Tag: Wall Street

America’s real hoax: Record highs on Wall Street as millions of jobless people can’t pay rent

Washington Post logo

The shocking disconnect between a thriving U.S. investor economy and its millions of unemployed as a recipe for even worse social unrest.

Don’t blame Lisa Scott, a 43-year-old certified nursing assistant who lives in the Oxford Circle section of Philadelphia, for not celebrating this week as the Standard & Poor’s 500 index soared to yet another record high, as Wall Street’s unbelievable — in every sense of the word — summer stretches into a new month.

On Wednesday afternoon, as the Dow was rising yet another 454 points, Scott — who hasn’t worked since the coronavirus turned her world upside down in March — was far too busy worrying why Pennsylvania still hasn’t processed her unemployment claim, whether her landlord will keep allowing her to pay whatever rent she can and how she’d be able to seek new work with her 12-year-old at home for virtual schooling. Continue reading.

Another Huge Helping Of Corporate Welfare For Wall Street

To say that these are unprecedented times would be the understatement of the century. Even as the United States became the latest target of Hurricane COVID-19, in “hot spots” around the globe a continuing frenzy of health concerns represented yet another drop down the economic rabbit hole.

Stay-at-home orders have engulfed the planet, encompassing a majority of Americans, all of India, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe. A second round of cases may be starting to surface in China. Meanwhile, small- and medium-sized businesses, not to speak of giant corporate entities, are already facing severe financial pain.

I was in New York City on 9/11 and for the weeks that followed. At first, there was a sense of overriding panic about the possibility of more attacks, while the air was still thick with smoke. A startling number of lives were lost and we all did feel that we had indeed been changed forever. Continue reading.

‘Oligarchs are running the White House’: Trump called Wall Street and hedge fund titans before ‘back to work’ push

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump hosted a private conference call Tuesday morning with several billionaire Wall Street and hedge fund titans just hours before the president said he hopes to “have the country opened up” and “get people back to work” by Easter—even as the coronavirus pandemic worsens.

Among the most prominent executives on the call—which was joined by Vice President Mike Pence—were Ken Griffin, billionaire CEO of Citadel; Stephen Schwarzman, billionaire CEO of the Blackstone Group; and Paul Tudor Jones, billionaire co-founder of Just Capital. The firms represented on the Tuesday morning call collectively manage hundreds of billions of dollars in assets.

The conversation came as Senate lawmakers and White House negotiators, led by Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin, were in the middle of talks over a $2 trillion economic stimulus package that includes $500 billion in taxpayer bailout funds for large corporations—and, though not widely reported, trillions more in a lending program backed by the Federal Reserve. Continue reading.

Dow plunges nearly 3,000 points as Fed intervention does little to subdue Wall Street’s distress

Washington Post logoU.S. markets went deep red on coronavirus fears, shredding roughly 12 percent from the S&P 500 and Nasdaq

Fears that policymakers have not done enough to avert a protracted economic downturn deepened a sense of national crisis on Monday and sent stocks to their worst single-day losses since the Black Monday crash of 1987.

The selloff accelerated, with the Dow Jones industrial average plunging nearly 3,000 points, after President Trump warned that disruption from the coronavirus pandemic could last through August and issued new public health guidance, saying Americans should limit gatherings to no more than 10 people. He also defended his handling of the crisis, which has been marred by a slow rollout of testing, saying his administration has done “a fantastic job.”

From Washington to Wall Street, the coronavirus is reshaping American life. The Supreme Court said it would postpone scheduled oral arguments through April, citing its stance during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic and outbreaks of yellow fever in 1973 and 1798.

Wall Street ends volatile month in major test for Trump

The Hill logoWall Street ended a wild August with the Dow up slightly on Friday, capping a tumultuous month for the global economy that spurred a wave of volatility in financial markets and posed a challenge for President Trump.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 index and Nasdaq closed the final day of August trading little changed from their Friday opens, with the Dow and S&P up only 0.2 and 0.1 percent, respectively.

But the three indices were well below their levels at the start of the month after a notoriously rough stretch for Wall Street. The Dow fell 1.76 percent in August, down 474 points. The index this month suffered two of its seven largest point losses, falling by 800 points on Aug. 14 and 767 points on Aug. 5.

View the complete August 30 article by Sylvan Lane on The Hill website.

Trump’s Fed feud roils markets, alarms Republicans

President Trump’s intensifying attacks on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell are having a destabilizing effect on financial markets and rattling Republican lawmakers.

Trump’s criticisms of the central bank’s chief policymaker kicked into high gear Monday, not long after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tried to reassure markets by insisting Trump has no intention of firing Powell.

Trump has undercut that claim by blaming the Fed for market volatility and recent economic woes.

View the complete December 24 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

Treasury secretary startles Wall Street with unusual pre-Christmas calls to top bank CEOs

Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Treasury secretary, spoke to the CEOs of six major banks about liquidity in an unusual move. The stock market reacted by dropping lower on Monday December 24, 2018. Credit: Andrew Harrer, Bloomberg

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin startled financial analysts, bankers and economists on Sunday by issuing an unusual statement declaring that the nation’s six largest banks had ample credit to extend to American businesses and households.

Mnuchin made the statement on Twitter after calling the leaders of the six banks, seeking to address an issue that had attracted little concern ahead of the treasury secretary’s tweet.

The statement came hours before Asian markets were set to open and following a sharp sell-off that made last week the worst for U.S. markets in a decade. President Trump has been furious at the sell-off, and efforts by Mnuchin to inspire confidence in the market have so far failed.

View the complete December 23 article by Damian Paletta and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.

Wall Street might not like this: Inflation rises 2.1 percent, faster than expected

Heather Long authored the above article, which was posted on the Washington Post website February 14, 2018:

“The consumer price index, which measures how quickly prices are going up in the U.S. economy, rose at a faster than anticipated 2.1 percent in January, compared with a year ago, triggering fears of another rocky run on Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 100 points at the open, but traders ultimately dismissed the news and the Dow closed up over 250 points.

Inflation around 2 percent is still very low, but Wall Street traders worry that this could be the beginning of a quick run up in wages and prices. There’s a big reassessment going on about what the future holds for the U.S. markets and economy.”

View the rest of the article here.

Trump’s tax plan gives Wall Street everything it wants — and that’s bad news for them

The following post by Matt O’Brien was posted on the Washington Post website October 6, 2017:

Credit: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

President Trump is trying to give Wall Street what it’s always wanted: tax cuts. But doing that might take away what it’s always had: the Republican Party.

That, you see, is a pretty good description of Trump’s tax plan. It would bestow almost all of its benefits on the Republican donors at the very top of the income ladder, and it would pay for some of this largesse by actually raising taxes on the Republican voters a couple of rungs below that. Indeed, by 2027, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that the top 1 percent would be receiving 79.7 percent of all the Trump tax cuts, while the 80th to 95th percentile of households would be getting negative 5 percent. Marxists might call this “heightening the contradictions” — making things worse for people so they’ll join the revolution. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) describes it as a plan whose “purpose” is to “help the middle class.” You say tomayto, I say tomahto. Continue reading “Trump’s tax plan gives Wall Street everything it wants — and that’s bad news for them”