It is the same players that we saw enabling reckless behavior in 1998: Citigroup, the Fed, and the Clinton-led Wall Street Democrats. And, as Jesse notes, here we are again, almost eighteen years later, watching the same short term, selfish characteristics by the big money banks putting the entire economy of productive individuals at risk again…

“There’s something big and scary going on behind the scenes but, as usual, the public isn’t reading about it on the front pages of the newspapers.” Pam Martens and Russ Martens warn that big banks and big insurers send scary signals…

Yesterday, the broad stock market, as measured by the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index, declined a modest 0.29 percent while big Wall Street banks like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase fell by triple that amount. Bank of America, which bought the big retail brokerage firm, Merrill Lynch, in the midst of the 2008 crash, fell by 8.6 times the rate of the decline in the S&P to give up 2.50 percent.

 

Equally noteworthy, two major insurers, MetLife and Prudential Financial, saw percentage market losses far in excess of the S&P. MetLife declined by 2.74 percent while Prudential Financial lost 1.68 percent. Prudential Financial has been named a Systemically Important Financial Institution (SIFI) by the Financial Stability Oversight Council. MetLife had received the same designation but won a court battle to rescind the designation. The U.S. government is appealing.