THE
BANKSTER-OWNED PRESIDENT PROMISED HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS NO real
REGULATION, NO PRISON TIME, AND UNLIMITED PILLAGING OF THE NATION’S ECONOMY!
DESPITE
THE DEVASTATION THESE BANKSTERS HAVE CAUSED AMERICANS, THEIR PROFITS SOARED
GREATER DURING OBAMA’S FIRST TWO YEARS, THAN ALL EIGHT UNDER BUSH. SO HAVE
FORECLOSURES!
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).
*
“Barack Obama's favorite
banker faces losses of $2 billion and
possibly more -- all because of the complex, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't trading
in exotic financial instruments that he has so ardently lobbied Congress not to
regulate.”
Is JPMorgan's Loss a Canary in a Coal Mine?
Posted: 05/16/2012 4:49 pm
That sound of
shattered glass you've been hearing is the iconic portrait of Jamie Dimon splintering
as it hits the floor of JPMorgan Chase. As the Good Book says, "Pride
goeth before a fall," and the sleek, silver-haired,
too-smart-for-his-own-good CEO of America's largest bank has been turning every
television show within reach into a confessional booth. Barack Obama's favorite
banker faces losses of $2 billion and
possibly more -- all because of the complex, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't
trading in exotic financial instruments that he has so ardently lobbied
Congress not to regulate.
Once again, doing
God's work -- that is, betting huge sums of money with depositor funds knowing
that you are too big to fail and can count on taxpayers riding to your rescue
if your avarice threatens to take the country down -- has lost some of its
luster. The jewels in Dimon's crown sparkle with a little less grandiosity than
a few days ago, when he ridiculed Paul Volcker's ideas for keeping Wall Street
honest as "infantile."
To find out more about
what this all means, I turned to Simon Johnson, once chief economist of the
International Monetary Fund and now a professor at MIT's Sloan School of
Management and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International
Economics. He and his colleague James Kwak founded the now-indispensable
website baselinescenario.com. They co-authored the bestselling book
13
Bankers and a most recent
book, White
House Burning, an account every
citizen should read to understand how the national deficit affects our future.
Bill Moyers: If Chase began to collapse because of
risky betting, would the government be forced to step in again?
Simon Johnson: Absolutely, Bill. JPMorgan Chase is
too big to fail. Hopefully in the future we can move away from this system, but
right now it is too big. It's about a $2.5 trillion dollar bank in terms of
total assets. That's roughly 20 percent of the U.S. economy, comparing their
assets to our GDP. That's huge. If that bank were to collapse -- I'm not saying
it will -- but if it were to collapse, it would be a shock to the economy
bigger than that of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and as a result, they
would be protected by the Federal Reserve. They are exactly what's known as too
big to fail.
Moyers: I was just looking at an interview I did with you in February of 2009,
soon after the collapse of 2008 and you said, and I'm quoting, "The signs
that I see... the body language, the words, the op-eds, the testimony, the way
these bankers are treated by certain congressional committees, it makes me feel
very worried. I have a feeling in my stomach that is what I had in other
countries, much poorer countries, countries that were headed into really
difficult economic situations. When there's a small group of people who got you
into a disaster and who are still powerful, you know you need to come in and
break that power and you can't. You're stuck." How do you feel about that
insight now?
Johnson: I'm still nervous, and I think that
the losses that JPMorgan reported -- that CEO Jamie Dimon reported -- and the
way in which they're presented, the fact that they're surprised by it and the
fact that they didn't know they were taking these kinds of risks, the fact that
they lost so much money in a relatively benign moment compared to what we've
seen in the past and what we're likely to see in the future -- all of this
suggests that we are absolutely on the path towards another financial crisis of
the same order of magnitude as the last one.
Moyers: Should Jamie Dimon resign? I ask that
because as you know and as we've discussed, Chase and other huge banks have
been using their enormous wealth for years to, in effect, buy off our
politicians and regulators. Chase just had to pay up almost three quarters of a billion
dollars in settlements and surrendered fees to settle one case alone, that of
bribery and corruption in Jefferson County, Alabama. It's also paid out
billions of dollars to settle other cases of perjury, forgery, fraud and sale
of unregistered securities. And these charges were for actions that took place
while Mr. Dimon was the CEO. Should he resign?
Johnson: I think, Bill, there should be an
independent investigation into how JPMorgan operates both with regard to these
losses and with regard to all of the problems that you just identified. This
investigation should be conducted separate from the board of directors.
Remember that the shareholders and the board of directors absolutely have an
incentive to keep JPMorgan Chase as a too-big-to-fail bank. But because it is
that kind of bank, its downside risk is taken by the Federal Reserve, by the
taxpayer, by the broader economy and all citizens. We need to have an
independent, detailed, specific investigation to establish who knew what when
and what kind of wrongdoing management was engaged in. On the basis of that,
we'll see what we'll see and who should have to resign.
Moyers: Dimon is also on the board of the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which, as everyone knows is supposed to
regulate JPMorgan. What in the world are bankers doing on the Fed board,
regulating themselves?
Johnson: This is a terrible situation, Bill. It
goes back to the origins, the political compromise at the very beginning of the
Federal Reserve system about a hundred years ago. The bankers were very
powerful back then, also, and they got a Federal Reserve system in which they
had a lot of representation. Some of that has eroded over time because of
previous abuses, but you're absolutely right, the prominent bankers, including
most notably, Jamie Dimon, are members of the board of the New York Federal
Reserve, a key element in the Federal Reserve system. And he should, under
these circumstances, absolutely step down from that role. It's completely
inappropriate to have such a big bank represented in this fashion. The New York
Fed claims there's no impropriety, there's no wrong doing and he doesn't
involve himself in supervision and so on and so forth. Perhaps, but why does
Mr. Dimon, a very busy man, take time out of his day to be on the board of the
New York fed? He is getting something from this. It's a trade, just like
everything else on Wall Street.
Moyers: He dismissed criticism of his dual
role yesterday by downplaying the role of the Fed board. He said it's more like an "advisory group
than anything else." I had to check my hearing aid to see if I'd heard
that correctly.
Johnson: Well, I think he is advising them on
lots of things. He also, of course, meets with some regularity with top
Treasury officials, and some reports say that he meets with President Obama
with some regularity. The political access and connections of Mr. Dimon are
second to none. One of his senior executives was until recently chief of staff
in the White House, if you can believe that. I really think this has gone far
enough. Under these kinds of circumstances with this amount of loss of control
over risk management, what we need to have is Mr. Dimon step down from the New
York Federal Reserve Board.
Moyers: He told shareholders at their annual
meeting Tuesday -- they were meeting in Tampa, Florida -- that these were "self-inflicted mistakes"
that "should never have happened." Does that seem reasonable to you?
Johnson: Well, it's all very odd, Bill, and
I've talked to as many experts as I can find who are at all informed about what
JPMorgan was doing and how they were doing it and nobody really understands the
true picture. That's why we need an independent investigation to establish --
was this an isolated incident or, more likely, the breakdown of a system of
controlling and managing risks. Keep in mind that JPMorgan is widely regarded
to be the best in the business at risk management, as it is called on Wall
Street. And if they can't do this in a relatively benign moment when things are
not so very bad around the world, what is going to happen to them and to other
banks when something really dramatic happens, for example, in Europe in the
eurozone?
Moyers: Some of his supporters are claiming
that only the bank has lost on this and that there's absolutely no chance that
the loss could have threatened the stability of the banking system as happened
in 2008. What do you say again to that?
Johnson: I say this is the canary in the coal
mine. This tells you that something is fundamentally wrong with the way banks
measure, manage and control their risks. They don't have enough equity funding
in their business. They like to have a little bit of equity and a lot of debt.
They get paid based on return on equity, unadjusted for risk. If things go
well, they get the upside. If things go badly, the downside is someone else's
problem. And that someone else is you and me, Bill. It goes to the Federal
Reserve, but not only, it goes to the Treasury, it goes to the debt.
The Congressional
Budget Office estimates that the increase in debt relative to GDP due to the
last crisis will end up being 50 percent of GDP, call that $7
trillion dollars, $7.5 trillion dollars in today's money. That's extraordinary.
It's an enormous shock to our fiscal accounts and to our ability to pay
pensions and keep the healthcare system running in the future. For what? What
did we get from that? Absolutely nothing. The bankers got some billions in
extra pay, we get trillions in extra debt. It's unfair, it's inefficient, it's
unconscionable, and it needs to stop.
Moyers: Wasn't part of the risk that Dimon
took with taxpayer guaranteed deposits? I mean, if I had money at JPMorgan
Chase, wouldn't some of my money have been used to take this risk?
Johnson: Again, we don't know the exact
details, but news reports do suggest that yes, they were gambling with
federally insured deposits, which just really puts the icing on the cake here.
Moyers: Do we know yet what is Dimon's
culpability? Is it conceivable to you that a risk this big would have been
incurred without his approval?
Johnson: It seems very strange and quite a
stretch. And he did tell investors, when he reported on first quarter earnings
in April, that he was aware of the situation, aware of the trade -- he called it a "tempest in a teacup,"
and, therefore, not something to worry about.
Moyers: He's been Wall Street's point man in
their campaign against tighter regulation of derivatives and proprietary
trading. Were derivatives at the heart of this gamble?
Johnson: Yes, according to reliable reports,
this was a so-called "hedging" strategy that turned out to be no more
than a gamble, but the people involved perhaps didn't understand that or maybe
they understood it and covered it up. It was absolutely about a bet on
extremely complex derivatives and the interesting question is who failed to
understand exactly what they were getting into. And how did Jamie Dimon, who
has a reputation that he burnishes more than anybody else for being the number
one expert risk manager in the world -- how did he miss this one?
Moyers:I've been reading a lot of stories
today about members of the House, Republicans in particular, saying this
doesn't change their opinion at all that we've got to still diminish
regulation. What do you think about that?
Johnson: I think that it is a recipe for
disaster. Look, deregulating or not regulating during the boom is exactly how
you get into bailouts in the bust. The goal should be to make all the banks
small enough and simple enough to fail. End the government subsidies here. And
when I talk to people on the intellectual right, Bill, they get this, as do
people on the intellectual left. The problem is, the political right largely
doesn't want to go there because of the donations. I'm afraid some people, not
all, but some people on the political left don't want to go there either.
Moyers: The Washington Post reported
that the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into
JPMorgan's trading loss. Have you spotted -- and I know this is sensitive --
but have you spotted anything in the story so far that suggests the possibility
of criminality? Dodd-Frank is not in existence yet, so where would any
possibility of criminality come from?
Johnson: Well Dodd-Frank is in existence but
the rules have not been written and therefore not implemented. So yes, it is
hard to violate those rules in their current state. And many of those rules, by
the way, violation would be a civil penalty, not a criminal penalty. If you
violate a securities law -- if you've mislead investors, if there was material
adverse information that was not disclosed in an appropriate and timely manner
-- that's a very serious offence traditionally.
I have to say that
the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have not
been very good at enforcing securities law in recent years, including and
specifically since the financial crisis. I am skeptical that this will change.
But if they have an investigation that reveals all of the details of what
happened and how it happened, that would be extremely informative and show us,
I believe, that the risk management approach and attitudes on Wall Street are
deeply flawed and leading us towards a big crisis.
Moyers: So what are people to do, Simon? What
can people do now in response to this?
Johnson: Well, I think you have to look for
politicians who are proposing solutions, and look on the right and on the left.
I see Elizabeth Warren, running for the Senate in Massachusetts, who is saying
we should bring back Glass-Steagall to separate commercial banking from
investment banking. I see Tom Hoenig, who is not a politician, he's a regulator,
he's the former president of the Kansas City Fed, and he's now one of the top
two people at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the FDIC. He is saying
that big banks should no longer have trading desks. That's the same sort of
idea that Elizabeth Warren is expressing. We need a lot more people to focus on
this and to make this an issue for the elections.
And I would say in
this context, Bill, it's very important not to be distracted. I understand for
example, Speaker Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House of
Representatives, is proposing to have another conflict over the debt ceiling in
the near future. This is the politics of distraction. This is refusing to
recognize that a huge part of our fiscal problems today and in the future are due
to these risks within the financial system that are allowed because the people
running the biggest banks hand out massive campaign contributions across the
political spectrum.
Moyers: Are you saying that this financial
crisis, so-called, is at heart a political crisis?
Johnson: Yes, exactly. I think that a few
people, particularly in and around the financial system, have become too
powerful. They were allowed to take a lot of risk, and they did massive damage
to the economy -- more than eight million jobs lost. We're still struggling to
get back anywhere close to employment levels where we were before 2008. And
they've done massive damage to the budget. This damage to the budget is long
lasting; it undermines the budget when we need it to be stronger because the
society is aging. We need to support Social Security and support Medicare on a
fair basis. We need to restore and rebuild revenue, revenue that was absolutely
devastated by the financial crisis. People need to understand the link between
what the banks did and the budget. And too many people fail to do that.
"Oh, it's too complicated. I don't want to understand the details, I don't
want to spend time with it." That's a mistake, a very big mistake. You're
playing into the hands of a few powerful people in the society who want private
benefit and social loss.
Watch Moyers &
Company weekly on public television. See more web-only features like this
at BillMoyers.com
*
Why hasn’t Obama been impeached?
His violations of our borders laws, inducing illegals to vote, sabotage of jobs
for Americans, connections to criminal banksters…. WHAT DOES IT TAKE?
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 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.
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).
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