NO WORKS IN THE CORRUPT OBAMA WHITE HOUSE THAT IS NOT
CONNECTED TO THE BANKSTERS THAT OWN OBAMA, OR THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA
RAZA!
THE REASON OBAMA BROUGHT IN DALEY WAS BECAUSE WAS FROM
JPMORGAN, AND AN ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS.
For much of Obama’s tenure, Jamie Dimon was known as the
White House’s “favorite banker.” According to White House logs, Dimon visited
the White House at least 18 times, often to talk to his former subordinate at
JPMorgan, William Daley, who had been named White House chief of staff by Obama
after the Democratic rout in the 2010 elections.
Obama Quietly Erasing Borders (Article)
OBAMA PROMISED HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS NO
PRISON TIME AND NO REAL REGULATION. DID HE DELIVER?
The JPMorgan scandal also throws into
relief the government’s failure to prosecute those responsible for the 2008
financial meltdown. Despite overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing and criminality
uncovered by two federal investigations last year, those responsible have been
shielded from prosecution.
The
JPMorgan debacle
15
May 2012
The economic and
political fallout from JPMorgan Chase’s sudden announcement last Thursday night
that it lost more than $2 billion from speculative bets on credit derivatives
continued to grow on Monday. The biggest US bank announced the forced retirement
of Ina Drew, who headed up the bank’s London-based Chief Investment Office,
which placed huge bets on the creditworthiness of a collection of US
corporations. Other top executives and traders are expected to be sacked or
demoted.
The bank’s shares fell another 3.2 percent, bringing its two-day market capitalization loss to nearly $19 billion. The Wall Street Journal reported that JPMorgan was prepared for a total loss of more than $4 billion over the next year from its soured stake in credit default swaps—the same investment vehicle that played a central role in the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the government bailout of insurance giant American International Group (AIG) in September of 2008.
In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program on Sunday, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon sought to present the loss as an innocent mistake, resulting from “errors, sloppiness and bad judgment.” Only a month ago, Dimon, who has led the public campaign by Wall Street against even the mildest restrictions on speculative banking practices, dismissed warnings over the massive bets being made by his Chief Investment Office as “a complete tempest in a teapot.”
The scale of the loss
and the denials that preceded it raise the likelihood that banking rules and
laws against investor fraud and deception were breached.
President Obama, however, rushed to the
defense of JPMorgan and Dimon, declaring on a daytime television talk show
Monday that JPMorgan was “one of the best managed banks there is” and Dimon was
“one of the smartest bankers we got.”
At the same time he cited the bank’s loss as a vindication of the Dodd-Frank
financial regulatory bill that he signed into law in July of 2010. “This is why
we passed Wall Street reform,” he said.
In fact, the JPMorgan debacle
demonstrates that nearly four years after the Wall Street crash nothing has
changed for the financial aristocracy. No measures have been taken to rein in
the banks, which received trillions of dollars in government handouts,
guarantees and cheap loans. The same forms of speculation and outright
swindling that led to the financial meltdown and the worst economic crisis
since the Great Depression continue unabated.
The big banks, such as JPMorgan, have increased their stranglehold over the US economy. They have recorded bumper profits by withholding credit from consumers and small businesses, keeping unemployment high, while speculating on credit default swaps and other exotic financial instruments that drain resources from the real economy. On this basis, bank executives and traders, including those at bailed-out institutions, have continued to rake in eight-figure compensation packages. Last year, Ina Drew made $14 million, and Jamie Dimon took in $26 million.
The Dodd-Frank law trumpeted by Obama
is a fraud, an attempt to give the appearance of financial reform while
enabling the banks to continue their parasitic and criminal activities. A case in point is the so-called
Volcker Rule, named after the former chairman of the Federal Reserve and
economic adviser to the Obama White House, Paul Volcker.
The rule,
incorporated into the Dodd-Frank Act and supposedly one of its most daring
provisions, ostensibly bars proprietary trading—speculation by a bank on its
own account—by commercial banks whose consumer deposits are guaranteed by the
federal government. The idea is to prevent government-insured banks from
speculating with depositors’ money.
But the regulation as
drafted by federal regulators—under pressure from the Federal Reserve and
Obama’s treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, as well as the banks—would
actually allow the type of speculative bet made by JPMorgan in the guise of a
“hedge” to offset risk in the bank’s overall investment portfolio.
The Volcker Rule,
whose precise form is yet to be announced, will do nothing to halt speculation
by government-backed banks using small depositors’ money.
The JPMorgan scandal also throws into
relief the government’s failure to prosecute those responsible for the 2008
financial meltdown. Despite overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing and criminality
uncovered by two federal investigations last year, those responsible have been
shielded from prosecution.
When Iowa Senator
Charles Grassley submitted a letter to the Justice Department earlier this year
asking how many bank executives had been prosecuted in response to the
financial crisis, the Justice Department replied it did not know because it was
not keeping a list.
According to a study
by Syracuse University, however, federal financial fraud prosecutions have
fallen to 20-year lows under the Obama administration, and are down 39 percent
since 2003. Under Obama, the number of financial fraud cases has fallen to
one-third the level of the Clinton administration.
These facts demonstrate the de facto dictatorship exercised by the financial aristocracy over the entire political system and both major parties. The Obama administration, in particular, is an instrument of the most powerful financial institutions. It has focused its efforts on protecting and increasing the wealth of the privileged elite while utilizing the crisis to permanently slash the wages and living standards of the working class.
For much of Obama’s tenure, Jamie Dimon
was known as the White House’s “favorite banker.” According to White House
logs, Dimon visited the White House at least 18 times, often to talk to his
former subordinate at JPMorgan, William Daley, who had been named White House
chief of staff by Obama after the Democratic rout in the 2010 elections.
The incestuous and
corrupt relations between Wall Street, the Obama administration and the entire
political system underscore the necessity for the working class to build its
own mass socialist movement to fight for its interests in opposition to the
ruling elite.The bankers responsible for the financial crisis, including Dimon and his co-conspirators, must be held criminally liable for their lawlessness and held accountable for the social suffering that has resulted from their actions. The ill-gotten trillions accumulated by the banks must be expropriated, with full protection for small depositors and small businesses, and used to provide decent jobs, housing, health care and education for all.
There is no way to rein in the banks and end their socially destructive activities within the framework of the capitalist system. The only way to stop the fraud and parasitism that go on every day on Wall Street is to nationalize the banks and run them as democratically controlled public utilities.
Andre Damon and Barry
Grey
FACT: JP MORGAN IS ONE OF BANKSTER-BOUGHT OBAMA’S BIGGEST
PAYMASTERS! HE’S PROMISED THEM NO PRISON TIME AND NO REAL REGULATION.
THERE IS A REASON WHY THE BANKSTERS INVESTED HEAVILY IN
OBAMA’S CORRUPT ADMINISTRATION!
Records show that four out of Obama's
top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman
Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup
($358,054).
Obama: JPMorgan Is 'One of the Best-Managed Banks'
By Mary Bruce | ABC
OTUS News – 2 hrs 31 mins ago
Obama:
JPMorgan Is 'One of the …
Lou
Rocco / ABC News
Just
hours after a top JPMorgan Chase executive retired in the wake of a
stunning $2 billion trading loss, President Obama
told the hosts of ABC's "The View" that the bank's risky bets
exemplified the need for Wall Street reform.
"JPMorgan is one of the best managed banks there
is. Jamie Dimon, the head of it, is one of
the smartest bankers we got and they still lost $2 billion and counting,"
the president said. "We don't know all the details. It's going to be
investigated, but this is why we passed Wall Street
reform."
The
full interview airs on "The View"
Tuesday on ABC at 11 a.m. ET
While
a powerhouse like JPMorgan might be able to weather an error that the bank's
own CEO called "egregious," the president questioned what might
happen to smaller institutions in similar situations.
"This
is one of the best managed banks. You could have a bank that isn't as strong,
isn't as profitable managing those same bets and we might have had to step
in," he said. "That's why Wall Street reform is so important."
While
touting his efforts to rein in the Wall Street behavior that led to the massive
taxpayer bailout of the banks following the financial crisis, he noted his
administration is still fighting for tough reform.
Pivoting
to November, the president said Wall Street reform is one of the many critical areas
where he and his Republican challenger, presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney,
have a different vision for the future.
The
president's full interview airs Tuesday on "The View." Tune into
"World News with Diane Sawyer" tonight for more.
*
Nicole Gelinas
It’s Not About Jamie Dimon
We should look to markets, not men, to govern the economy.
14 May 2012
It’s Not About Jamie Dimon
We should look to markets, not men, to govern the economy.
14 May 2012
On
Meet
the Press
yesterday, JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon epitomized what’s wrong with
America’s approach to the financial crisis. The American media and political
elite remain obsessed with personalities, looking for heroes and villains
instead of focusing on what we really need: the dispassionate rule of law that
would allow free markets to flourish. Meet the Press is for politicians,
and Dimon performed like a model one. He spoke in short sentences and
apologized directly: “I was dead wrong,” he offered, for having made a
“terrible, egregious mistake.” Specifically, last Thursday, JPMorgan announced
a $2
billion trading loss
on a derivatives bet.
Theoretically,
anyway, such a loss should be a matter between the bank and investors, not TV
fodder. Yet Dimon’s business—too-big-to-fail
banking—is
no ordinary business. Washington’s willingness to subsidize failure means that
Dimon’s job is as much political risk management as financial risk management. Because JPMorgan depends on Uncle Sam’s backing, one of
Dimon’s key constituencies is politicians and government regulators. And one way to charm
regulators—and the voters who elect the politicians—is through a killer
interview.
In
October 2008, the Bush administration, not normally a fan of government
expropriation, forced
nine big banks,
including Dimon’s, to accept $125 billion in TARP money. The banks were deemed
so important that they had to take the money to protect them against failure,
whether they wanted it or not. Since then, the
banks and the government have stayed bound together. President Obama’s
Dodd-Frank financial reform law, enacted two summers ago, has tied the two
sides closer still.
The problems that led to the financial crisis, remember, included investors’
perception—honed over two decades of smaller-scale bailouts—that big banks were
too big to fail. Dodd-Frank has given such banks an official title:
“systemically important financial institutions.”
Another
problem that led to the financial crisis was that, over the years, politicians
and regulators determined that banks had become so good at risk management that
they no longer needed to abide by consistent rules—fixed limits on borrowing,
for example, so that banks could fail without leaving behind so much unpaid
debt that they endangered the economy. Instead, banks could largely do what
their executives wanted, as long as regulators believed, on a case-by-case
basis, that they knew what they were doing.
In
the aftermath of the JPMorgan mess, politicians and reporters have been
invoking the Dodd-Frank law’s “Volcker Rule.” Named after Paul Volcker, the
Federal Reserve chairman from the Carter and Reagan eras, the rule prohibits
banks whose customers benefit from taxpayer-backed deposit insurance from
engaging in “proprietary trading,” or speculation. But the Volcker Rule isn’t a
rule at all: it prohibits behavior that has no set definition. Twenty-two
months after Dodd-Frank became law, regulators have delayed
enforcing the rule
because they still cannot figure out what proprietary trading really is.
Consider how JPMorgan lost all that money: creating derivatives that let it
sell billions of dollars’ worth of protection against the risk that some
corporate securities would default. That sure doesn’t sound like a good idea.
Banks, because they’re lenders, are already at risk if people and companies
default in droves.
But
does selling such synthetic “insurance” constitute proprietary trading?
Michigan Senator Carl Levin, who helped draft the Volcker Rule language, says
it does. Bank officials have argued that such behavior is hedging, which would
be okay under Dodd-Frank.
Real
rules could govern Wall Street, but politicians must give regulators the
backing to create and enforce them. Rather than worry about the Volcker Rule,
politicians and reporters should be focusing on derivatives rules. One reason
that Washington had to bail out the financial system four years ago was that
financial firms such as AIG had taken on virtually infinite risk through the
derivatives markets. Through derivatives, AIG could “sell” protection against
other companies’ defaults with almost no cash down. Lo and behold, that’s what JPMorgan
Chase was doing, too. Regulators should demand that traders—whether big banks
or tiny hedge funds—put a set amount of cash down behind such bets, curtailing
the amount of potential unpaid debt in the financial system. Regulators should
also require that traders execute such transactions on open clearinghouses and
exchanges—so that markets can determine which bets are going well and which
aren’t, and clearinghouses can demand more money from traders to cover their
losses. Such rules empower market signals, not regulatory micromanagement, to
control risk. If such rules were in place, it’s unlikely Dimon would have
visited the White House 18
times in three years,
as he would have had no way to manipulate a restriction that, after all,
applied to everyone.
The
best way to stop bailouts is to limit borrowing and demand transparency. When
markets know that financial firms have put a cash cushion behind their bets—and
where the risk behind such bets lies—they’re unlikely to pull their money out
of the financial system en masse, necessitating a government rescue. The
Volcker Rule, by contrast, adds no such protection against future taxpayer
rescues; all it does is unleash regulators to debate, in private, the
definitions of risk.
Dodd-Frank
gave regulators the authority to impose real rules on derivatives, and the
regulators have done
so. But
lobbyists demanded and secured exceptions, which could eventually prove the
rule. With such loophole-ridden reform, America has hardly set a good example
for Europe, which lags even further behind in enacting derivatives rules. In
fact, JPMorgan Chase may have executed the derivatives deals from London
because the bank perceived London as a looser environment. Moving this activity
around the world so that financiers can play inconsistent rules against one
another does nothing to help the struggling Western economies.
The
media and the politicians, however, would rather discuss people than arcane
issues like financial rules. Look at how politely—almost obsequiously—NBC’s
David Gregory treated Dimon. Gregory asked Dimon: “Here you are, Jamie Dimon,
you’ve got a sterling reputation. . . . How does a guy like you make this
mistake? If this happened at JPMorgan Chase . . . what about all the other
banks out there? If somebody else made a mistake like this, would we be again
talking about too big to fail and taxpayer bailouts?” Then, when asking
delicate questions about potential criminal liability, Gregory unconsciously
switched from “you” to “the bank.” Lowly regulators will hardly be more willing
to take on Dimon and his colleagues.
Focusing
on one man represents bailout thinking. Policymakers continue to be distracted
from the rules needed to protect the economy from the consequences—including
corporate failure—of the bad decisions that individuals can make. Nearly four
years after the financial crisis began, Washington seems to have learned almost
nothing.
NO PRESIDENT IN HISTORY HAS TAKEN MORE LOOT FROM CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS THAN OBAMA. HE PROMISED HIS BANKSTERS NO CRIMINAL PROSECUTION, AND NO REAL REGULATION.
PROFITS FOR BANKSTERS HAVE SOARED UNDER OBAMA, JUST AS FORECLOSURES HAVE. DURING HIS FIRST 2 YEARS THE BANKSTERS MADE MORE LOOT THAN ALL 8 UNDER BUSH!
WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?
"In general,
these are professional prognosticators," said Ritsch. "And they may
be putting their money on the person they predict will win, not the candidate
they hope will win."
Records show that
four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry
giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207)
and Citigroup ($358,054).
Obama Quietly Erasing Borders (Article)
ARE AMAZED AT HOW UTTERLY BRAZEN THESE CORPORATE OWNED
POLITICIANS ARE?
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Editorial Reviews
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