Casino Banking: Wall Street Mega Banks Traded More in their Federally-Insured Bank than the Total for their Bank Holding Company

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: October 13, 2022

When something happens for the first time in history at federally-insured banks, Congress and federal regulators need to pull their heads out of the sand and pay attention. We’re talking about the fact that in the second quarter of this year, trading revenues at federally-insured commercial banks eclipsed the trading revenues at bank holding companies – which typically include subsidiaries where traders actually have licenses to trade.

This latest data on what is happening inside the nation’s largest federally-insured banks comes from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), see pages 2 and 3 here. The federally-insured banks generated a total of $10.3 billion in trading revenue in the second quarter versus $10.2 billion for the bank holding companies, or 101 percent of the bank holding company revenues. That’s never happened before according to the data provided by the OCC.

The report provides the following historical perspective:

Gold Beating

This should be gold’s time to SHINE…

In a time of high global inflation caused in part by massive money printing and fiscal stimulus experiments, gold should be rocking.

But instead, gold hit a 2 year low this week.

For decades investors have linked gold and inflation together.

  • The Theory: As inflation rises, the purchasing power (or the quantity of goods) that $1 Dollar can buy, will go down.

Which in layman’s terms means the dollar bill in your pocket today will buy less stuff tomorrow, than it will today.

Gold and other real assets like art and real estate tend to hold their value much better and retain their purchasing power.

This means they should be a better asset class to invest in during inflationary periods.

The Test: Gold and Inflation

Below is a table that shows the performance of gold, dollars, oil, and equities during periods of US tightening cycles over the last 60 years.

Protect Your Cash With This Hidden Asset

By John Pangere, senior analyst, Strategic Investor

The markets are in turmoil.

As I write, the S&P 500 Index is down 23% for the year. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is faring worse, down 31%.

It’s just plain ugly out there.

You can blame it all on a number of factors. Inflation is raging at 8.3%. The U.S. dollar hit 20-year highs. And the Federal Reserve is keeping up its relentless pace of raising interest rates… with no hint of an end.

It has investors scrambling… with the typical deer-in-the-headlights look we see during bear markets.

For years, we heard about buying the dip. Or about the Fed put, with talking heads and major investors relying on the Federal Reserve to come to their rescue.

After all, that was typically the case for much of the last 40 years. It helped fuel the rise of risky assets and growth companies.

5 altcoins that could turn bullish if Bitcoin price stabilizes

The major United States stock market indexes continued their decline last week as worsening macroeconomic conditions increased concerns of a global recession. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at its lowest level in 2022, and major indexes recorded their fifth weekly close in the past six weeks.

Although Bitcoin (BTC) has only declined marginally this week, it risks closing at the lowest level since 2020. While a new multi-year weekly close is a negative sign, sellers will have to sustain the lower levels or else it may turn out to be a bear trap. The price action of the next few days is likely to witness heightened volatility as both the bulls and the bears battle it out for supremacy.

The Bear-Market Rally in Stocks, Bonds, Mortgages Wiped Out: Why This Nails the Parallel to the Dotcom Bust

But this time, there’s over 8% inflation.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday closed about 300 points below its June 16 low, thereby having more than wiped out the bear-market rally gains. For the Dow, the bear-market rally started on June 17 and ended on August 16. During the two-month rally, the Dow had jumped 14%. By Friday at the close, it was again down 20% from its all-time high.

The S&P 500 Index, on Friday intraday, fell through its closing low of June 16 – the infamous 3,666 – and then bounced a little to close 27 points above the June 16 low, at 3,693. During the two-month bear-market rally through August 16, the index had surged 17%. By Friday, the index was down 23% from its all-time high.

The Nasdaq closed about 2%

Watch for This Sign That the Tide Is Turning for Stocks

We'll start this essay with the latest news from the Federal Reserve...

On Wednesday afternoon, the Fed raised its benchmark interest rate by another 75 basis points. This came as no surprise to Wall Street.

The move will bring the federal-funds rate range – which most directly matters for banks and then filters throughout the economy – to between 3% and 3.25%. The change makes borrowing costs in the U.S. the highest they've been since before the 2008 financial crisis... and it's the first time rates have eclipsed their previous cycle peak since before the dot-com bubble...

Maybe it's just a coincidence?

As is a quarterly custom, the Fed's board members also published their updated projections for interest rates (the so-called dot plot), gross domestic product ("GDP"), inflation, and unemployment through the end of the year and for the next two years.

Here's where it gets interesting...

Brace for a market unlike anything you’ve ever seen

This week is all about the Fed. 

Daniel joins me once again to discuss yesterday’s interest rate hike, and what stood out about Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s comments.

Prepare for a rant on how Powell’s actions could push the market far lower… 

I also break down why the U.S. dollar will keep rising… and how it will hurt the global economy. 

Bottom line: It’s time to play defense. If you don’t have portfolio protection in place, this strategy is one of the best ways to reduce risk… and start profiting from a falling market.

FDA Covered Up CV19 Vax Biological Catastrophe – Dr. Peter McCullough

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

Dr. Peter McCullough is a renowned cardiologist who fought the accepted government CV19 vax narrative from the beginning. Dr. McCullough said, “The injections should have been halted in February of 2021.” Instead, the government mandated the clot shots, and the CDC and FDA covered up the problems. The FDA is still covering up massive deaths and injuries from the mRNA shots. Dr. McCullough explains, “It’s the great gamble of the Covid19 vaccine program. It was the gamble of a lifetime, if not a gamble of all-time.