Update from Public Citizen Ingrid , “Banks are under assault.” That’s what JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon claimed earlier this week when announcing the record $21.8 billion in profits his company raked in last year. Dimon’s latest comments — which range from out of touch to outright preposterous — expose anew the misbegotten, pathological sense of entitlement that poisons the thinking of Wall Street titans. Before I present more of these Dimons in the rough, keep in mind: JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the U.S. and 2014 was its best year ever. Regarding reasonable controls put in place after Big Banks like JPMorgan drove the global economy to the brink of destruction back in 2008, Dimon said: “In the old days, you dealt with one regulator when you had an issue, maybe two. Now it’s five or six.” “It’s a hard thing to deal with.” “You all should ask the question about how American that is.” Do I even need to point out that there was obviously not enough regulation “in the old days”? The crash occurred when Wall Street’s bottomless greed went too long unchecked following Clinton and Bush-era deregulation. Restraints on the Big Banks have yet to catch up to what they once were or what they should be. And of course the financial behemoths, along with Big Business outfits like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, spend millions and millions lobbying against commonsense protections. It’s too bad that Dimon finds the Dodd-Frank reforms — intended in large part to help save the Big Banks from their own worst impulses — so onerous. But there are harder things to deal with in life, like losing your job or your home, that millions of Americans were needlessly forced to endure because of Wall Street’s recklessness. And Dimon’s imperious, red-baiting question about how “American” the modest rules — which permitted JPMorgan to amass record profits of nearly $22 billion in just a single year — are? It’s bad enough when corporations claim the same rights and privileges as living, breathing humans. Does Dimon believe JPMorgan has a constitutional right to operate outside of the law altogether? Dimon also spoke about how JPMorgan’s profits would have been even greater if not for fines related to assorted wrongdoing committed under his watch over the past few years: “Obviously, companies make mistakes. We try to resolve it, we try to fix it, we admit it.” “I want to ... try to stop stepping in dogs**t, which we do every now and then.” Dimon is talking about things like selling the risky mortgage-backed securities that catalyzed the 2008 crash, manipulating international currency markets and domestic electricity rates, being involved with Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and more. These are a lot more than errors of judgment. And despite Dimon’s assertion that “we admit it,” the settlements inadequately resolving these abuses typically evade any real admission of wrongdoing. So, for example, when JPMorgan agreed to a $13 billion settlement over improper sales of mortgage-backed securities, the company admitted it made “serious misrepresentations” to investors but did not admit it violated any laws. Time after time, JPMorgan pays fines and penalties that, while they make headlines, are easily absorbed by a corporation of such unfathomable scale. Then it goes right back to work. Dimon himself seems to get a bigger and bigger raise year after year, no matter how much trouble his company gets in. As for stepping where someone neglected to clean up after Fido? While most of us have probably suffered that nuisance, the metaphor is, tellingly, insufficient for the frequency and severity of JPMorgan’s wrongdoing and insensitive to the real harm inflicted on countless people throughout the world. Finally, Dimon had some things to say about demands — for which Public Citizen is a leading voice, and which many investors are beginning to echo — to break up JPMorgan and other Big Banks: “The model works from a business standpoint.” “If the regulators at the end of the day want JPMorgan to be split up, then that’s what will have to happen. We can’t fight the federal government if that’s their intent.” Well, I’ll leave it to others to assess whether JPMorgan is worth more to its investors broken up. But I can say this: The model of goliath financial institutions does not work from the standpoint of the American economy or American democracy. By their sheer magnitude, and by the fear that their collapse would doom everything else, the Big Banks hold taxpayers, policymakers and even law enforcement hostage. And then there’s Dimon’s just plain weird suggestion that JPMorgan “can’t fight the federal government.” His company, along with all the other Wall Street giants, employs an army of lobbyists who scurry around Washington, D.C., doing nothing but fighting the government. Remember that Dimon personally called members of Congress in December as part of fighting efforts by Senator Elizabeth Warren and others to block rollbacks of Dodd-Frank, which were snuck at the last minute into the federal spending bill that avoided a government shutdown. Jamie Dimon fought the law, and the law lost. And the financial industry spends more on political contributions and lobbying — far more — than any other industry, which lets them use their vast wealth fighting those in government who put the needs of Main Street before the greed of Wall Street. I really don’t know if Jamie Dimon could be more out of touch with the ideals and struggles of everyday Americans. It all makes you wonder: Who’s assaulting who? Onward, Robert Weissman President, Public Citizen P.S. JPMorgan Chase is only one example of the many, many mega-corporations that Public Citizen takes on day in and day out. Jamie Dimon alone makes more in a year than it costs to run Public Citizen for a year. Clearly we can’t just throw more money at something than they do. But we do need a baseline level of financial strength to back up our advocacy, research and organizing — which again and again see us winning progress even against such powerful forces. Please chip in today if you can. Thank you.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 21:18:50 +0000
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