Once again, Pam and Russ Martens have grabbed our attention with another zinger.
In today’s Wall Street on Parade newsletter, they feature Michael Hsu, the acting director of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).
The OCC charters, regulates, and supervises national banks, federally chartered savings associations and federal branches and agencies of foreign banks in the U.S.
They stand beside the Federal Reserve as a major regulator of banking institutions.
Specifically, the Martens write about how Hsu “undermined [already declining] public trust in the U.S. banking system” when he approved JPMorgan Chase’s acquisition of failed First Republic Bank in May.
(By now, readers know that JPMorgan Chase is America’s largest – and, by some measures, the riskiest – bank in the nation.)
The Martens go on to note that Hsu’s response to that “collapse in public trust” was to, yes, issue a survey measuring public trust in, yes (again), banks.
The Martens tie much of Americans’ lack of trust to the number of unlawful acts committed by the largest of the too big to fail banks over the last 23 years.