the leadup to the financial crash of 2008. One of its key benefits is that it has a complaint database where consumers can post their complaints to the agency, and the general public and reporters can read those complaints on a public website. The general public benefits by seeing what types of complaints are being made against a financial institution they might be considering doing business with and reporters can look for dangerous patterns that are emerging. We delved into a specific area of complaints at the CFPB yesterday. We put the word “Bitcoin” into the search box and pulled up 1,031 matches. Next we searched under the word “crypto” and pulled up 885 matches. Considering that perhaps (generously) one in 1,000 people in America have heard about this complaint center and perhaps one in 2,000 would take the time to file a complaint, that’s an enormous number of complaints. It didn’t take us long to zero in on the company that was getting the bulk of the complaints. It was the cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, that became publicly traded on Nasdaq to much fanfare on April 14 of last year. So we entered the word “Coinbase” into the search box and got an astounding 3,732 matches. To wrap your head around just how astounding that number of complaints is for such a young company, we put the words “Goldman Sachs” into the search box and pulled up only 1,193 matches – and that’s over the span of more than a decade that the CFPB complaint center has been alive and the “great vampire squid” has been “wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” to quote Matt Taibbi’s take on Goldman Sachs. Coinbase’s website carries the slogan “The future of money is here.” Based on the gut-wrenching details in the complaints filed with the CFPB – if this is the future of money in America, the country is doomed and every citizen will soon be stuffing their cash under the mattress or burying it in the backyard. The complaints paint the narrative of a company that is not ready for prime time – or even the B roll that lands on the cutting room floor. Not to mention the fact that the business of Coinbase is trading and storing crypto – a product which has been called a Ponzi scheme by economist Nouriel Roubini and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich; “rat-poison squared” by legendary investor Warren Buffet; and a sham by a growing number of scientists and software engineers. Before we get to the text of the complaints and the horror stories of getting fleeced, consider who did get rich on this not-ready-for-prime-time company. On its first day of trading as a direct listing on April 14, 2021, the stock closed at a share price of $328.28 (after spiking to more than $400 during the day), giving it a market capitalization of $85.8 billion. In a traditional IPO, early investors and company executives are not allowed to sell their shares for several months under a lockup period. There’s no such restriction in a direct listing. According to an SEC filing, Coinbase’s Chairman and CEO, Brian Armstrong, sold 750,000 shares on April 14, 2021 at an average share price of $389.10, raising approximately $291.8 million for himself. Since then, Coinbase has been on a steady descent, closing yesterday at $57.49, a decline of 82 percent from its first trading day’s closing price. On May 27 of this year, Wall Street Journal reporters Corrie Driebusch and Tom McGinty revealed that Coinbase “Co-founders Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, as well as President and Chief Operating Officer Emilie Choi and Chief Product Officer Surojit Chatterjee, together netted about $1.2 billion in proceeds from stock sales starting the day the San Francisco-based company started trading through February of this year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of regulatory filings.” Let that sink in for a moment. Shareholders in Coinbase have lost their shirts. Millions of crypto investors have lost much or all of their life savings as crypto prices have crashed or evaporated entirely. On June 14, Coinbase employees learned that 18 percent of their ranks were going to be sacked. And, as you will read in a moment, Coinbase customers have been put through insidious pain and suffering — repeatedly hacked, locked out of their accounts, and dealing with inept and/or suspect customer service reps, according to the reports at the CFPB. But the brainiacs who brought this not-ready-for-prime-time crypto company public have secured for themselves $1.2 billion in real U.S. dollars. Consider this tiny sampling of complaints against Coinbase in the CFPB database from residents of seven separate states: (Redacted data was done by the CFPB. We have not edited the text so typos and grammatical errors remain.) Complaint No. 5119798 Date Received by CFPB: January 18, 2022 Complainant’s State: California On XX/XX/XXXX I deposited {$50000.00}, XX/XX/XXXX I transferred {$50000.00} to coinbase pro to purchase bitcoin. I purchased XXXX bitcoin for {$50000.00} and then on XX/XX/XXXX deposited {$25000.00} and bought XXXX Ethereum, and XXXX cosmo coins for {$1500.00}. In total I sent {$75000.00} to coinbase to purchase crypto currency. Immediately after the {$25000.00} purchase they froze my account and wouldn’t let me buy or sell or withdraw my crypto currency. I attempted to sell multiple times while the market appreciated by 20 % only to receive a message that says “ sells disabled ”. The message on the coinbase app says ” unable to buy and sell, contact customer service ”. I’ve contacted customer service several times through email and phone calls and when they do respond, which is rare, they tell me my ” account is under review ”. I submitted a formal complaint and received a message 10 days later that said they need an additional 20 days to review my complaint. Meanwhile the market has decreased significantly and I’ve missed out on {$15000.00} of gains and my value is worth {$62000.00} so I’ve lost {$13000.00} already in one month all because they prevented me from selling or withdrawing my money. On XX/XX/XXXX i deposited {$10.00} to see if they would let me buy crypto still, they let me buy so their own messaging on the app is contradicting. They will take my money but won’t let me take it back. How can my account really be frozen if that is the case? This is theft and fraud and I demand financial compensation for my damages and lost opportunity. Complaint No. 5454783 Date Received by CFPB: April 16, 2022 Complainant’s State: Georgia For well over a month, I have been trying to get a resolution with funds accessibility issues relating to Coinbase and my account. Their app is unusable due to errors on their side with their system. This is causing great stress as I can not access my money or transfer funds to my bank from their exchange. XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, XXXX & XXXX are ticket numbers I have created with their support center. I have also signed up for their paid service to get support to no avail. They sell support services for their platform that results in no assistance. This in and of itself is stealing just as much as them not allowing me to access my funds. I have been a customer since XXXX with them, This is the first time I have seen their services in this kind of condition. I am in the payments industry as a profession and can not believe they can operate a service and withhold people ‘s funds due to refusing to fix their system issues. The nature of their bugs makes the website inoperable and their mobile app is also not functional. This is gone on for far too long and it is causing personal stress because of not being able to access a significant amount of funds that is mine, not theirs. I can log in to the site, I can not see my balance it reports as $ XXXX. I can not see my transactions or portfolio activity as the graphs will not load. I can not send money to my bank, It says ” You do not have any funds available to cash out right now. ” < — This is incorrect. I do, their system is broken and I can not access MY MONEY. It also represents my balance as $ XXXX and does not show a numeric value. The mobile app continually says … ” XXXX XXXX ” despite logging in to it and working on XXXX out of XXXX pages in their app ( meaning I am logged in so there is no ” XXXX XXXX ” really. It’s related to the same $ XXXX dollar amounts that the website is showing, This is really getting serious as I need access to my funds. I work very hard to be able to invest and they are making this very stressful as I need access to my money now… & can’t wait months for them to finally respond. Their ticketing system automatically closes tickets ( despite them not being really resolved ). This is very concerning and an intervention is needed with them to help me resolve this. The balance being held back ( my money ) is significant enough value to take legal action to get a resolution. They need to be responsive. CFPB please help, I know I am not the only person reporting such issues. It’s a big issue and they are not addressing it. They have a very poor track record of taking care of customers. This is a bad sign for a Publically Traded company … when many thousands of dollars are impacted on many users because of this complaint. Complaint No. 5196503 Date Received by CFPB: February 7, 2022 Complainant’s State: New York I purchased and stored cryptocurrency using Coinbase in XXXX. On XX/XX/XXXX I sold my cryptocurrency holdings ( Cardano, Bitcoin, and Ethereum ) on Coinbase for {$5100.00} USD. When I attempted to withdraw the USD to my XXXX XXXX account which is linked to my account on the site, I received an error message stating ” An error occurred. Your account has been locked, please visit coinbase.com to resolve ”. I had already gone through the account identity verification process, and had enabled the secure 2XXXXstep verification to access to my account on the site, so I was confused as to why my account would be locked. On XX/XX/XXXX I submitted a support claim on the Coinbase Support site detailing this issue. Shortly after submitting it, I received confirmation that my support claim had been received by Coinbase. On XX/XX/XXXX, at XXXX EST, I received an email from Coinbase Support asking for a screenshot of the error message I saw when attempting to withdraw USD to my bank account. At XXXX EST that day, I replied to the email providing the requested screenshot. After this correspondence, I received no further guidance or messages from Coinbase in any form. I followed up via email on XX/XX/XXXX, still to no response. I called their Support Hotline numerous times, but was never able to connect with a live service agent, only an automated system that provided no meaningful interactions and only repeated information that is readily available on the Coinbase Support site. Today, XX/XX/XXXX, after waiting XXXX business days since submitting my support claim, I issued a formal complaint via the Coinbase Complaint system. However, given my abysmal customer experience with Coinbase thus far, I am concerned that the issue will not be resolved. Additionally, I am prevented from accessing my account at the moment, as Coinbase renewed their user agreement to include limitations on the litigious actions and legal rights of its users who have complaints. Given my current situation, I feel it would not be prudent for me to agree to these terms prior to having this issue fully resolved. This issue has been incredibly disheartening. Had I known how little customer service support Coinbase had, I would have never decided to invest in crypto using their platform. I can not believe the number of hoops I have had to jump through just to reagin access to my assets. Complaint No. 5317727 Date Received by CFPB: March 11, 2022 Complainant’s State: Pennsylvania XX/XX/XXXX at XXXX am I had regular day to get ready for work. When I wake up I see my phone to check the weather but that day it was very shocking I saw a message telling me my Coinbase account has been breached. After that I tried to login Coinbase I couldnt login then I tried to change password I couldnt. Then I saw almost 200 emails which is telling me I transferred this amount of Bitcoins at this wallet address like this Congratulations! You have successfully sent XXXX XXXX to XXXX. You can view transaction details in your Coinbase XXXX account. To facilitate this transaction, you paid XXXX XXXX in network fees. After that I find out my XXXX phone is out of service. So I had to change my sim call XXXX and they help me to restore my line. I complained to my local police and they give me a case number then I also reported to the fbi. Now I have headache mourn for my money my wife is crying day and night. Our hardworking money go all on a second. Now Coinbase they cant help me to restore my Coinbase account I called them 10/15 times. They just send me an its my responsibility to protect my password. But police want to what IP address the guy login and all the transactions in my account but Coinbase cant help me. Complaint No. 5086437 Date Received by CFPB: January 8, 2022 Complainant’s State: Florida Utilizing Coinbase as an exchange for cryptocurrency, I was hacked out of more than {$40000.00} USD on two separate occasions and was hacked without losing any cryptocurrencies once prior. In all three incidents, there was an automatic/unauthorized sending of all crypto currencies in my account immediately upon logging in. During the first hacking incident there were crypto conversions that were made without me making them. Further details and timelines are as follows : The following transactions occurred on XX/XX/XXXX without my consent : [ e-mail at XXXX ] You have successfully sent XXXX XXXX to XXXX. You can view transaction details in your Coinbase account. To facilitate this transaction, you paid XXXX XXXX ( {$0.00} USD ) in network fees. [ e-mail at XXXX ] You have successfully sent XXXX ETH to XXXX. You can view transaction details in your Coinbase account. To facilitate this transaction, you paid XXXX XXXX ( {$14.00} USD ) in network fees. Unauthorized Bitcoin address on XXXX XX/XX/XXXX for XXXX XXXX : XXXX The only way to receive any kind of help is through Coinbase E-mail system. There were many times that I replied to their e-mail only to get a ” Non-Deliverable ” notification back. It took several other tickets for them to combine ticket numbers before I was successful in replying to their e-mail support. Needless to say, their support is almost non-existent. Their response to these malicious hacking attacks are that I’m responsible for my own security of my account, and that there is no breach, fault, or obligation on their part to safeguard customers ” accounts. I have done everything they suggested, including reaching out to my phone carrier for any security breaches to my phone ( no breaches have been made in that area ). I have not been the only that has experienced the litany of frustration dealing with Coinbase, yet they continue to operate as a business rendering no restitution to many of their customers. The last bit of salt in the wound is that there is approximately {$130.00} left in my account in a cryptocurrency that I can’t recover because the amount is too small to transfer. I would have to add more money to my account, and then transfer all of it out at the larger acceptable amount. There is an obvious problem with this because the funds would most certainly be hacked and stolen. Complaint No. 5252132 Date Received by CFPB: February 23, 2022 Complainant’s State: Tennessee On XX/XX/XXXX While I was preparing my taxes on XXXX XXXX, they needed to know how much my capitol gains from trading crypto currency were for XXXX. The website gave instructions on how to let them have the report from Coinbase Pro, however they were difficult to follow. I also had Coinbase Pro website on my laptop and was trying to figure out how to do it. On the computer there was a phone number to call to get help. When I called the number the man said he worked for Coinbase Pro and would help me figure it out. He asked me to let him on my computer and said he would take care of it for me. He was doing all sorts of things and he assured me that it was all part of the process. After a short while he suddenly hung up and I never heard from him again. When I tried to call him back at the same number, a recording said it was no longer in service. I didn’t want to panic so I waited for him to call me back which never happened. When I logged back on Coinbase Pro my remaining balance was only XXXX cents … .down from aprox {$5600.00} which was made up of about XXXX in cash and XXXX of XXXX and XXXX XXXX XXXX. Later I found out that he also transferred XXXX out of my checking account. XXXX on my debit card and XXXX from my checking account. I contacted Coinbase Pro immediately and they said they would begin an investigation into it. I Contacted my bank to stop any transactions I could to Coinbase Pro. When I called back to Coinbase Pro a few days later, I found out there was absolutely no investigation done at all. Complaint No. 5456264 Date Received by CFPB: April 16, 2022 Complainant’s State: Massachusetts On XX/XX/2022, I made a bitcoin ( of XXXX unit ) purchase on Coinbase XXXX using the majority of my cash balance of {$20000.00} at noon. However, the transaction didn’t seem to go through as the purchase wasn’t shown in the portfolio balance but the cash balance dropped by the amount purchased. So I reached out to Coinbase and asked for a resolution. The technician didn’t know the issue and planned to seek his colleague for help. Around XXXX I got a call from XXXX XXXX who claimed to work for Coinbase to help me with my issue. He said the transaction didn’t go through due to the need for my ID verification. He then sent me an email asking for my driver ‘s license and then sent all my bitcoin balance of ( {$48000.00} for XXXX units of Bitcoin + XXXX cash balance ) at Coinbase XXXX to an unknown blockchain address. He then hung up the phone. I contacted Coinbase customer service and they said they can not revert the transaction and they don’t have a strict regulation on bitcoin transfers to any external address. Also, they don’t provide FDIC insurance of any amount either. I would like for CFPB to contact Coinbase to investigate the poor customer service they had in terms of providing security and protection to its customers. We have provided this article this morning to the Senate Banking Committee, the House Financial Services Committee, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the state securities regulators in each of the seven states where complainants reside. FacebookTwitterWhatsAppLinkedInEmail

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Why Eric Adams Failed to Make NYC a Crypto Hub
by Gunnar Larson 17 Dec '24

17 Dec '24

https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/why-eric-adams-failed-to-make-nyc-a-crypt… Ad crypto all stars logo $STARS Presale Raises $18+ million Will CryptoAllStars be the Next Meme Coin to Explode? Buy $STARS Crypto News Cryptonews Features Why Eric Adams Failed to Make NYC a Crypto Hub Bitcoin Mayor Eric Adams New York Eric Adams made huge promises to make New York City attractive for crypto businesses — but lacked the power to turn this into reality. Last updated: September 30, 2024 at 04:18 EDT Features writer Connor Sephton Fact Checked by Elena Bozhkova Why Trust Cryptonews NYC Bitcoin New York City Mayor Eric Adams is best known in crypto circles for being unabashedly pro-Bitcoin — even engaging in friendly rivalry with Miami counterpart Francis Suarez. Back in 2021, he vowed on X that he planned to take his first three paychecks as mayor in BTC and ETH, and make NYC the beating heart of the crypto sector. Unfortunately though, his rhetoric hasn’t always matched up to reality. He was unsuccessful in attempts to block New York State proposals to impose a two-year moratorium on Bitcoin mined using fossil fuels. While you could argue this policy is good from an environmental standpoint, Adams had raised fears that this would “put barriers in place” that prevent NY from becoming an attractive destination for crypto businesses. Adams’ Democratic counterpart Kathy Hochul declined to veto the measures and they came into force in November 2022 — affecting all Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, the mayor was left red-faced after it emerged that he had failed to declare his BTC holdings last year. Even though Adams had vowed that he would not sell his digital assets during the recent bear market, he told regulators he didn’t own more than $1,000 in crypto. It remains unclear how much is in his wallet — or whether he’s still converting his paychecks. And in another embarrassing development, it emerged that he had met with Sam Bankman-Fried at a swanky dinner in 2022, just a few months before FTX collapsed. The doomed exchange’s general counsel, Ryne Miller, ominously tweeted that NYC was “in good hands” under his leadership. But all this is small potatoes compared with the legal headaches that Adams is currently facing. Why? Because he’s become the first sitting NYC mayor to be charged with federal crimes. What’s Going On? Adams is facing five counts — including bribery, fraud, and conspiring to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals, already a delicate topic in the U.S. It’s alleged that he received more than $100,000 worth of luxury meals, high-end hotel stays, and airline upgrades from Turkish nationals — paying less than 10% of what it would usually cost for two nights at a five-star hotel in Istanbul. Prosecutors now claim Adams was asked for political favors in exchange — with The New York Times writing that “a love of luxury may bring him down.” Adams is denying the charges and is vowing to prove his innocence, claiming he is being targeted by rivals because of his politics. And although he is refusing to resign, the stakes are high right now, as he could face jail time if convicted. Reports from Politico even suggest that Governor Hochul is considering whether to use rare powers that would oust Adams from power. Whatever happens, it’s now starting to look increasingly unlikely that the mayor will succeed in his quest for a second term when New Yorkers head back to the polls in June 2025. And by the looks of things, none of the other Democratic candidates are as pro-crypto as he is. The Impact on Crypto Zooming out, and there isn’t any sign that all of this legal drama will have much impact on Bitcoin, which has pierced through key resistance at $65,000 — potentially opening the door for a return to all-time highs above $73,000. Beyond his crypto paycheck stunt, Adams hasn’t really spoken about crypto all that much during his time in office — or introduced policies that make the city more attractive for the industry. That’s partly because a lot of the decision making in this arena is taken by the state, rather than the city. High tax rates make New York hugely uncompetitive when compared with other states — and crypto firms operating here also need to obtain a BitLicense, which means jumping through a plethora of regulatory hoops. Even if businesses bite the bullet and do set up shop in NYC, it can be fairly unattractive for top talent confronted with surging levels of rent. This helps explain why other U.S. states have proven far more enticing for startups, investors, and professionals alike — including Wyoming, Texas and California. Austin in particular has become a hotspot for Bitcoin mining — driven by cheaper energy and a lax regulatory landscape unencumbered by the moratoriums imposed over in New York. Adams has failed in his dream of making NYC the center of the cryptocurrency industry. And now, he’s fighting for his political life. Follow us on Google News Trending News Price Predictions Recommended Articles Trump Appoints PayPal Veteran David Sacks as ‘White House AI and Crypto Czar’ Bitcoin Soars Past $106,000 Amid Hopes of U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Ripple CTO Warns of Potential Supply Shortages in Early Days of Ripple’s Stablecoin Due to Large Orders Trader Predicts $1 Trillion XRP Market Cap – Is a 500% Surge Just the Beginning? Best Crypto to Buy Now 15 December – Hyperliquid, Ethena, Crypto All-Stars Recommended Articles Tether Backs Euro Stablecoin Startup StablR in Its European Expansion Bid 1 hour ago Saga Launches Mainnet 2.0, Partners with Uniswap 1 hour ago ESMA Releases Final Policy Guidelines on MiCA 29 minutes ago Lightchain AI Opens Staking Following $2.2M Raised During Presale 2 hours ago Former Finance Minister Slams Germany’s Missed Bitcoin Opportunity 3 hours ago Beyond Quick Gains: How Web3 Gaming Can Drive Mass Adoption 1 hour ago India’s Leadership Pushes for International Crypto Regulation Framework 2 hours ago Read More Articles More Articles Bitcoin News ESMA Releases Final Policy Guidelines on MiCA Tanzeel Akhtar Tanzeel Akhtar 29 minutes ago Blockchain News Saga Launches Mainnet 2.0, Partners with Uniswap Sead Fadilpašić Sead Fadilpašić 1 hour ago Connor Sephton Features writer Connor Sephton is a journalist based in London, who also works for Sky News and the BBC as a radio newsreader and online reporter. He has covered crypto since 2018 — reporting from major conferences around the world. Read More Crypto News in numbers editors Authors List + 66 More 2M+ Active Monthly Users Around the World 250+ Guides and Reviews Articles 8 Years on the Market 70 International Team Authors Get dialed in every Tuesday & Friday with quick updates on the world of crypto Enter your email for our free Newsletter Email Sign Up This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. cryptonews cryptonews Enter your email for our free Newsletter Get dialed in every Tuesday & Friday with quick updates on the world of crypto Email Sign Up This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Terms & Conditions About Us Privacy Policy Financial Risks Disclaimer Have a Story? Advertising The information on this website is for educational purposes only, and investing carries risks. 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A CEO Assassination; a Billionaire Heiress/NYPD Commissioner; a Secret Wall Street Spy Center – Here’s How They’re Connected
by Gunnar Larson 17 Dec '24

17 Dec '24

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2024/12/a-ceo-assassination-a-billionaire-he… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 9, 2024 ~ Indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams Announcing the Appointment of Billionaire Heiress Jessica Tisch as NYPD Commissioner on November 20, 2024. On Friday, this headline appeared in The Guardian newspaper: “Trump Assembling US Cabinet of Billionaires Worth Combined $340 Billion.” Receiving much less attention is the fact that the indicted Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, named a billionaire heiress, Jessica Tisch, as the new Commissioner of the New York City Police Department on November 20. Tisch has never been a police officer – of any rank. Nonetheless, she will now oversee 36,000 police officers and 19,000 civilian employees at the NYPD. Tisch took her office on November 25. Nine days later, an unprecedented assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, took place on a Manhattan sidewalk outside of the New York Hilton Midtown hotel on December 4. The UnitedHealth Group, Inc., the parent of Thompson’s employer, is a stock component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average with a half-trillion-dollar market cap. Thompson was on his way to a UnitedHealth investors’ conference at the Hilton at the time he was gunned down. It is now Day 5 since the assassination and the assassin has yet to be captured. The NYPD has released a series of photos of their main suspect, taken by some of the thousands of private and government-owned surveillance cameras located throughout Manhattan that feed their images 24/7 into a massive spy center called the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. In addition to live video feeds, the NYPD surveillance operation uses facial recognition technology, license plate readers, radiation detectors, mobile X-ray vans, and surveillance drones. Despite all this, a young assassin of a Fortune 500 company CEO remains on the loose. In 2011, the CBS News program, 60 Minutes, interviewed Tisch when it did a fawning story on the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center. The program reported that “Jessica Tisch helps run this $150 million surveillance system that monitors the cameras and all those radiation detectors. A powerful computer, using artificial intelligence actually watches all of the cameras at once….” The narrative of the 60 Minutes program was the fine job of counter terrorism being done by the NYPD and its Commissioner at the time, Raymond Kelly. It was a triumph in public relations for a police department about to launch brutal physical assaults on citizen activists: pepper spraying and punching peaceful protestors; kicking, ramming and arresting journalists who were attempting to cover the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in lower Manhattan. What 60 Minutes chose not to report to the public, despite being aware of the facts, was that the center was jointly staffed and operated by the NYPD along with the largest Wall Street banks and trading houses – the same firms under investigation in 50 states for mortgage and foreclosure fraud and widely credited with causing the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. The same Wall Street firms that were involuntarily bailed out by the 99% were now policing the 99%. JPMorgan Chase, which has been charged with five criminal felony counts by the U.S. Department of Justice, was one of the firms with a workstation in the center, sitting elbow to elbow with the NYPD, with the ability to surveil the comings and goings of their own employees in the streets of Manhattan – ostensibly giving it the ability to detect whistleblowers heading to the doorsteps of the SEC or FBI. The co-producer of the 60 Minutes program, Robert Anderson, conceded to us in a phone interview that he was aware of the presence of the Wall Street firms in the center. It would have been hard to miss them. The facility was designed with three long rows of computer workstations. The outside of each cubicle bears a brass plaque with the names of the occupants: Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, the New York Fed, etc. We obtained this information from a foreign news service that posted images of the workstations on its public website. The photos were taken during a press briefing at the center. During the 60 Minutes program, the following exchange took place between the 60 Minutes reporter Scott Pelley and Tisch, who was, at the time, the NYPD Director of Counterterrorism Policy and Planning. Pelley: “Tisch showed us how the system can search for a suspicious person based on a description – a red shirt for example.” Tisch: “And I can call up in real time all instances where a camera caught someone wearing a red shirt.” Pelley: “So the computer looks essentially through all the video, finds all of the red shirts and puts it together for you.” Tisch: “Video canvasses that used to take days and weeks to do, you’ll now be able to do with the snap of a finger.” Tisch snaps her fingers for added emphasis. Tisch was in her early thirties at the time of this 60 Minutes program. She is the granddaughter and one of the heirs to the fortune of now-deceased billionaire Laurence Tisch, who built the Loews Corporation, a conglomerate with holdings in insurance, hotels, and energy. Her father, James Tisch, is the CEO of the Loews Corporation and was previously elected by Wall Street banks to sit on the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, representing the public’s interest. The NYPD acknowledges on its website that it has the ability to use its facial recognition technology to compare images of unidentified suspects to other government photo databases – for example, driver license photo databases. All of this raises two critical questions for Americans: Is the U.S. being colonized by billionaires and has the blowback begun? FacebookTwitterWhatsAppLinkedInEmail

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$663 Billion in Cash Assets Have Gone Poof at the Largest U.S. Banks
by Gunnar Larson 17 Dec '24

17 Dec '24

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2024/12/663-billion-in-cash-assets-have-gone… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 16, 2024 ~ According to the December 6 release of Federal Reserve H.8 data, cash assets at the 25 largest U.S. banks have dropped by a stunning $663 billion from their peak levels on December 15, 2021. (See chart above, taken from the St. Louis Fed’s FRED graph, which is updated on an ongoing basis. Put your cursor on the FRED chart line here to get the weekly dollar figures.) Notice also on the chart that cash levels at the largest U.S. banks were a sea of calm for more than two decades prior to the financial crash of 2008, but since that time cash assets have displayed wild gyrations, rising sharply then precipitously plunging. It should provide no comfort to Americans that the wild gyrations on the chart above are a product of the central bank of the United States (the “Fed”) inserting itself, time and again since December 2007, into bailing out the trading houses on Wall Street – which since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 are in drag as federally-insured banks. The Fed’s first giant money funnel began secretly in December 2007 and lasted through at least July 2010. The Fed battled in court for more than two years to keep the names of the banks and the $16 trillion they borrowed a secret from the American people. (See chart below from the GAO audit.) If you add in the dollar swap lines that the Fed made available to foreign central banks during the financial crisis, the Fed’s money funnel comes to an even more staggering $29 trillion. On July 21, 2011 the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), released the first-ever government audit of the Federal Reserve. The audit came about as a result of the determined efforts of Senator Bernie Sanders, who was successful in adding an amendment to the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 that mandated a top-to-bottom audit of how much the Fed had spent on bailing out the megabanks on Wall Street. Sanders issued a statement saying this on the day the findings were released: “The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression…The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether, some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG.” The Fed’s bailout of the giant insurance company, AIG, was, in effect, a thinly disguised bailout of the Wall Street megabanks, which received 100 cents on the dollar from AIG for the derivative trades (credit default swaps) that AIG owed the banks and would not otherwise have been able to pay. The reality is that the Federal Reserve’s 2007-2010 bailout was conceived by Wall Street, run by Wall Street for its own benefit, and controlled behind a dark curtain at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York – which is, literally, owned by the megabanks on Wall Street. (See These Are the Banks that Own the New York Fed and Its Money Button.) A very similar scenario played out during the repo crisis in the last quarter of 2019 when the Fed pumped more trillions of dollars into Wall Street megabanks. That crisis transitioned into the COVID-19 pandemic crisis of 2020 and beyond, which resurrected the emergency loan programs of 2008 by the Fed plus a bunch of new ones. Then there was the Fed’s emergency response to the 2023 spring banking panic that saw the second, third and fourth largest bank failures in U.S. history plus a run on uninsured deposits across the banking landscape. (See Former New York Fed Pres Bill Dudley Calls This the First Banking Crisis Since 2008; Charts Show It’s the Third.) The Fed defines cash assets as “vault cash, cash items in process of collection, balances due from depository institutions, and balances due from Federal Reserve Banks.” As the chart above shows, cash assets at the 25 largest banks have plummeted from $2.163 trillion on December 15, 2021 to $1.5 trillion on December 4 of this year – a plunge of $663 billion. Where is all of this cash going? Since a major part of what these federally-insured megabanks do today is trading, we suspect – but can’t say for sure – that the cash is being used in part to post cash collateral on the tens of trillions of dollars in derivative trades held by a handful of these megabanks. Let’s look at another strange era of cash assets going poof at the megabanks. On April 8, 2015, cash assets stood at $1.398 trillion at the 25 largest U.S. banks according to Fed data at that time. By September 18, 2019, cash assets had plunged to $759 billion – a decline of 45.7 percent. This next chart shows how the Fed responded to this cash crisis in the fall of 2019, making trillions of dollars in emergency revolving repo loans to U.S. and foreign banks. Fed's Repo Loans to Largest Borrowers, Q4 2019, Adjusted for Term of Loan When the names of the banks that received these trillions of dollars in cheap loans from the Fed were finally revealed by the Fed two years later, there was a complete mainstream media news blackout. (Read our report: There’s a News Blackout on the Fed’s Naming of the Banks that Got Its Emergency Repo Loans; Some Journalists Appear to Be Under Gag Orders.) The 2008 financial collapse was the worst economic crisis in the U.S. since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It took six years for jobs to recover; more than 10 million Americans fell into poverty; and more than 6 million families lost their homes to foreclosure. And yet, Congress has failed to reform the Fed under both Democrat and Republican leadership in the White House.

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The New York Fed Has Extended Its Half Trillion Dollar Bailout Facility to a Sprawling Japanese Bank You’ve Never Heard Of
by Gunnar Larson 17 Dec '24

17 Dec '24

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/12/the-new-york-fed-has-extended-its-ha… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 14, 2023 ~ Kazuto Oku, CEO of Norinchukin Bank Kazuto Oku, CEO of Norinchukin Bank Quietly, on December 1, the New York Fed published the following statement on its website: “The Norinchukin Bank, New York Branch, has been added to the list of Standing Repo Facility Counterparties, effective December 1, 2023.” The Standing Repo Facility (SRF) is a permanent $500 billion bailout facility created by the Federal Reserve and operated by the New York Fed – the private regional Fed bank where multi-trillion dollar Wall Street bank bailouts have become a regular feature of its operations. Without any action from the U.S. legislative branch (otherwise known as Congress), the Fed has unilaterally decided to become lender of last resort to Wall Street trading houses (whom the Fed prefers to call its “primary dealers”) and deposit-taking banks, including the uninsured New York branches of foreign banks like Norinchukin Bank. If you have never heard of Norinchukin Bank, don’t feel badly. Neither have we and we’ve been monitoring global banks for decades. According to Norinchukin Bank’s financial statement for its fiscal year ending March 31, 2023, it had $708 billion in assets. If it were a U.S. bank, it would be the fifth largest by assets, just behind JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank. The notice from the New York Fed about adding Norinchukin Bank to its bailout facility grabbed our attention for two reasons. First, it came out on a Friday, which is typically when financial entities dump bad news they hope will disappear over the weekend. And also because the Standing Repo Facility was the successor to the trillions of dollars in still unexplained emergency repo loans the Fed had to pump into Wall Street in the fourth quarter of 2019. As indicated on the chart below, a unit of another Japanese bank, Nomura, was the largest recipient of Fed bailout largesse in the last quarter of 2019. Nomura borrowed $3.7 trillion cumulatively under the Fed’s emergency repo loan program, topping the amount borrowed by JPMorgan Chase by $1.11 trillion. The loan amounts on the chart come directly from the emergency repo loan data released quarterly by the New York Fed, adjusted for the term of the loan. (Reverse repo amounts have to be deleted from the data released by the Fed.) Fed's Repo Loans to Largest Borrowers, Q4 2019, Adjusted for Term of Loan The Fed swung into emergency mode on September 17, 2019 when the rate on overnight repo loans suddenly spiked from around 2.25 percent to as high as 10 percent at one point, strongly suggesting that Wall Street banks were backing away from questionable borrowers. The Fed set up its own repo facility to make tens of billions of dollars in loans available to trading houses on Wall Street on a daily basis, and at very cheap interest rates that did not reflect the credit risk of the individual trading houses. (Repos, short for Repurchase Agreements, are a short-term form of borrowing where corporations, banks, brokerage firms and hedge funds secure loans, typically for one day, by providing safe forms of collateral such as Treasury notes.) The Fed hadn’t made these emergency repo loans since the financial crisis of 2008. Instead of making just the typical overnight repo loans in 2019, the New York Fed extended some of these repo loans to 14-day, 28-day, and 42-day term loans, further suggesting some banks were in dire need of long-term liquidity. The distress being experienced by Nomura likely came from its large derivatives exposure. The fact that JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs were, from the get-go, also borrowing heavily from the Fed, suggests that the three firms were counterparties to each other’s derivatives. (See 14-day chart below beginning when the Fed first launched its emergency repo loan bailouts in September 2019.) Repo Loans Made by the Fed, Sept 17 through Sept 30, 2019 -- Adjusted for Term of Loan Celebrating 100 years of existence this year, Norinchukin Bank describes itself as a wholesome outfit on its website: “It is a cooperative private financial institution with a clear mission to ‘contribute to the development of the nation’s economy by supporting the advancement of Japan’s agriculture, fishery and forestry industries by providing financial services for the members of the agricultural, fishery and forestry cooperative system.’ ” Helping the agricultural, fishery and forestry industries in Japan, unfortunately, has somehow morphed into this: “Under the policy of reinforcing our asset management business, we transferred our credit and alternative investment functions to Norinchukin Zenkyoren Asset Management (NZAM), an affiliated company of the Bank, in fiscal 2021. In addition, we newly established Norinchukin Capital (NCCAP), for private equity investment and Nochu-JAML Investment Advisors (NJIA), for managing domestic real estate private REITs. “NZAM now offers a full lineup of products according to economic cycles and launched its credit flagship fund in August 2022. NJIA has begun managing a domestic real estate private REIT, in which the Bank also has a stake, offering prime yen-denominated investment opportunities. We will continue to ensure the effective use of our management experience to meet diversified customer needs (including ESG investment products).” This sounds like some serious mission creep to us. Instead of its “clear mission” to support the “advancement of Japan’s agriculture, fishery and forestry industries,” Norinchukin Bank sounds like it is attempting to remake itself into a cross between Blackstone and Blackrock. According to its most recent financial statement, Norinchukin Bank does not appear to be heavily involved in derivatives. However, it has been heavily involved in CLOs – Collateralized Loan Obligations, which frequently include high risk debt. In February of 2020, Reuters reported this: “Norinchukin, the world’s largest CLO investor, ceased its buying in the second half of 2019. Its December holdings were ¥8trn (US$72bn), the same level as in June last year, according to the bank’s latest result released early this month.” The Fed may have another particular interest in making sure Norinchukin Bank has ample access to liquidity. The bank has typically been a large buyer of U.S. Treasury securities. In a NikkeiAsia.com interview in March of this year, Norinchukin Bank’s Chief Investment Officer, Hiroshi Yuda, said this: “We were hit with unrealized losses, largely in U.S. government bonds. We actually started reshuffling our bond holdings in 2021 to prepare for rates to rise, but we rushed to unload in response to the jump in 2022. We sold around 12 trillion yen in securities, mainly U.S. government bonds, in the April-September half. We have continued to sell since October.” At today’s conversion rate, dumping 12 trillion yen in U.S. government bonds amounts to dumping $84.6 billion. When U.S. government bonds are sold in large quantities, it puts downward pressure on the price of the bond in the secondary trading market, resulting in higher yields. Higher yields, in turn, raise the debt service cost to the U.S. government. Like mega banks in the U.S., Norinchukin Bank is also grappling with heavy unrealized losses on the government debt securities it has not dumped into the market but is maintaining on its balance sheet. According to its fiscal year-end financial statement linked above, at fiscal year-end (March 31, 2023) it had unrealized losses on investment securities of $20 billion, which netted out to a loss of $10.76 billion after adjustments for reclassification and tax effects. The bottom line is this: what kind of a Faustian bargain has the Fed ensnarled itself in by becoming the lender of last resort to sprawling trading operations around the globe? And how long will Americans continue to allow the privately-owned New York Fed to usurp power from the elected members of the legislative branch of the United States? Related Articles: Economist Michael Hudson Says the Fed “Broke the Law” with its Repo Loans to Wall Street Trading Houses Former New York Fed Pres Bill Dudley Calls This the First Banking Crisis Since 2008; Charts Show It’s the Third

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NYC Mayor Eric Adams Takes Victory Lap: 'Remember Y'All Laughed When I First Got My Bitcoin? Who's Laughing Now?'
by Gunnar Larson 17 Dec '24

17 Dec '24

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nyc-mayor-eric-adams-takes-225014417.html New York City Mayor Eric Adams is seizing the moment as Bitcoin's (CRYPTO: BTC) value edges closer to the $100,000 mark, up 129% this year. At a press conference on Tuesday, Adams had a pointed message for his skeptics: "Remember y'all laughed at me when I first got my Bitcoin? Who's laughing now?"

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Fwd: MSNBC -->
by Gunnar Larson 17 Dec '24

17 Dec '24

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: News Alert <info(a)dscc.org> Date: Tue, Dec 17, 2024, 11:22 AM Subject: re: MSNBC --> To: <g(a)xny.io> ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ *BREAKING:** MSNBC viewership drops as Fox News SOARS* *We need to know if you're tuning in:**Do you watch MSNBC?* Yes <http://go.dscc.org/go/20753?ask=5&t=5&firstname=&lastname=&email=g%40xny.io…> No <http://go.dscc.org/go/20753?ask=5&t=6&firstname=&lastname=&email=g%40xny.io…> Team, ever since Donald Trump won the presidency, Fox News' viewership has SOARED as MSNBC's has dropped! *The very LAST thing America needs right now is even more right-wing propaganda on our TV screens -- so we need to make sure Democrats are still keeping up with critical news developments!* With Trump just weeks away from returning to power, *we need to know your answer now:* [image: Live Poll] <http://go.dscc.org/go/20753?ask=5&t=7&firstname=&lastname=&email=g%40xny.io…> *Do you watch MSNBC?* Yes <http://go.dscc.org/go/20753?ask=5&t=8&firstname=&lastname=&email=g%40xny.io…> No <http://go.dscc.org/go/20753?ask=5&t=9&firstname=&lastname=&email=g%40xny.io…> Thanks, Team DSCC * If you've recently responded or done so with a different email address, thank you! Online records may not be up to date, but don't worry -- your responses have been recorded. [image: Chip in $5 monthly to flip the Senate] <https://secure.actblue.com/donate/support-senate-democrats-2024-q4-recurrin…> ------------------------------ The DSCC is the only committee solely dedicated to supporting Democrats in the U.S. Senate, and our work relies on grassroots supporters like you. If you'd like to make a contribution to support us, please *click here <https://secure.actblue.com/donate/support-senate-democrats-2024-q4?refcode=…>*. *Click here <https://go.dscc.org/signup/receive-fewer-emails/?t=3&akid=19184%2E26297126%…>* to receive fewer emails. *Click here <https://go.dscc.org/unsubscribe/unsubscribe/?t=4&akid=19184%2E26297126%2EFc…>* to unsubscribe. Paid for by the DSCC | PO Box 96047, Washington, DC 20090 | *dscc.org <https://www.dscc.org/>* | Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Contributions or gifts to the DSCC are not tax deductible.

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The Head of Fixed Income at T. Rowe Price Makes the Scary Case for the 10-Year Treasury to Spike to 6 Percent
by Gunnar Larson 17 Dec '24

17 Dec '24

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2024/12/the-head-of-fixed-income-at-t-rowe-p… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 17, 2024 ~ Arif Husain, Chief Investment Officer, Fixed Income, T. Rowe Price Arif Husain, Chief Investment Officer, Fixed Income, T. Rowe Price Arif Husain is the head of Global Fixed Income and Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of the Fixed Income Division of T. Rowe Price. He is also a member of the firm’s Management Committee. Husain holds a B.Sc. (honors) in banking and international finance from the City University London, Cass Business School. When Husain speaks, Wall Street listens. What Husain has been saying since October is that the U.S. is on a collision course with higher interest rates. In October, Husain released his interest rate outlook for the next six months, writing the following about the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note, whose yield impacts mortgage rates and a wide swath of debt instruments: “I think that the 10-year Treasury yield will test the 5.0% threshold in the next six months, steepening the yield curve. There are three dynamics at play: 1. Fed rate cuts could limit yield increases on short-maturity Treasury bills. 2. Ongoing issuance by the Treasury to fund the government’s deficit spending is flooding the market with new supply. 3. The Fed’s quantitative tightening has taken a large, reliable buyer of Treasuries out of the market, further skewing the balance of supply and demand in favor of higher yields.” Husain’s analysis in October had yet to factor in the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. Now that there is no longer any doubt that President-elect Donald Trump and his promised tariffs and tax cuts must be factored into any interest rate forecast, Husain had this to say on a November 22 Global Market Webinar at T. Rowe Price when queried by his colleague, Investment Specialist Ritu Vohora: Vohora: So coming to you now, Arif. You know, Blerina talked there about one of the key risks is around fiscal policy. The U.S. deficit is on track to be 7% of GDP at the end of the year. I think the interest expense alone is going to be higher than the defense budget, which is mind-boggling. When should we start worrying about the debt burden? I feel like we talk about it, but when do we actually start worrying? Husain: You should be worried right now. I think, certainly, the initial reaction in the bond market post-the-election was to go after some of the fiscal laggards. So, the European peripheral market got hit. The UK bond market got hit, and so did the U.S. Now there’s been plenty of volatility. So I think you got to be worried about the bond market. I’m on record of saying I think the U.S. 10-year will get to 5%. I said that before the election. There’s only more evidence, new information, to think, to believe that and frankly, I said 5%, because 5% you need to go through 5 to get to 6. So for me, what will create fiscal austerity? What will create a little bit more discipline around the deficit? Can’t see it. I really can’t see it. And really, I think the real thing that most people miss when they’re just looking at the U.S. fiscal deficit is a really simple point, which is the U.S. are not the only people who need to sell a lot of debt. A huge, huge amount of debt. You know, Justin was talking about Chinese stimulus a moment ago. Guess what that is: debt issuance. And every country with the exception of Germany, actually, the German debt break is one of their structural, one of the structural issues holding them back a little bit, but from a bond holder’s perspective it’s a positive, right, but other than that, everyone is selling lots and lots and lots of debt in a time when central banks are no longer buying it. And so from a global perspective, I think we really need to worry about deficits and the lack of plan to address them. And the U.S. is at the front of the queue there. You know, every week, every second week, they’ve got to, they come with massive bond issuance and really to my mind, bond yields need to be a lot higher to be competitive. And you’ve got to see a much steeper yield curve to make that longer duration debt a lot more attractive. At this point in the webinar, another colleague asks Husain, “Arif, did you, did you just call for 6% U.S. 10-year as a possibility?” Husain responds: “I think we’ll see 5 before 6, that’s for sure.” This morning, Husain’s outlook for rising interest rates in the U.S. is getting a lot more attention. Bloomberg News has put excerpts from a new report by Husain in a headlined article on its digital front page. The article is apparently syndicated, because it is being picked up by other news outlets, including Yahoo! Finance. If Husain is correct and the 10-year Treasury yield blows past 5 percent on its way to 6 percent, there are going to be a lot more than bond holders licking their wounds. (As yields on bonds rise in the secondary market, their market price declines in order to bring their yield to the going rate on new bonds of the same maturity.) Because the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury impacts mortgage interest rates, a rise in its yield could price more home buyers out of the market because they would be unable to afford the higher monthly mortgage cost. This could lead to a slump in home prices and potentially negatively impact consumer sentiment. A yield of 5 percent or higher on the 10-year Treasury note could also lure money out of stocks and into Treasuries. Should a stock exodus become a stampede, a handful of tech stocks trading at nosebleed valuations might plunge, leading to more selloffs. Since Donald Trump’s ego is bound up in the stock market only rising when he’s in the driver’s seat, this could lead to Trump making imprudent demands on the Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, or firing him as a scapegoat. Since Powell has said he will serve out his term as Fed Chair, irrespective of Trump’s threats to fire him, a Trump-Powell debacle could unnerve foreign investors, leading to capital flight out of the U.S. In fact, we’re shocked we haven’t seen that already, given the chaos Trump has outlined for his first 100 days in office.

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