Courtesy of Pam Martens
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell wants Americans to believe that the mega banks on Wall Street that hold trillions of dollars in federally-insured deposits, while peddling everything from high-risk derivatives to junk bonds to precious metals, “are a source of strength” during this economic downturn. The big problem for the Fed is the above two charts.
The chart data comes from BigCharts at MarketWatch, owned by Dow Jones & Company. According to the first chart, Citigroup has lost 90 percent of its share value since January 3, 2005. (It dressed up its share price in 2011, doing a 10-for-1 reverse stock split, meaning shareholders who had previously owned 100 shares, now owned just 10 shares at a higher price.)
Bank of America’s share price has lost half of its value and Morgan Stanley’s share price has been essentially flat for a decade and a half. Compare that to the Standard & Poor’s 500 (SPX) which is up more than 150 percent.
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