This just floored me:
“When I hear the constant vilification of corporate America, I personally don’t understand it,” Dimon said in his speech. “I would ask a lot of our folks in government to stop doing it because I think it’s hurting our country.”
That is Jamie Dimon, chairman of JP Morgan Chase. Yes, the vilification of corporate America is just mean-spiritedness. It has nothing to do with you clowns spending millions to have the markets deregulated and for laws to be changed to your benefit (including the Bankruptcy laws). It has nothing to do with once you got what you wanted, you guys gambled away billions of dollars on reckless bets, all the while charging exorbitant fees and padding your own pockets. It has nothing to do with the fact that last year, while running your company into a ditch, you earned were paid $55 million.
It has nothing to do with the fact that after you all had run the financial sector into the ground, you then came to the taxpayers for money to ease the credit market that you had screwed up, and then turned around and spent the money acquiring new assets. It has nothing to do with the fact that you guys took the TARP money and immediately began planning on how to spend it fighting card check. It has nothing to do with the fact that corporate America lobbied to not pay the premiums for FDIC and then didn’t for the past ten years. It has nothing to do with the fact that after receiving trillions of dollars, you and your buddies flipped a lid over a paltry sum being spent shoring up mortgages for homeowners. It has nothing to do with the fact that as soon as this mess is fixed, after trillions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted, you all will begin to fiercely lobby against any structural changes to the system.
So stop it, America. Stop picking on Jamie Dimon. Stop picking on corporate America.
*** Update ***
I should note that I read this story last night right before seeing this headline– Hersh: ‘Executive assassination ring’ reported directly to Cheney.
I have to admit, for a minute, before I read the Hersh piece, I thought Cheney might be on to something.
Third Eye Open
GO GALT! you fucktard
jrosen
"It has nothing to do with the fact that last year, while running your company into a ditch, you earned $55 million last year."
A minor nit, but what the hell…The use of "earned" in this context is questionable. These people don’t "earn" those huge bucks, they appropriate them, or steal them, or whatever. The poor garbageman who protects us from plague earns his money, as does the school-teacher who spends evenings reading and grading papers and exams, or the cop who risks his life, etc. Not parasitic, self-important a**holes like this guy!
iluvsummr
Leave corporate America alone! I think someone needs to update this video.
Ash Can
Anyone who says something like this is too fucking stupid to chair a corporate board, and the board members who appointed him are too fucking stupid to sit on that board.
Brian J
Did you happen to see David Leonhardt’s Economic Scene column in The New York Times yesterday? If not, here’s the link. He called it "The Looting of America’s Coffers." It’s really something else.
The idea is that because they know they will be bailed out, since they are involved in finance, the lifeblood of the economy, these people make bets that they know won’t work. The idea of moral hazard, as one of the authors of the paper Leondardt cites says, doesn’t work here, because moral hazard involves a legitimate investment, even if there’s a high chance it will go bad. The deals he’s discussing, like those involving Texas real estate in the 1980s, involve what amounts to scams.
The last part of his column is almost chilling. Take a look:
Like so many, I don’t know nearly enough about this stuff to have an opinion one way or the other. Upon first glance, there doesn’t appear to be anything intrinsically wrong with this stuff. But there is a difference between something that’s complex and exotic and something that amounts to a scam. In other words, I don’t think we should automatically lock up everyone associated with Credit Default Swaps, but if as time goes on we know that people gamed the system in a clear manner, perhaps they should be prosecuted.
bootlegger
I’m at the point to where I really do want them all to Go Galt so we can see how truly worthless they are. Please, do, stop working, stay home, do nothing. For goddsakes please!!!
cervantes
He collected $5 million last year, he didn’t "earn" it.
Jay in Oregon
I read that tirade and thought "Well, his name is going on ‘the list’ now."
Bill In OH
I hope mister Dimon used some of his ill-gotten loot to hire a few bodyguards. I suspect there’s more than a few recently unemployed or recently de-cashed hotheads out there who would love to "vilify" him into a semi-comatose state.
Just sayin’
4tehlulz
What is piano wire?
Violet
Thank you for summing it all up so well. This is exactly why the average American is so ticked off. It’s not just one instance of fraud. It’s a culture of fraud, theft, lies and protecting the fat cats.
And the average person can’t figure out how it can be changed. The fox is guarding the henhouse, since the Congresstools are cozied up with the industry lobbyists – and they’re all rich and scratch each other’s backs anyway. We feel powerless against such a strongly entrenched culture of rot. Yet what other government do we have? What other corporate culture is there? This is it. What can we do?
Hence the extraordinary anger against such people as Mr. Dimon. And the fact that he just whines about people beating up on him and his friends? Yet another example of how incredibly out of touch they all are.
Things must change. I just don’t know how. At this point it wouldn’t surprise me to see a few of the corporate fat cats being thrown to the wolves, French Revolution style. They’re all telling us just to eat cake, after all.
Herb
Dingus, I mean Dimon, doesn’t seem to understand that rather than villifying "corporate America," since most of us kind of like "corporate America" (if that means our jobs, our stores, our cable providers, etc).
We just don’t like dickhead CEOs ripping off "corporate America." After all, corporate comes from the Latin "corpus," which means body.
Not just the head.
bootlegger
@Brian J: And it also gives us clear evidence for and interest in regulating the financial sector. If the government is to do what the individual people cannot do for themselves, then this it. You and I cannot keep tabs on these assholes, yet their decisions effect us in ways we come to comprehend with each new crash. So if you and I can’t do it, then the government must. Because if government won’t do it, then goddammit it’s pitchfork time baby!!
dmsilev
That just cries out for a remake of the "Leave Britney ALONE!" video.
Or a torch and pitchfork wielding mob storming Chase headquarters.
-dms
Cat Lady
Mistakes were made.
That is all.
NonyNony
@bootlegger:
A concise description of how FDR saved capitalism from itself during the Great Depression.
The fact that conservatives don’t understand that this regulation stuff is essential to provide the stability that prevents them from getting dragged out of their gated communities in a 21st century re-enactment of the French Revolution never ceases to amaze me.
Comrade Dread
This is a like a drunk wondering why everyone’s so pissed off at him just because he climbed into a bus full of nuns and drove it into a crowd of kids on a field trip before crashing into a puppy store.
Zifnab
bootlegger
@cervantes: Oh he earned it a’right, he earned it because the market says he earned it dontchaknow, and don’t you dare question the Giant Stone Head of the Free Market or it will call you a commie socialist.
Michael
It is genuinely sad that our college kids aren’t into the sort of rock throwing, window smashing, car dumping and molotov cocktail tossing protests that Europeans seem to do so well.
Methinks that Wall Street could use some of those sorts of displays.
Sadly, the 60s kids were fairly stupid in their targets, and gave protesting a bad name (especially when they occupied university administration offices).
Zifnab
So I do wonder if this sort of thing carries. I mean, you’ve got a large number of high profile individuals chastising mainstream America for all its irrational, baseless, and destructive anti-corporate anger. Do the good people of Peoria take the words of wisdom from our Masters of the Universe to heart, or are they just too selfish and stupid to listen?
Does this sort of thing have a net positive, negative, or negligible affect on public perception of our captains of industry?
bootlegger
@NonyNony: I’m sorry, were the cons wrong to assume that we’d take it up the ass by our rapist and ask for more? After all, we might all be the Pitchers and not the Catchers one day. Amiright?
The Grand Panjandrum
Dimon pulling a page out of the Eric Cantor WATB play book. Nice. That will instill confidence in the markets and reassure jittery investors.
Michael
They will, however, angrily nod in frantic agreement to every bit of bullshit that flies from the mouth of the increasingly deranged Glenn Beck tomorrow on "We Surround Them" day.
If you really want to have fun, watch Beck with the sound off, and decide for yourself as to whether he is about a hair away from losing it and going all Michael Douglas from "Falling Down".
libarbarian
Now we just need a new Chris Crocker to tell us to "LEAVE CORPORATE AMERICA ALONE!! LEAVE HER ALONE!!!"
Michael
The Masters of the Universe believe that their analysis and decisionmaking capacity is more than one standard deviation greater than that of the average peon.
That is why they believe they are entitled to admiration and respect.
bootlegger
@Zifnab: It’s one of those situations where circumstances have to be absolutely stark before people are jarred out of their False Consciousness (hey, Marx was right about this one). Even then they won’t be motivated to tip the entire apple cart and will try incrementalism first (see Obama). But if that doesn’t work to keep the lid on class consciousness, then its guillotine time.
TR
Got my hair cut this morning, and the barber had it tuned to Headline News. The anchor seemed shocked at the prospect that Bernie Madoff might actually be made to suffer the indignity of having handcuffs placed upon his wrists.
The indignity of handcuffs? We should bring back the Puritan-style stocks and set his ass up outside the NYSE so people can come and taunt his sorry ass and pelt him with rotten fruit.
To paraphrase Jon Stewart: "Fuck you, corporate America."
Zifnab
@Michael: Right. But I’m curious to know if the goodman still thinks as highly of the master as the master thinks of himself. Does this chastisement cool hot heads, or does it just fan the flames?
I mean, around here, the pitchforks come out. But they’ve been coming out a long time. I’m wondering if your average Bloomberg viewer nods sagely in agreement or makes a crude finger gesture at the screen. Or maybe it all just goes in one ear and out the other. :-p
jcricket
Exactly… These guys don’t know how thin the ice is on which they’re walking is, because for 30 years the government has been protecting and encouraging them (while simultaneously undermining the ice).
If any of them had actually lived through a real down-turn (that impacted them personally, because of the "looting" caused by workers in their industry) they’d be singing a different tune, one would hope.
But whatever, it’s time to stop caring about the top 1 or 5%. No one’s suggesting bankrupting them, there are a lot more of us, and a lot more economic theories on our side. So let’s just do it.
liberal
@Brian J:
If you mean CDS, of course there’s something intrinsically wrong with it: it’s regulatory arbitrage designed to avoid traditional capital requirements for insurance.
If there were no collateral damage to the economy, then I wouldn’t care about it, but…
libarbarian
Hey, at least the Greeks know whats up: Citibank attacked over crisis
Ash Can
In contrast to Dimon and his whining, Barney Frank is going to be conferring next week with various regulators and law enforcers on the subject of nabbing corporate crooks (h/t GOS).
Oh, and Madoff’s headed for the slammer.
schrodinger's cat
We need a regulatory body with teeth to regulate derivatives and rating agencies that don’t have conflicts of interest. Easier said than done, I guess.
jcricket
This whole thing reminds me of when I fucked up when I was a teenager. As soon as I admitted it (or was caught and stopped lying), I would immediately want the reprobation and punishment to stop. The argument being, "haven’t I suffered enough on the inside with all my tortured lying and the pain of confessing to you?"
The answer was and is, "No. You did something wrong, you need to be punished, and you have lost some trust/freedom going forward."
You think people that spend all this time blathering on about "moral hazard" would get this.
Personally, I think moral hazard is a load of bull. The "looters" know that punishment is so far off, probably won’t end up catching them, and even if it does won’t take away anywhere near all their ill-gotten gains, that even if the government bailout of the bank didn’t come, they’d still do the looting. Plus, they’re looters. They loot. That’s what they do.
Brian J
@bootlegger:
Yes. How this regulation takes shape is a pretty big question, but the idea that this stuff will just blow over and isn’t really a problem that can be addressed doesn’t pass the laugh test.
libarbarian
Bloomberg cries for Madoff
KDP
@Ash Can
You beat me to it! Madoff bail revoked, remanded to jail now!! Woohoo!!!
Civil suits likely to follow in an effort to obtain compensation for losses. I heard at least one talking head indicating that Mrs. Madoff’s ownership of assets may be of no value to her as any transfer to her name of fraudulently obtained monies will not have merit. Anyone know the validity of that?
srv
Surely Kierkegaard or someone has an ominous word like Dolchstoßlegende for the "No one cold have foreseen this outcome" mantra.
jake 4 that 1
There was a time when the ruling classes retreated to the castle, raised the drawbridge and sent out their goons to break heads when the great unwashed got antsy.
Now, they run around whining about how mean everyone is to them.
Hooray, progress.
libarbarian
Ok, sorry for the constant links but this is AWESOME:
Alaska Gov. Palin’s Daughter, Fiance Break Up
Who else won a prize for calling this?
Violet
Exactly. The few rule at the whim of the many. I guess they never studied history. Too busy getting those fancypants MBAs.
camchuck
Shorter Dimon: "Why you gotta bring up old shit?"
liberal
@Zifnab:
I think the problem is that your average working stiff hears this stuff and gets pissed, but doesn’t know enough about the situation to realize how much it’s going to cost him in the long run (through increased taxes, or (if he’s lucky enough to have some assets) inflation).
Me, I realize it’s probably going to cost me tens of thousands of dollars, so I’m pissed off.
Ultimately, it’s a classic problem of democracy. The gainers (here, the looters) are a concentrated few, and the losers (taxpayers) are a diffuse many. So the latter have much bigger coordination problems to solve to effectively lobby. Not to mention that the FIRE sector is relatively bipartisan in their campaign contributions, so there’s not really much of a partisan angle on this, unfortunately.
Brian J
I’m not sure about this, but I think the overall point stands. Assuming that you aren’t right (and again, you could very well be right), it’s not that (all) of this stuff was bad. It’s that, generally speaking, people aren’t being held responsible for their bad decisions.
As I indicated above, moral hazard isn’t really the right term. That would imply that there was a chance of this bet actually paying off. What some of these people did looks, at least on the surface, like a scam.
liberal
@Ash Can:
IMHO Barney is also a tool of the banks. He might not be as snuggly in their pocket as, say, Schumer, but he’s still lodged in there.
liberal
@Brian J:
Yes, not all of the stuff is bad. For example, on the face of it, there’s nothing wrong per se with securitization of mortgages. The problem in that case is that the underlying mortgages were issued with bogus underwriting, that the securities were rated based on some idiotic assumption that mortgage defaults would almost never never never occur in a correlated fashion, and that the banks did the securitization only to generate fees, not actual value in the form of a useful security.
But in terms of CDSs, I’m simply right. There’s a reason why insurance issuers are forced to have pretty onerous capital ratios, and now we’re seeing it. In short, idiots like Greenspan and Rubin who were against regulating the derivatives market were making the all-too-common assumption that "this time it’s different."
Zifnab
@bootlegger: I don’t know. There was a lot of grumbling leading up to the Revolution. One of the reasons the French Legislature of the time was Tri-Cameral sprang from all the grumbling.
People weren’t too eager to storm the Bastille, given that fortresses don’t fall easily. People are even less eager to run off and start revolutions given the increased firepower of your average city cop.
I don’t think we’ll ever really see bloody revolutions like that again, if only because military power is so disproportionately in the hands of the state. People are going to have to find more stable forms of business. That’ll involve boycotts and shifting consumer habits and general survival of the fittest economics. But you’re not going to see a bunch of guys with pitch forks standing outside a CEO’s office because by the time life is shitty enough that you want to riot, you can’t travel the hundreds or thousands of miles necessary to lynch the right people.
The 60s demonstrated how the American power base had positioned itself so remotely that angry citizens just couldn’t get at it directly.
over_educated
I hope he is the first with his back up against the wall when the revolution comes. (In a sent to jail kind of way, not an "off with his head" kind of way).
Walker
I am glad I am not the only one who thought that when he first read the Hersh title.
bootlegger
@liberal: I’ll give Frank credit for this: Frank and Paul (last names) co-sponsored a bill to legalize industrial hemp in the US. My wife laughed her ass off when she heard the names of the Dynamic Duo. Quite a pair.
garyb50
You know things are bad when you catch yourself thinking of the Saving & Loan Scandal as the good old days.
Brian J
@liberal:
In other words, there’s no way that anyone who had sufficient capital requirements would have used CDSs?
jrosen
@4tehlulz
Piano wire is a very high tensile strength wire that is used for piano strings. The force exerted by the all the strings on the frame is something on the order of a ton, which is why the strings (and frame) have to be so strong.
In its more sinister aspect, piano wire makes an excellent garrote. I don’t know what context your question is in (I didn’t check the link) but I seem to remember that when the plot against Hitler failed, a number of people involved were executed that way.
Surely a firing squad would be enough for some of these guys. We don’t have to be vindictive.
Ash Can
@liberal: I agree to an extent, but what I like most is that he’s calling in the DoJ, the SEC, the FBI and other agencies on this. If he were doing it on his own, I’d say, yeah, whatever. Instead, he’s essentially saying to these enforcement/regulatory agencies, "Sic ’em." I think their involvement increases the potential significantly.
As for Bristol and Levi, that just might be the smartest thing they’ve ever done. The chances of them being ready for marriage are infinitesimal, and it’s much better for them to do this now than later. I wish them well; heaven knows they’re far enough behind the eight ball as it is.
bootlegger
@Zifnab: You’re right, of course. Any violence will be localized and its much more likely we’ll burn down our own neighborhoods as recent versions demonstrate.
I have in mind a metaphorical pitchfork where the electorate is motivated to support a radical candidate. It could be a Reactionary or Revolutionary, Right or Left, but the ballot box is in the new pitchfork.
John PM
@KDP: #38
Ah, yes, the old "I’m judgment proof and millions of dollars in assets just happen to be in my wife’s name" ruse to avoiding civil judgments. Typically it is revealed in short order that the assets were transferred into the wife’s name in order to avoid judgment, and the wife really has no knowledge about the assets (this is especially true for real estate). I myself have recently been successful in arguing that transfers made by a judgment creditor to two other companies owned by the same individual were fraudulent. New York should have a statute allowing for wronged investors to pursue Mrs. Madoff, as well as anyone else who received assets from Madoff.
sum gai
Shine On You Crazy Dimon.
liberal
@Brian J:
No, that’s not what I’m saying.
Of course, someone could write a CDS (essentially, writing an insurance policy) and happen to have plenty of capital. So, for instance, I can’t believe every issuer of CDSs has gone belly up when they’ve had to pay off.
The problem is that they often do go belly up. Look at AIG, or look at the total notional value of all CDSs, which IIRC is in the trillions of dollars—it’s very hard to believe that is all adequately capitalized.
The whole point of regulations is to prevent bad situations from happening. If someone has enough capital to issue insurance, then let them do that under regulations.
Finally, you have to ask about the cost/benefit of these things. People always trot out the "we don’t want to stunt financial innovation" trick. In the light of the current crisis, that’s growing old very quickly.
liberal
@Ash Can:
I hope so. Right now not that many Congresscritters have earned my trust, and in particular people on the relevant committees (which includes Frank).
The main reason I don’t trust Frank—aside from his having taken money from banks—is his silliness regarding bailing out homeowners. Putting aside the fairness issue (aside: I’m in the camp of "it’s not fair for me to be forced to pay for the mortgage for the idiot next door’s bad gamble"), the fact is that most of these homeowners are underwater and never put anything down to begin with. (Contrast that with the Great Depression, before which people routinely put down 50%, apparently.) So any bailout of the homeowner is really a bailout of the bank. It’s not entirely unreasonable to argue that the banks need bailing out (though there’s a fairness issue here, too, of course), but it’s entirely disingenous to pretend otherwise.
Brian J
@liberal:
I don’t mean to be dense, but I’m having a little trouble understanding you. I know the big issue with AIG was that those rating the stuff gave out bogus grades and that the part of AIG that dealt with CDSs wasn’t sufficiently capitalized. But is it really as simple as making sure the credit rating agencies aren’t giving out nonsensical ratings and that the insurers have enough capital? Generally speaking, that’s the impression I was under.
If that’s the case, I don’t really see the problem with CDSs. That may be because I’ve forgotten what little I know about arbitrage.
bootlegger
The news models on MSNBC were just going, "like, oh my god, I can’t believe all these billionaires lost money just like we did! They’re so supersmart it must be really bad for them to lose money!"
Idiots.
cgp
Not the original link John had, but here’s the "story" he was referring to before he linked to a png image:
http://news.google.com/news?q=Hersh:+%E2%80%98Executive+assassination+ring%E2%80%99+reported+directly+to+Cheney&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS309US309&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&ei=Hzi5Sde7EI_SNJnIoLAI&sa=X&oi=news_result&resnum=1&ct=title
Zifnab
@liberal: It’s this difference between a bank bailout and a national bailout. Right now we’re just dumping money on the banks and buying up the toxic assets, but we haven’t gone very far in shoring up the homeowners themselves. At the end of it all, we could see banks weakened, but sitting on millions of square miles of US property. That’s bad, in my opinion.
Bailing out the homeowners benefits the banks, in that they continue to receive payments, but it keeps the property in the hands of individuals. The ultimate objective of the US Government should be to discourage foreclosure rather than just reduce bank losses. Frank’s plan is vastly preferable to the government just sweeping in and buying up all the old homes for resale or making a private/public Bad Bank that continues to focus entirely on turning a profit, at least from the perspective of the guy currently in the house.
jake 4 that 1
@bootlegger: The older term for model is appropriate here: Mannequin.
Xanthippas
I think Dimon needs some perspective…which can be given to him in the form of a mob with torches and pitchforks. Or possibly a rail, some tar, and some feathers.
The Raven
This is what is called a "sense of entitlement". It’s not the poor who feel it–it’s the rich. That’s why their defenders suspect it of everyone else.
Krawk!
Xanthippas
I didn’t think that, but I did think "executive" in the form of leaders of other countries. Which, since to my knowledge the only heads of state assassinated recently were African, would seem to indicate an odd set of priorities on our part.
Delia
Yes, stop picking on corporate America, everyone. They’re doing the best they can. After receiving all that bailout loot, Citigroup is trying to help the economy by working hard to defeat EFCA.
Steeplejack
@srv:
My Kierkegaard is a little rusty, but I’m pretty sure it’s Nicht predikten.
leo
Stop picking on JP Morgan? I wish they’d stop picking on me: their lousy charge card now charges close to 30% APR! That’s out of my pocket and into their vault — at the same time as they’re getting cash from the government which, as a citizen, I’m also liable for and which they used not to extend people like me credit but to buy another company.
What a disgrace!
Comrade Stuck
@Delia:
Yes, yes they are. and now if the Obama Administration would get over it’s divorce from the American people, and turn back the sinking polls back to a barely respectable 70% approval, they could be of some help to the patriotic captains of industry.
OC
What a douche.
Rick Taylor
Actually I’d agree with this sentiment. As comfortable as it is, there’s no point in griping and moaning about how awful or selfish companies are. If we have a system in place that rewards selfishness, that puts a value on making short term profits, then why should we complain when the people who succeed and run it are selfish people who place short term profit ahead of long term viability? If we want the money we give to the banks to go to new loans and not to acquiring assets, then we should take them over and make sure the money goes where we want; not give it to them, hope they do what we want, and grumble when they don’t. Why should they? They’re first responsibility is to their share holders not to the country.
Redhand
What an idiot! How can one not compare Jamie Dimon to Marie Antoinette?
I just love his claim that "the U.S. can rescue its banking system by the end of the year if officials start cooperating and stop the “vilification” of corporate America." OK Genius, tell us how. And exactly what you mean by "cooperation?"
passerby
Dimon:
“When I hear the constant vilification of corporate America, I personally don’t understand it,”
Greenspan:
"The solutions for the financial-market failures revealed by the crisis are higher capital requirements and a wider prosecution of fraud — not increased micromanagement by government entities."
Making statements of this nature suggests 2 things:
1) That these men are naive (not bloody likely),
2) That these men see themselves losing the control they’ve had for so long and, backed into a corner, they must resort to blatant lies in a desperate attempt to defend the fraud committed by their institutions.
Either way, they must face the fact that the cat is out of the bag and no one is buying this bullshit. Even the corporate media are having a tough time defending remarks like this without losing their own credibility (what little they had).
It’s apparent that they’ve got nowhere to run and no place to hide. It’s almost pitiful to watch them try.
Delia
@Rick Taylor:
Absolutely. The free market must work its way with no restrictions. And with that thought in mind we all welcome the addition of fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to Forbes’ list of billionaires. I’m sure he’s contributing a lot to the economy.
Comrade Stuck
There is not much doubt that some (lots) of that selfishness involved actual and would be felonies committed under an unplugged or unenforced regulatory apparatus. Lots of blame to go around though, I agree.
liberal
@Brian J:
Let’s put that aside, since I’m sure everyone understands and agrees that the ratings system was thoroughly broken.
But that’s the point: AFAICT, there’s no regulation saying a firm selling CDSs has to have any capital backing it up.
Now, you’d assume the counterparty would want there to be capital. And my vague impression is that when AIG’s own rating went down, the contracts bound AIG to put up (more) collateral. (Though I’m not sure whether that was in regard to CDS.) But the whole point is that if you want to make the system robust to these problems, you can’t rely on the good faith or competence of the financial actors alone.
TenguPhule
I believe that is Dimon asking us not to kill him.
I say don’t listen to the man.
rumpole
If Dimon pissed you off, take a look at David Ignatius’s column in the WAPO today. It’s literally a whining bitch-scream saying "Why don’t we have any CEOs fixing the economy?" Sorry, don’t know how to embed in HTML, but the link is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/11/AR2009031103214.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
The only response to this that I could think of was "F*** you."
But then, I was never one to string together an argument.
liberal
@Zifnab:
Which I agree is inefficient and unjust.
I don’t see why shoring up homeowners is a just end of government. Government should be there to make sure there are plentiful jobs, and that the non-able-bodied get enough to get by. Homeownership, OTOH, is a bet placed on appreciation of a scarce resource (land).
It’s also inevitable. Home values were, and possibly still are, massively overpriced. If you do mitigation through a break on interest, when the owners sells again in the future, he’s going to take a massive bath. Better he be forced out of the house now.
No. It keeps property in the hands of certain individuals: those foolish enough to buy during the bubble. For everyone who is kept in their home at a higher price, there’s a buyer who’s kept out who’d be willing to pay a lower price.
I don’t see why the government should be playing favorites with current homeowners over prospective homeowners.
Not enough money for that. The selling point of aiding homeowners is that it could be done on the margin.
Comparison with the current corrupt "rescue" of lending money to banks for very little is setting the bar low.
And, again, you’re forgetting the perspective of the person who rented through the entire bubble but would very much like to buy, but needs prices to go down a bit first.
Again, the real issue here is that prices were way out of line with rents and even more out of line with incomes. That damage is down, and tinkering with mortgages on the margin isn’t going to change the big picture. Again, better to foreclose on some guy now, then shore him up for a few years and then see him foreclosed after he’s sunk some money into it.
AkaDad
I hardly ever get emotional, but the plight of Corporate America makes me weep.
TenguPhule
Mine involve feeding people to great white sharks on PPV.
Brian J
Well, if that was your entire point, and me trying to sort out the issues that were in my head out loud distracted you, let me say that I apologize and agree with you, even if I am more confused about credit default swaps than I thought I was.
Comrade Stuck
That’s so Galty, it must give K-Low the itchy scratchems.
But little did Lord Darth know, his Executive Assassination Ring would quite deceitfully, carry out a contract on his own reputation.
Call it the Evil Clown Sanction.
Xanthippas
I’m not quite sure what that means, but I endorse it.
That One - Cain
Is it just me or does Madoff kinda looks like George Washington?
cain
Susan Kitchens
Yes, first thing I thought of was the Leave Britney Alone video.
Did you know that John Amato (Crooks and Liars) recently did a Leave Limbaugh Alone video?
We could have a nice trend going on.
So, the question is, does the person who lays on bed weeping do so wearing pin-striped shirt? Briefcase nearby? Or should we have the person look like a street bum, homeless?
gex
@Brian J:
True, that is problematic. I know John has ranted about the ratings agencies several times. But there are two parties to this fraud. AIG, and other financial institutions, brought their products to the ratings agencies and ALWAYS got back AAA ratings. Doesn’t that seem suspicious? Do you dig deeper or do you take that and run with it and make as much as you can?
Mnemosyne
That’s really not a fair comparison. Poor Marie didn’t know what was being done in her name but she got blamed for it all anyway.
chrome agnomen
stop picking on britney!
stop picking on rush!
stop picking on corporate amerka!
Mnemosyne
I’d like all of the people who dismissed Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette as "non-political" to go back and watch it again. I think the politics will kind of jump out at you if you missed them the first time, especially the warnings about getting too far out of touch with what the majority of the country wants.
Rick Taylor
@Delia:
Though I’m putting it provocatively, I’m making the opposite point than I think you’re drawing. There’s no point in giving companies billions and then bitching when the do what greedy capitalists do when you give them lots of money with no strings attached. Instead, if their companies are insolvent, we should take them over, fire current management, split them up, and figure out what to do.
jake 4 that 1
@Susan Kitchens: Obviously a Joe the Plunger Jockey look-alike should do the video. Hell, I bet we can get actual footage of Joe whining about the free market.
Susan Kitchens
@jake 4 that 1:
"Joe the Plunger"
I like it. +1, jake 4 that 1
Dalancroft
The problem with any thought of rebellion is that these people have the cash and the juice to call in the paramilitary SWAT teams and, if necessary, the National Guard. A whole lotta veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts who know their way around urban warfare, if you know what I mean. Us general citizenry with our little popguns would be mowed down in a massacre that would make Tiananmen Square look like a little girls’ tea party. But if you’re gonna string someone up, using piano wire of course, start with Phil Gramm — his amendment to the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 specifically prohibited the regulation of futures & CDSs.
Delia
@Dalancroft:
And besides that, you’ve got Cheney with his Executive Hit Squad.
Wile E. Quixote
Well, corporate Amerika seems to be getting what it wants in Congress. The FASB is set to reconsider the "mark to market" rule.
ironranger
Dimon is apoplectic that we, the rabble, don’t understand how very special they, the pillagers, are.
Jill
Dimon also said that we should stop the bickering and get behind Obama and many other pro-administration things. But that wouldn’t be fun to talk about would it? Those of you who get your yucks out of spreading and promoting the bickering are much more harmful to Obama than anything his opposition does.
bago
@Michael: Hey, at least Michael Douglas in Falling Down had limits.
"I’m an American. You’re a sick asshole"
jvp
It was Spengler, I believe, who introduced the concept of "die Unvoraussehbarkeit der eigenen Dummheit".
Vilification of Corporate America? Yikes, at least he could have said American corporations, but nooo….
As I am not in the economics field myself, I was heretofore unaware that ‘vilification’ had a second, technical meaning in microeconomics jargon: as far as I can understand, something to do with identifying parties who are insolvent and demanding that they hand over all of their assets to their creditors.
Speaking of economics, I am still waiting to hear a good explanation of why CDSs are consistent with a free market. Isn’t the whole idea that when you make an investment, you are using expert knowledge to put capital where it will be most productive, and that if your judgment turns out to be wrong, you ‘should’ lose control over your capital so that it can be used more productively? Aren’t CDSs an attempt to make investment pretty much risk-free, so that no matter how stupid your judgment was, you still get to keep all of your capital? Is it any wonder that this magic trick exploded in our faces?
Zifnab
@liberal:
It’s just not that simple. Home foreclosures don’t magically generate new buyers. I’ve got homes in my area that have been on the market for months, after having their prices dropped substantially. No one is keeping a buyer out except the diminished market for home buyers.
What’s more, this isn’t like dealing in flat screen TVs. You’re not just putting more product out on the market. You are suggesting we should allow people who – until their mortgages spiked – were successfully making payments on their homes to be evicted. It’s foreclosing on Peter to give Paul a better home price.
I’ve got no problem with banks and borrowers being forced into renegotiations because it keeps the banks open and the home owners from being homeless. But your solution seems to be the same "let the market deal with it" laize-faire mentality that we explicitly abandoned after Bush.
The stimulus bill includes an $8000 credit for new home buyers purchasing before December ’09. The new home buyers will be buying into a vastly deflated market with large supply and little demand. I think they’re actually covered rather well.
La Gringa
This douchebag’s company raised the interest rate on my credit card by nearly 4% for no reason other than they could. Screw you, shitbag. I’ll stop busting your balls when you stop busting mine, m’kay?
jbb
I actually am conflicted on this one. I’m a fan of Jamie Dimon’s. [ducks]
No, really. He saw the regulatory problems and high risk of CDS four years ago and ordered, from the top down, that Chase get out of them completely, despite the fact that his competitors were still "earning" exorbitant "profits" off the market. (Unfortunately, they missed some CDS trading in some acquisitions and weren’t completely out of it — but their exposure was very, very limited compared to — well — everyone else.) As a result, Chase is one of two national banks that is viewed as, at the very least, solvent — though they are suffering from the exact same economic conditions and capital contractions that everyone else is.
So I kind of see his point, to an extent — Chase explicitly "did the right thing" and got out — and the reward is to both suffer the economic consequences of everyone else’s poor risk management and be lumped in rhetorically with all of the other people who raped the country for a quick buck, like his former boss, Sandy Weill, who fired him from Citigroup when he would not take the risks that other financial services firms were taking.
On the other hand, it’s obviously ridiculously tone-deaf and he’s placing the blame on the wrong group of people.
Mnemosyne
I may be naive, but pretty much the only time the government has successfully managed to get American soldiers to fire on their fellow citizens with any regularity was the Civil War. Unless they can keep them inside a bubble (like they can in Iraq), it’ll be hard to sell GI Joe or Jane on the idea that they should be picking people off in the streets of New York.
The generals might be batshit crazy enough to order it, but I don’t think that most of the troops are crazy enough to go along with it.