Acting Fed Chair Powell Held Private Meeting with Blackstone Board Director During March FOMC Blackout Period
Acting Fed Chair Powell Held Private Meeting with Blackstone Board Director During March FOMC Blackout Period
Powell met privately with Google CFO/Blackstone director on March 17; then BlackRock's Fink on March 24 just week before major stock market turbulence
Acting Fed Chair Powell Held Private Meeting with Blackstone Board Director During March FOMC Blackout Period
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms. We don’t know how he was raised, but somewhere along the way, Acting Fed Chair Jay Powell decided that rules don’t apply to him or his friends. As we covered in detail before, Powell has engaged in pervasive violations of personal securities trading and disclosure requirements without so much as a slap on the wrist. These violations are inexcusable. They should immediately disqualify him from continuing in public office. But Powell doesn’t break the rules just for his own benefit. Powell’s a man for others, just as long as those others are his cronies in the 1% club.
Although they’re heavily redacted and released on a lag, the Acting Fed Chair’s monthly calendars provide at least some insight into his shadowy activities running America’s sprawling, unelected and apparently unaccountable central bank. The latest calendar available is for March — perhaps the most pivotal month for Fed policy in 2 years. First, March 15 supposedly marked the end of the Fed’s multi-trillion QE program. (Of course, our readers know we exposed massive discrepancies with that dubious Fed assertion.)
Second, on March 16, Powell announced that the FOMC was finally raising the Fed Funds rate by 0.25%. This after slashing it to zero and refusing to act quickly or decisively in the face of the worst inflation in at least four decades. Many an analyst and trader have worried and wondered about the Fed’s plans to fight inflation after so massively overdoing it for Wall Street under the guise of pandemic response.
But a few select “elites” get exclusive access to Powell behind closed doors to ask their burning questions. For example, far more than his predecessors, Powell meets with a steady stream of sitting U.S. Senators and House reps. Just since being renominated, Powell has now had more than 60 private meetings off-the-record with U.S. Senators — the same Senators who will soon decide whether to approve his renomination! One can only imagine what kind of lobbying or horse trading might go on in those private meetings.
But it’s not just elected officials Powell meets in private. It’s the heads of the top of the top largest Wall Street firms. One Wall Street titan who clearly has privileged access is Jamie Dimon, CEO of five-time felon & the largest megabank in the US — JP Morgan Chase. Indeed, after Dimon had private meetings with Powell and then NY Fed’s Williams in October 2019, the Fed pumped out tens of trillions in repo loan bailouts, including more than $6 Trillion to JPM’s trading unit alone!
Experts have opined the Fed’s massive, unsanctioned repo program “broke the law” and was intended to bail out just a few failing financial firms, contrary to a central purpose of the Dodd-Frank Act. Wall Street-owned corporate media has disturbingly muzzled any coverage of the $48 Trillion and counting repo bailouts. Powell and the Fed are so emboldened they’ve set up standing repo facilities.
But there’s someone who has even better access than Dimon, and that’s Larry Fink, CEO of shadow banking behemoth BlackRock. BlackRock has more assets under management than $3 Trillion at JP Morgan or even the Federal Reserve’s own monstrous $9 Trillion balance sheet. As we’ve discussed at length before, Powell is massively conflicted as to BlackRock. He has personally invested millions in their proprietary securities while gifting them exclusive, no-bid contracts to manage the Fed’s own asset purchase program (and allowed them to buy their own products too!). As Wall Street on Parade exposed, Powell had no less than four PRIVATE phone calls with Fink despite the existence of ethical walls.
Guess who’s back on Powell’s schedule just weeks before stock markets hit the skids? You guessed it - Larry Fink and Jay Powell had a nice private lunch on March 24. Right after some “meeting with media” (on what not to report to the American public?) and a private call with Randal Quarles (the former Fed Vice Chair for Supervision who “retired” early after the Fed insider trading scandal broke last Fall).
In addition to all the financial conflicts and ethical wall issues raised by Powell’s repeated private 1-on-1 meetings with Fink, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which decides Fed policy, is supposed to adhere to a stringent Communications Policy. For example, Section 6 states:
“Staff will strive to ensure that their contacts with members of the public do not provide any profit-making person, firm, or organization with a prestige advantage over its competitors. They will consider this principle carefully and rigorously in considering invitations to speak at meetings sponsored by profit-making organizations and in scheduling meetings with anyone who might benefit financially from apparently-exclusive contacts with Federal Reserve staff.”
Is it any wonder that BlackRock’s AUM is now literally MULTIPLES of the AUM for the biggest bank in America after Jay has effectively deputized Fink as some kind of outrageous Fed-Wall Street pumper-in-chief? Oh, and don’t forget, BlackRock is not even subject to Fed regulation. Why? Because the Fed has ridiculously determined that shadow banks like BlackRock and Blackstone are not systemically important enough to warrant it.
The foxes aren’t even pretending to guard the henhouse. Powell has such contempt for the Fed’s rules and policies that he scheduled a private meeting with a top level executive at a major tech company during the FOMC communications blackout period in March. Why not wait a day until blackout is over? Why not include another member of staff at the meeting consistent with Fed policy? (“Whenever practical, at least two Federal Reserve staff should be present at such a meeting.”).
And hey, how did Google’s CFO get the exclusive private meetup with Jay anyway? Well, Ms. Porat is a recently minted member of the board of directors for shadow-banking giant Blackstone Group! You know, the same Blackstone Group that paid newly confirmed Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard’s husband $50,000 for two speeches. You know, the same Blackstone Group that, along with BlackRock, was frontrunning Fed MBS purchases and buying up every affordable single-family home they could find, squeezing out regular American families during a pandemic.
So did Jay give top execs at BlackRock and Blackstone a secret warning about the bottom falling out of the market at these private 1-on-1 meetings? You’ll never know for certain, but what we do know is they’re a flagrant breach of protocols for the benefit of a select few. As the incomparable George Carlin famously said, “it’s a BIG club and you ain’t in it.”
But screw their little club for the greediest of wealthy Americans, who are buying up second passports as a backup plan in case our country goes to shit after they looted it. Everyone else who actually cares about America is welcome to join the Occupy The Fed movement. If we all work together, we can hold these scumbags accountable.
#OccupyTheFed
Another fine article. I just read Jpow makes $200,000/yr. in his job but $400,000/hour in speaking fees. And Wall Street firms clamor to have him speak. That schmoozing with Jpow before and after his speeches must be worth millions, if not billions, to them.
The Fed is literally owned by the big banks, don't forget!