Free Republic

The Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating whether moguls Barry Diller, David Geffen and Alexander von Furstenberg violated insider trading laws by buying Activision Blizzard options shortly before the video game company announced an acquisition by Microsoft, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday—but Diller says they didn’t have prior knowledge of the impending deal. [archived version] https://archive.ph/EfWpu#selection-3339.0-3347.80

Jamie Dimon is a renowned Wall Street wisecracker but making jokes about China is risque even for the world's top banking executive. Speaking at a panel discussion at the Boston College Chief Executives Club, Dimon quipped: 'I was just in Hong Kong and I made a joke that the Communist Party is celebrating its hundredth year. So is JP Morgan. I'd make a bet we last longer.'

The country's largest bank has cut ties with a Missouri conservative group, forcing an event that had been set to feature Donald Trump Jr. to be immediately canceled. The December 3 St. Charles, Missouri, event featuring the son of former President Donald Trump was organized by the conservative Defense of Liberty political action committee. WePay, a payment processor owned by JPMorgan Chase, had reportedly been used to handle the event's ticket transactions... ...WePay informed him in a message that it would no longer do business with his group based on an alleged violation of terms of service...

In an interview last year, Mr. Freeman argued that the austere cuts enacted at his newspapers reflected a more realistic understanding of the industry’s direction and better positioned Alden-owned publishers for the pandemic’s downswing. “We were prepared for a real step down in terms of a recession because we were honest about what was needed in the future,” he said. “Numbers don’t lie.” The newspaper industry’s numbers looked bleak even before the pandemic. Annual advertising revenue dropped 70%, or $34 billion, between 2005 and 2018, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center. More than 1,800 newspapers closed between 2004...

I am deeply offended that big corporations are trying to bully Georgia into repealing a perfectly reasonable voting integrity law. President Biden lied about the law so egregiously that even the Bezos propaganda outlet, The Washington Post, awarded him 4 Pinocchios. But that didn’t stop some of America’s most prominent corporations from trying to bully Georgia into repealing the law, one which protects legitimate votes from being cancelled out by fraudulent votes.Now, former President Trump is calling for boycotts of the corporations that are acting as political overlords:"For years the Radical Left Democrats have played dirty by boycotting products when...

Integrity is apparently a myth with the journalists at NBC News. The network’s insufferable Business Correspondent Stephanie Ruhle was just exposed for filming promotional videos for a bank she covers. The Washington Post, which broke the story, wrote that Ruhle “doesn’t promote banks when she’s anchoring for the cable network. But on the Internet, it may be a different story.” In a September 22 clip produced and sponsored by JPMorgan Chase, Ruhle said: “‘Hey, this is Stephanie Ruhle, and I’m looking forward to my conversation with Chase, where we talk about life’s unpredictable moments and how important it is to...

Warren Buffett has given up his long-held conviction against buying gold — and he’s meanwhile getting out of Goldman Sachs. The totemic tycoon revealed in filings late last week that he has scooped up more than 20 million shares of mining giant Barrick Gold Corp. even as he unloaded nearly all of his nearly 2 million shares in Goldman Sachs. The 89-year-old investing icon’s sudden embrace of the precious yellow metal — which has has previously derided as “useless,” saying that “anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head” at the idea of investing in it — took many...

JPMorgan Chase announced Monday that it is planning to end loans to companies pursuing fossil fuel drilling in the Arctic Circle, according to reports. The Washington Post reported that the bank said that it will soon complete a 2017 commitment to help fund $200 billion in projects to help meet the U.N.'s sustainable development goals, as well as $50 billion for "green initiatives." The bank also plans to phase out all existing and future loans to the coal industry by 2024, and end the financing of oil and gas extraction projects in the Arctic, a region vulnerable to the effects...

WASHINGTON — Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase & Co. will create an independent health care company that is “free from profit-making incentives” that will aim to reduce healthcare costs for their U.S. workers. The focus of the company will be technology solutions “that will provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost,” a news release says. “The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy. Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable. Rather, we...

The Republican tax plan that will cut U.S. coporate taxes will create jobs because "ultimately you're going to have a lot more capital retained and invested here," JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said at an Axios event Wednesday at the University of Michigan. Dimon said current tax rate is "a mistake" because other nations have reduced taxes while the U.S. hasn't. Why it matters: Republicans are nearing a final agreement on tax legislation to cut corporate rates from 35% to 21%. Some economists have warned the increased corporate profits wouldn't be used to create jobs

... Bank of America (BAC) on Thursday announced it set aside $997 million to protect from loan losses, mainly in the bank's $22 billion energy portfolio. Wells Fargo (WFC) warned of "significant stress" and "deterioration" in the oil and gas space. The problems there forced Wells Fargo to add $200 million in loan-loss reserves, its first increase to this rainy-day fund since 2009. And JPMorgan Chase increased its provisions for credit losses by 88%, mostly due to the oil, natural gas and pipeline business. It was enough to cause JPMorgan's (JPM) first drop in profits since late 2014. ...

Financial shares are down sharply in 2016 even as broader markets have recovered; central-bank policies squeeze interest margins --- Bank stocks are having a terrible 2016, as central-bank policies, which for years lifted asset prices, are hurting the financial sector. The impact of economic stimulus efforts on lenders will get a fresh airing this week, as big U.S. banks begin reporting their earnings for the first quarter. Trading revenue is expected to have taken a hit, but the more enduring problem will be visible in the lenders’ net interest margins, the basic measure of bank profitability that gets flattened by...

For most people, pleading guilty to a felony means they will very likely land in prison, lose their job and forfeit their right to vote. But when five of the world’s biggest banks plead guilty to an array of antitrust and fraud charges as soon as next week, life will go on, probably without much of a hiccup. The Justice Department is preparing to announce that Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and the Royal Bank of Scotland will collectively pay several billion dollars and plead guilty to criminal antitrust violations for rigging the price of foreign currencies, according to people briefed...

It's every parent's nightmare, but true: Major U.S. corporations are funding a campaign of sophisticated, psychologically intrusive "gay" indoctrination programs targeting very young children in elementary schools across America. It’s part of a very well-planned and well-funded effort to reach children as young as possible without their parents’ intervention. The national program, called “Welcoming Schools”, skillfully works on the minds of young children in three ways: (1) Introducing the concept of homosexuality to children. (2) Telling them that homosexuality is normal and natural. (3) Telling them that their parents or friends who portray homosexuality in a less than positive way...

Fleischmann is the central witness in one of the biggest cases of white-collar crime in American history, possessing secrets that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon late last year paid $9 billion (not $13 billion as regularly reported – more on that later) to keep the public from hearing. Back in 2006, as a deal manager at the gigantic bank, Fleischmann first witnessed, then tried to stop, what she describes as "massive criminal securities fraud" in the bank's mortgage operations. Six years after the crisis that cratered the global economy, it's not exactly news that the country's biggest banks stole on...

She tried to stay quiet, she really did. But after eight years of keeping a heavy secret, the day came when Alayne Fleischmann couldn't take it anymore. "It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'" Fleischmann is a tall, thin, quick-witted securities lawyer in her late thirties, with long blond hair, pale-blue eyes and an infectious sense of humor that has survived some very tough times. She's had to struggle to find work despite some striking skills and qualifications, a common symptom of a not-so-common condition...

Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking By Matt Taibbi | November 6, 2014 "It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'" Fleischmann is the central witness in one of the biggest cases of white-collar crime in American history, possessing secrets that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon late last year paid $9 billion (not $13 billion as regularly reported – more on that later) to keep the public from hearing. Back in 2006, as a...

At this point, the five largest banks account for 42 percent of all loans in the United States, and the six largest banks account for 67 percent of all assets in our financial system. The bets that I am most concerned about are known as “derivatives“.  In essence, they are bets about what will or will not happen in the future.  The big banks use very sophisticated algorithms that are supposed to help them be on the winning side of these bets the vast majority of the time, but these algorithms are not perfect.  The reason these algorithms are not perfect is because they...

The hackers are thought to be operating from Russia and appear to have at least loose connections with officials of the Russian government, the people briefed on the matter said. Some American officials speculate that the breach was intended to send a message to Wall Street and the United States about the vulnerability of the digital network of one of the world’s most important banking institutions. “It could be in retaliation for the sanctions” placed on Russia, one senior official briefed on the intelligence said. “But it could be mixed motives — to steal if they can, or to sell...

Over 4,000 Americans have signed a petition to boycott Chase bank over a company survey that probed employees about their sexual orientation and personal beliefs. The National Organization for Marriage’s campaign, “Void Chase,” urges customers across the globe to take their banking business elsewhere until JPMorgan Chase apologizes and promises “never again to invade the privacy of your employees in this way.” The effort is the result of what critics call an invasive survey that asked whether Chase employees identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, or as an “LGBT ally.”