tybs
morning
BOXER44 USAF C-40C and SAM301 USAF C-40B (State Dept. AC) departed JBA west
62-3519 USAF KC-135 tanker over Not AF1 Joe at Long Beach
Not AF1 Joe doesn't do nuffin until 110pm EST and that is getting on an AC to Denver...must be nice.
1:10pm EST Potato+/Not AF1 Joe departs Long Beach, California en route Denver, Colorado
https://factba.se/biden/calendar
Elizabeth Warren Demands Fed Break Up Wells Fargo
In an announcement that was clearly timed for maximum embarrassment (with the news hitting just as Wells Fargo was presenting at the Barclays Global Financial Services Conference), Sen. Elizabeth Warren has stepped up her long-simmering feud with Wells Fargo. In a letter to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell (whose future tenure she recently jeopardized by complaining loudly about his qualifications), the Massachusetts Senator demanded that the Fed force a breakup of Wells Fargo, separating its Wall Street businesses like trading, asset management and corporate banking and advisory from consumer-facing businesses like mortgage lending and providing retail banking services (something the bank already does on a massive scale).
In her letter first reported by the NYT, Warren says Wells has "run out of time" to fix the problems at its bank. The Fed imposed an asset cap on Wells' balance sheet back in February 2018 which - while it was lifted temporarily during the pandemic - is still in place. The bank has been rattled by a series of scandals in recent years, most notably the fake account cross-selling scandal that exploded in 2016 and destroyed the bank's relatively innocent (by Wall Street standards) reputation (much of which stemmed from Warren Buffett's investment).
Divorcing consumer and Wall Street banking would help protect regular Americans from the depravities of Wall Street, and could be accomplished with the simple stroke of a pen. The Fed would only need to revoke the bank's financial holding company license, essentially blocking it from performing all Wall Street-related activities. That would force the bank to spin off its investment bank. “Continuing to allow this giant bank with a broken culture to conduct business in its current form poses substantial risks to consumers and the financial system,” she wrote. Warren has suggested that Wells be broken up before during heated interrogations of the firm's CEO and other bank CEOs during a series of Senate hearings in recent years. But this is the first time Warren has officially requested the Fed to break up Wells.
Last week, federal regulators announced another set of fines and restrictions on the bank, stemming from the its inappropriate handling of some of its home loan customers’ portfolios. And just yesterday, a trial began involving a series of former Wells' executives who are being sued over their roles in the fake account scandal.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/elizabeth-warren-demands-fed-break-wells-fargo
dhey not gonna do that-revoke license...she not wrong (this time) but this is just bullshit rhetoric from her again.
SEC Chair Gensler Will Tiptoe Around Questions of Meaningful Reform on Wall Street at Today’s Senate Banking Hearing
The Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing today titled “Oversight of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.” The SEC needs a lot of oversight because that’s the federal agency that didn’t catch Bernie Madoff for more than four decades, despite a financial expert, Harry Markopolos, sending the SEC detailed written reports (in 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007 and 2008), making the case that Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme.
The SEC was also asleep at the switch while Wall Street banks concocted their subprime debt bombs, then bet billions of dollars that they would fail while selling them to public pension funds as good investments. Those subprime bombs blew up in 2008, cratering the U.S. economy and leaving millions of innocent Americans jobless and homeless. More recently, the SEC was caught flat-footed when the family office hedge fund, Archegos Capital Management, blew up and the public learned for the first time that Wall Street banks have been disguising massive, highly-leveraged stock positions held by these hedge funds as belonging to the banks.
The SEC is also currently turning a blind eye to a practice that screams illegal manipulation: it is allowing the serially-charged mega banks on Wall Street to trade their own bank’s stock in their own Dark Pools. The reason that the Senate Banking Committee has to closely police the SEC with these regular oversight hearings is because this Senate Banking Committee has repeatedly confirmed the outside counsel to the largest trading banks on Wall Street to serve as Wall Street’s top cop. The guy before Gensler, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton of Sullivan & Cromwell, was nominated by President Donald Trump. Clayton had legally represented 8 of the 10 largest Wall Street banks in the three years prior to the Senate Banking Committee confirming him to Chair the SEC. Before Clayton, the Senate Banking Committee had confirmed Mary Jo White, a law partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, as SEC Chair. White was nominated by President Barack Obama. Between White and her husband, John White, a law partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, they had represented almost every major trading bank on Wall Street.
As Einstein reportedly once quipped, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” If the Senate Banking Committee genuinely wanted a real cop on the beat on Wall Street, it would stop confirming captured regulators. The jury is still out on Gensler, who previously spent 18 years at Goldman Sachs and served as Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Obama. Gensler’s initial performance as SEC Chair earned him an early black eye when he picked a 20-year Wall Street bank defender as his crime chief. That crime chief, Alex Oh of the Wall Street go-to law firm, Paul Weiss, exited the role after only six days on the job and considerable unfavorable publicity. To his credit, Gensler went with a career prosecutor the second time around.
Gensler’s opening remarks at today’s Senate Banking Committee hearing include seven references to this phrase: “asked staff for recommendations…” If past is prologue, this will mean that Gensler will run out the clock on actually advancing any meaningful “recommendations” into concrete final rules."see Gary's tenure at the CFTC where the same thing was asked regarding Silver Market Manipulation and he punted on dat too.'''
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This is Gensler’s statement from his written opening remarks for today’s hearing on market structure: “I believe it’s appropriate to look at ways to freshen up the SEC’s rules to ensure that our equity markets reflect our mission and are as efficient and competitive as they could be. I think it’s time we take a broad view about what the market structure should look like today. The Commission started this exercise with regard to market data under former Chairman Jay Clayton.” Let’s stop right there for a moment. Clayton took office on May 4, 2017 during the Trump administration. That’s more than four years ago and nothing positive about market structure has changed one iota.
Gensler continues:
“I’ve asked staff for recommendations, particularly around two key questions: First, how do we facilitate greater competition and efficiency on an order-by-order basis — when people send each order into the marketplace? While there is fragmentation amongst trading platforms, past reforms and new technologies may have led to more segmented markets and higher concentration amongst market makers. “Nearly half of the volume transacted is executed in ‘dark pools’ or by wholesalers. One firm has publicly stated that it executes nearly half of all retail volume. [That firm is Citadel Securities.] Further, I wonder whether this means that the consolidated tape — the so-called National Best Bid and Offer — fully reflects the full range of activity on exchanges.” The SEC has no criminal powers. It can only bring civil cases. And yet, the trading conduct among the Wall Street mega banks is increasingly criminal in nature and prosecuted, or not, (mostly not, via deferred prosecution agreements) by the U.S. Department of Justice. Which leads to the question, has the SEC become simply the illusion of policing Wall Street while it picks on the small crooks while giving the big crooks a pass?
That’s the view of a former 25-year trial attorney at the SEC, James Kidney, who retired in 2014. On October 12, 2018, Kidney delivered a stunning assessment of the SEC at Lake Forest College, just outside of Chicago. Kidney characterized the leadership of the SEC when he worked there as “self-serving cowards” who didn’t go after the higher ups on Wall Street because they were simply “looking to move on, to return to their Wall Street job.” During the lecture, Kidney put up a chart to show how Wall Street’s unchecked corruption impacted the average American and the U.S. economy during and after the 2008 financial collapse. The chart shows that $19 trillion in U.S. wealth was lost; there was a 30 percent drop in housing prices; 8.8 million American jobs were lost; and 10 million homes were lost to foreclosure.
As John F. Kennedy said, “We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve.” Americans need to pick up the phone today and call their Senators to demand meaningful reform of the structure of the Securities and Exchange Commission itself.
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/09/sec-chair-gensler-will-tiptoe-around-questions-of-meaningful-reform-on-wall-street-at-todays-senate-banking-hearing/
quite the narrative using da challenger explosion to distract from the huge military build-up they unleashed on central and south america in the weeks that followed that planned explosion.
Goldman Sachs CFO Stephen Scherr To Retire; Names Denis Coleman CFO
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) said Tuesday that its Chief Financial Officer Stephen Scherr has decided to retire from the firm. Denis Coleman III, co-head of the Global Financing Group, will become the firm's Chief Financial Officer, effective January 1, 2022.
After a distinguished career at Goldman Sachs spanning three decades, including serving for the last three years as Chief Financial Officer, Stephen Scherr has decided to retire from the firm. Stephen will remain Chief Financial Officer until the end of the year and will retire from the firm at the end of January. Upon his retirement, he will become a Senior Director.
The company noted that Denis will serve as Deputy Chief Financial Officer effective immediately to ensure a smooth transition. Denis has served as co-head of the Global Financing Group in the Investment Banking Division since 2018. Denis joined Goldman Sachs in 1996 as an analyst in the Bank Loan Group. In 1998, he moved to Capital Markets in the then Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities Division. He transferred to the Investment Banking Division in 2004 and became co-head of U.S. Loan Capital Markets in 2005.
In 2008, Denis was named co-head of U.S. Leveraged Finance, in 2009 he became head of EMEA Credit Finance in London and was then named head of the EMEA Financing Group from 2016 to June 2018. Denis was named managing director in 2005 and partner in 2008.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/goldman-sachs-cfo-stephen-scherr-to-retire-names-denis-coleman-cfo-1030798856
Global Debt Hits Record $296 Trillion as World Lockdowns Ease
Global debt loads surged during the second quarter as households seized on low mortgage rates and governments continued borrowing heavily to revive pandemic-battered economies.
The amount of the world’s outstanding debt swelled during the three months by about $4.8 trillion to a record $296 trillion, according to a report by the Institute of International Finance.
The increase was led by households that added added $1.5 trillion of debt during the first half of the year, driven by the U.S., China and Brazil, with home buyers tapping into low interest rates and stepping up spending as countries emerged from lockdowns. Meantime, government and corporate debts increased by $1.3 trillion and $1.2 trillion, respectively, over the six-month period. At the same time, the amount of debt relative to the size of the global economy declined for the first time since the onset of the pandemic as growth rebounded. The total debt load stood at about 353% of the world’s annual economic output, a nine-percentage-point drop from the peak during the first three months of 2021.
Other findings from the report include:
*Emerging-market debt excluding China, rose to a record near $36 trillion, driven by government borrowing in Brazil, Korea and Russia
*Global issuance of sustainable bonds and loans is projected to reach $1.2 trillion in 2021. It has already reached $800 billion, surpassing the total for all of last year
*“The pace of China’s debt buildup has been much steeper than in other countries,” the IFF writes. It grew by $2.3 trillion to $55 trillion in the second quarter, with non-financials accounting for over 40% of the rise.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/global-debt-hits-record-296-trillion-as-world-lockdowns-ease-1.1652009