Salon.com > Jamie Dimon

Is JPMorgan a farmer?

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:02:00 +0000

Imagine you’re a finance lobbyist and want to move deregulation and other industry-friendly policies through Congress. While you might think the House Financial Services Committee would be the logical place to do it -- since it has jurisdiction over financial issues, naturally -- what if there were a sneaky way to maneuver it through a far less scrutinized committee, so most people would have no idea what you were doing?

This is the story of how the world’s largest banks came to love the House Agriculture Committee.

In Washington, we often witness politicians forgetting the lessons of a year or five years or 10 years ago. It takes some special obliviousness to forget the lessons of Friday. Five days ago, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., delivered a critical report and held an explosive hearing detailing the “London Whale” trades, made by a JPMorgan Chase satellite office in London. As you may have read, these trades turned sour and led to a $6.2 billion loss for the bank in a matter of weeks. More important, JPMorgan misled regulators about the nature of the trades, altered its internal processes to take on more risk, and then hid the losses by improperly mismarking the value on its balance sheet, pretending the shortfall was inconsequential to avoid oversight and present a positive financial picture to investors.

Senate report: JPMorgan lied, misled public

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:11:00 +0000

For those who thought that the financial crisis marked a watershed for Wall Street malfeasance, the latest damning Senate report on the JPMorgan Chase "London Whale" trading debacle will set you straight.

The investigation into how a bet by a trader -- known as the 'London Whale' for his position so large it could rock the market -- led to losses of $6.2.bn paints found widespread misconduct. According to the Senate report released Thursday, the bank attempted to limit losses using secretive trades and creative bookkeeping. As the Guardian's Heidi Moore noted, one regulator called JPMorgan's efforts to stem losses and keep the public in the dark "make believe voodoo magic."

According to the report, the bank had promised regulators it would reduce the size of its bets, but instead, as Moore noted "created a portfolio of trades that metastasized from $4bn to $51bn in only three years, followed by a three-month 'trading spree' that took it to $157bn."

The Senate report notes:

The 6 most appalling statements of America’s biggest CEOs

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:10:00 +0000

The sh*t CEOs say! When the chiefs of giant corporations are not blaming others for their mismanagement and unscrupulous behavior, they’re explaining why their distorted worldviews are best for the 99 percent. They do this, of course, at a time of declining national median income and huge paydays for executives.

Recently, there has been an uptick of particularly stupid remarks coming from the mouths of America’s CEOs. Here are a few of the most out-of-touch and out-of-line oracles, a mix of recent gaffes and classic blunders.

1. “That's why I'm richer than you.”

JPMorgan honcho Jamie Dimon has taken time out of his regularly scheduled program of mismanaging a systemically dangerous bank to divulge why he's richer than the rest of us. Last week, Mike Mayo, who is both an analyst at CLSA and a critic of too-big-to-fail banks, was on an investor conference call -- a forum in which executives typically offer BS about their company’s performance. Mayo wasn’t having it. He asked pointedly if customers might take their money to better-capitalized banks than JPMorgan. (Check out the video.)

Debt “fixers’” 6 biggest lies

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 14:40:00 +0000

New York magazine calls it a “Mass Movement for Millionaires.” The New York Times' Paul Krugman sums up the idea: “Hey, sacrifice is for the little people.”

The Campaign to Fix the Debt is a huge, and growing, coalition of powerful CEOs, politicians and policy makers on a mission to lower taxes for the rich and cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid under the cover of concern about the national debt. The group was spawned in July 2012 by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, architects of a misguided deficit reduction scheme in Washington back in 2010. By now, the "fixers" have collected a war chest of $43 million. Private equity billionaire Peter G. Peterson, longtime enemy of the social safety net, is a major supporter.

9 greediest CEOs

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 19:44:00 +0000

  A gang of brazen CEOs has joined forces to promote economically disastrous and socially irresponsible austerity policies. Many of those same CEOs were bailed out by the American taxpayer after a Wall Street-driven financial crash. Instead of a thank-you, they are showing their appreciation in the form of a coordinated effort to rob Americans of hard-earned retirements, decent medical care and relief for the poorest.

Using the excuse of a phony, manufactured crisis known as the “fiscal cliff” – which isn’t a crisis at all, as economist James K. Galbraith has succinctly explained -- they are gearing up to pull the wool over the public's eyes by cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The CEOs are part of the Fix the Debt campaign run by the Peter Peterson-backed Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, which plans to unleash tens of millions pushing for a deficit reduction deal that favors the rich in the lame-duck session and beyond.

Jamie Dimon’s hissy-fit

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Wall Street's reality-distortion field is nothing if not internally consistent. Earlier today, I discussed Goldman Sach's feelings about being left out of the regulatory process:

From the Wall Street Journal:

Resentments against the White House began, said senior Goldman executives, because the firm thought it would be consulted when the Obama administration began crafting regulations in response to the financial crisis. They weren't.

After publishing that post, I finally found the time to read William Cohan and Bethany Mclean's epic profile of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. The language describing his bruised ego is spookily similar:

At President Obama’s inauguration, Dimon said to Obama and to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, “Tell me what you need. I’ll send people down here. I’ll do anything,” says one D.C. hand. “Jamie walked into 2009 with the view that he was on the team.” He wasn’t.

The two forms of corporate executive influence, illustrated

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 18:42:00 +0000

America's worst people, after the murderers and rapists, are obviously our CEOs, as any child could tell you. Over the past few years, they have not stopped complaining about how mean everyone is being to them even though they have been earning, on average, a zillion times what their average employee makes. (Or, OK, between 231 and 380 times.)

One CEO who is already famous for being cartoonishly awful in every conceivable way is David Siegel of the real eastate and timeshare company Westgate Resorts. You may know him as the guy who tried to build the country's biggest house, which became the subject of a recent documentary film. (Our Andrew O'Hehir describes him as "self-pitying, endlessly aggrieved" and "a vulture feeding on the dreams of vulnerable people.") Siegel is a Republican, and he sent a letter to all his employees strongly suggesting that if Obama wins he will be "forced" to lay everyone off.

Barclays head forced out, JPMorgan head remains

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 16:34:00 +0000

Thrilling news, accountability fans! Barclays Bank head Bob Diamond has announced his resignation as chief executive and director of the U.K.-based megabank, a week after the bank was fined 59.5 million pounds for attempting to manipulate the Libor rate. Just yesterday, Diamond had promised his staff that he'd stay on, in order to guide the bank through the parliamentary inquiries and Justice Department investigations that are still to come. Then his mind got changed for him.

According to BBC business editor Robert Peston, Diamond's departure was "encouraged" by Sir Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, who telephoned Barclays chairman Marcus Agius (who announced his intention to fall on his sword and resign yesterday) personally. This doesn't make the Barclays board look very smart.

Let’s put Jamie Dimon on trial

Mon, 14 May 2012 11:45:00 +0000

Let's put JPMorgan Chase chairman, president and CEO James "Jamie" Dimon on trial. Mr. Dimon has a reputation for being the sagest guy on Wall Street and an expert at managing risk. JPMorgan emerged from the financial crisis not just unscathed but secure enough to step in and rescue Bear Stearns when the government asked it to. (He gets very mad when you say that his bank got bailed out by the government, and he insists that the government made him take all that free money.) Then his bank somehow accidentally lost billions of dollars last week, whoops! And he is really embarrassed, but not embarrassed enough to fire himself. So, let's put him on trial and force him to explain what good he and his bank are.

The SEC is investigating the massive loss, but that will take a lot of time and the eventual report will probably be very difficult for novices to understand and probably they won't put anyone in jail. Dimon might have to be hauled before Congress to answer questions, but no one watches congressional hearings, and no one likes members of Congress. I think a big televised prime-time tribunal would be best. And then maybe some JPMorgan shareholders, unemployed people, journalists and angry bloggers can just ask him some really simple questions about why he thinks JPMorgan shouldn't be regulated at all.