Today, one of the most convoluted, opaque editorials ("The Dimon Principle") that the Wall Street Journal has been able to muster, alluding to JPMorgan Chase's $2 billion trading loss, opened with the following hosanna to Jamie Dimon, and slap on the wrist to those in government and elsewhere who now feel that Dimon's aggressive prop trading policies have finally come home to roost:
Employees at J.P. Morgan may think that CEO Jamie Dimon's primary rule is to minimize risk. But Washington politicians now have their own Dimon Principle: Use mistakes at a bank run by an admired CEO to expand government control over financial markets.
The editorial goes on breathlessly in technical hodgepodge jargon, with nary a mention of the obdurate and relentless policies initiated by Dimon to turn JPMorgan Chase into a casino on a scale barely known nor countenanced before. There was the eye-opening broad exposé in the very same Wall Street Journal's October 2010 article "JPMorgan's Commodities Chief Takes the Heat". (please also see "Bravo JPMorgan! Just What We Need Another Wall Street Casino"). The article details JP Morgan's full court press ambitions "to build the No.1 commodities trading franchise on the planet." Barely deterred by the events of 2008, JP Morgan was busy spending then $2 billion acquiring the trading assets of:
But building the casino wasn't enough for Dimon. A little over a year later JPMorgan Chase took steps to buy the casino itself, acquiring a stake from that heralded provenance, MF Global, in the London Metals Exchange, to make it the largest single shareholder (please see "JP Morgan Chase Banks on Buying Into The Casino"). At the time the Telegraph revealed that JP Morgan Chase was the "mystery trader" that bought Pounds1 billion worth of copper on the LME. That purchase, according to the Telegraph pushed up the price of copper to the highest level since the banking crisis in October, 2008. Now that's banking as it should be!
And the beat went on. As a prelude, to as Mr. Dimon would put it on NBC's Meet the Press this Sunday, "There's almost no excuse for it," Bloomberg reported in April of this year that J.P Morgan's treasury and chief investment office held a combined $355.6 billion of investment securities as of December 2011. At the time, the now departing Chief Investment Officer, Ina Drew was among JP Morgan's highest paid executives in 2011, earning $14 million and whose imminent departure from JP Morgan was due, one can assume, in measure to the $2 billion and counting, debacle.
Yet it would appear Ms. Drew was simply or complexly following guidelines laid down over the years by the corner office where banking had become second fiddle to siren call of the roulette wheel.
Clearly, at JPMorgan the buck stops elsewhere.
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Janet Tavakoli: Jamie Dimon: JPMorgan's Chief is the World's Funniest Financier
Charles Gasparino: Jamie Dimon's "Tempest in a Tea Pot"
Mark A. Calabria: JPMorgan Losses Do Not Make the Case for Regulation
That sounds like the role that speculation reportedly plays in oil prices, thus gas prices. You know, the role that conservatives deny even exists.
Since we have FDIC deposit insurance banks should not be involved in risky, complex hard to understand transactions. If you want to become a multi billionaire go be an executive at a hedge fund.
Funny thing when I graduated college in 1981 I was told to go work in banking, you will never get super rich but will be a respected professional. How times have changed.
Yes, I believe that one of the stops on the roulette wheel is a quantum singularity. Its gravity so massive that it swallowed up a couple of billion dollars and nobody noticed. Or at least, they hope nobody noticed?
REVOKE charters NOW! Rebuild the corporate chartering codex to insist on STRICT oversights and limitations on CORPORATIONs and CAPITALISTs and ENFORCE it!
It is time for the money barons to stop wagging the dog and to be put under control in prison cells!
The CORPORATE/gop organized crime syndicate MUST be destroyed!
TRUE STORY: When Rupert Murdoch first tried to buy the Journal, the deal was held up for months. Why? Because the Editorial Board of the news sections ( Op-Ed and News editorial boards are VERY separate entities, they share NOTHING in common) refused to go along with the deal unless Murdoch agreed, in the contract, to leave the news section alone.
They said if Murdoch bought the paper without signing that agreement, the news section would quit, en-mass. All the award winning reporters, the editors, the secretaries, the photographers, the feature writers, everyone would walk.
Think about that for a minute. A guy is buying a big company, and two thirds of the people working there say, "We can't stop you from buying the company, but if you do so without agreeing, in writing, to leave us alone and keep YOUR nose out of OUR business, we'll quit and the companies reputation will be in the gutter. It's YOUR call."
Murdoch was beside himself. He wouldn't do it. The months dragged on. The end was, what good would it do to buy the Wall Street Journal if it's reputation was shot? Turn it into a rag like News Of The World? Murdoch finally caved and signed the agreement to leave the news section alone. Fricking amazing.
Why was the economy crashing?
Due to crazy, ridiculous risk taking by selfish, greedy, entitled, and (obviously) stu pid and delusional Wall Streeters and bankers.