JPMorgan Chase’s board Friday “strongly” endorsed Jamie Dimon to continue serving as both chairman and chief executive despite last year’s embarrassing $6.2 billion trading loss in the “London Whale” debacle. JPMorgan had “strong” performance under…
J.P. Morgan is not a farmer
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 was 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 ten years ago. It takes some special obliviousness to forget the lessons of Friday. Five days ago, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) 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 their 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.Continue Reading… … Read More
Senate report: JPMorgan lied, misled public
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:Continue Reading… … Read More
Raymond J. Learsy: Our Next Secretary of the Treasury: A Woman or Jamie Dimon
Warrren Buffett that “Oracle of Omaha” who at the height of the financial crisis, having invested billions in Goldman bonds, instructed us through every microphone or camera he could find that we should understand that all that those wonderful “Abacus” deals cobbled together by Goldman Sachs costing their client-investors into the billions (financial packages that Senator Levin (D-Michigan) termed as “sh*t” during Congressional hearings) was just business as usual, that the responsibility for deceit lay with the buyer in Mr.Buffett’s perverse notion of ‘caveat emptor’. To Mr. Buffet, issues of trust and accountability were secondary to this new world of finance (please see “Mr. Buffett’s New York Times OP-ED. Thank You We Feel Better Now”11.17.10))Mr. Buffett has now given us his latest pearl of wisdom. During an interview with Charley Rose on Monday night he proffered Jamie Dimon JPMorganChase’s CEO as his suggested successor to Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury. Given the way Wall Street has run Washington, and certainly not to Mr. Buffett’s cost, this would be a natural extension of the old boys network solidifying business as usual during President Obama’s second term T with a Treasury Department deeply entrenched to Wall Street. Selecting Jamie Dimon would be a gift to the powerful investment bank constituency plying their trade already in the all too comfortable niche of ‘too big to fail’. Ever quick to place at risk their depositors money while having easy access to cheap and virtually limitless borrowing at the Fed Window, permitting them to engage highly speculative proprietary trading while emasculating the Dodd-Frank Bill meant to rein in their excesses. Policies that brought us to the brink of financial ruin. It would be a gruesome revisit to déjà vu all over again. (please see “Jamie Dimon’s Malign Influence On The Culture Of American Banking” 07.13.12). Mr. Dimon’s propensity for speculative and proprietary trading was spotlighted through JPMorganChase buying up new trading platforms such as acquiring the Royal Bank of Scotland’s RBS Sempra trading division, becoming the largest shareholder of the London Metal’s Exchange, placing billion dollar bets on copper and other metals, boosting their trading work force from 125 in 2006 to some 1800 in 2010,or chartering VLCC tankers of 200,000 Dead Weight Tons (DWT), filling them with millions of barrels of crude oil or oil products such as heating oil, and keeping them anchored at sea for months at a time to play the oil market, not to speak of the ongoing ‘London Whale’ imbroglio (‘financial transaction’ to some, ‘speculation’ to others) . Read More…
More on Timothy Geithner
The two forms of corporate executive influence, illustrated
America’s worst people, after the murderers and rapists, are obviously our CEOs, as any child could tell you. They have not yet once stopped complaining, over the last few years, about how mean everyone is being to them, during a period in which they make, 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.Continue Reading… … Read More
JPMorgan losses soar to $4.4bn
One of the largest banks in US admits losses from botched derivatives trades is twice as large as originally thought. … Read More
Keiser Report: Countdown to Armageddon (E288)
http://www.youtube.com/v/Y2VhkQe3gQ0?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata The rest is here: Keiser Report: Countdown to Armageddon (E288)
