Fuck You To Jamie Dimon & His Plaintive Wail For The 1%
Pardon me for the Taibbi like insolence, but this is just fucking amazing. While most Americans are struggling to stay alive, employed, and their families fed and in their homes, much less celebrate a decent Christmas, the 1% Masters Of The Universe have gotten together for a group bitchfest of elitist assholes:
Jamie Dimon, the highest-paid chief executive officer among the heads of the six biggest U.S. banks, turned a question at an investors’ conference in New York this month into an occasion to defend wealth.
“Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I don’t understand it,” the JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) CEO told an audience member who asked about hostility toward bankers. “Sometimes there’s a bad apple, yet we denigrate the whole.”
Dimon, 55, whose 2010 compensation was $23 million, joined billionaires including hedge-fund manager John Paulson and Home Depot Inc. (HD) co-founder Bernard Marcus in using speeches, open letters and television appearances to defend themselves and the richest 1 percent of the population targeted by Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.
Uh, fuck you Jamie Dimon and to the plaintive wail of the skimming, raping moneychangers.
Oh, and in case you had any question on what side of the 1%/99% divide Barack Obama and his Administration are on, yet another answer was given today with the announcement of their proposed selection for the critical “independent” seat on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC):
The Obama administration is considering nominating Jeremiah Norton, an executive director for JPMorgan Chase’s investment bank, to sit on the FDIC’s board of directors.
Who is Jeremiah Norton? Well, as this quote states, he executive director of the investment banking shop and one of Obama’s buddy, Jamie Dimon’s, right hand men. Oh, and before that, Norton was former Goldman Sachs honcho Henry Paulson’s right hand man in the Bush Treasury Department and assisted Paulson in getting Goldman Sachs a backdoor bailout through AIG.
And, remember, if Barack Obama has to replace Turbo Tax Timmeh Geithner, Jamie Dimon is near the top of the list of replacements thought to be on the White House’s list.
So, while OWS is out protesting and the majority of citizens are falling deeper in despair and many losing their homes and hopes, and Barack Obama duplicitously coos about feeling the pain of the 99%, this is what is going on where the rubber meets the actual road.
PS: Digby has pounded Dimon on this as well if you want more searing criticism.
Note to President Obama:
This would be a good opportunity to test the infinite detention provisions in the NDAA.
My heart goes out to the 1%ers’ tale of woe. There is nothing sorrier than a bankster blubbering in public. Oh the tragedy! Chin up Jaime! Don’t let the 99%ers get you down.
Remember that there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And while it doesn’t belong to you, who’s going to know if you pocket it for your troubles?
Now dry those tears Jamie and light up that cigar. Have a blowjob on us! If anybody deserves one, you do!
Are you fucking kidding me?
They are not even trying to hide any damn thing anymore.
Sharpen your pitchforks and have your kids start making torches for homework, this experiment is over.
tangentially related: over at naked capitalism, a reader posted a letter she just rec’d from the Washington State Attorney General’s office re. the Mortgage Settlement they’re trying to ram through. i think it’s an interesting peek into their PR pushback talking points. the close:
@rosalind:
Right up there with the phone call I got last night from my now-ex TBTF bank. They had some kind of offer for their homeowner customers – neither of which describes me. I hung up – quietly – before the guy got any farther into his pitch.
Oh, Jamie? FOAD. Soon. With a rusty garden implement, sideways. You and your buddies, all of you.
PahLeeeze! Lemme take him to the back 40 for a week. I promise to give him a tent for shelter and a blanket for warmth. I’ll throw in a lighter and matches so he can start a fire. I know he doesn’t know how to do it any other way.
But, Heck! The majority of Americans living today don’t know how to live like a pioneer either. Please, let’s teach him how it is. He might forget to blabber over somebody’s printed opinions of him.
Hmm. Considering that what really pisses us off is the illegal way that folks like Jamie have amassed their wealth by outright theft and stacking all the rules in their favor, does Jamie think that everyone who is “successful” got there the same way he did? He’s saying we’re mad at all wealthy people. No, we’re just mad at the cheaters. I will admit that the way the system is set up now, it’s nearly impossible for folks to rise to the top without cheating, but I suspect there may be a few exceptions.
How much exposure does JPMorganChase have to derivatives?
I’d like to see a list of all the TBTF fail banks along with their shitpile to equity ratio.
There have been a few studies of the ratio of executive compensation to the pay rate of most other employees within the same company. There has been an escalation of widening that gap, increasing the ratio in favor of the top executives. I kind of like Gretchen Morgenson’s low key articles encouraging stockholders of companies that are publicly traded to work for more control of boards of directors. That’s a difficult zone for congress to be interested in, given the election campaign donation proportions common in these times, also rising as each election arrives setting its own respective record for donations. Then there are the rules and regs controlling the revolving door of government specialists who next serve as lobbyists and on boards of directors, as well as on advisory bodies like presidential commissions. EW covered some of that nobly in a few posts about the FIAB. Congress members rarely campaign on specifics about how to make those ingrown circuits of cash and influence less deleterious to functioning government and impeding economic opportunity for the middle class. The latest attractant for politicians seems to be developing allure by high tech, somewhat invasive profiling methods. Then, once elected, keeping some modicum of inscrutability. Morgenson had an interesting article two days ago about the office of thrift supervision, and the impact of Dodd-Frank. I think Obama’s administration actually is realizing advances in increased accountability, but it has been incremental.
From another perspective, I have viewed the Democratic party longtime as one which had favorable relations among stock market professionals. It always seemed to me a challenging realm for Republicans who would wish the Democrats had less closeness to folks in that part of the finance world.
I think much of the work of ‘Occupy’ has a lot to offer the Democratic party now. It could be the DNC’s countermeasure to the isolationist teaPartlies who have glommed onto the Republican bandwagon.
In the abstract, based on personal study in economics, I believe the stock market’s strength in the US is one of the pinnacles of our financial system in these times. I also appreciate the value of having a business environment in which the erudite can anticipate ample reward for having learned how modern global economics function, and for the long hours slaving over spreadsheets.
Yet, the inequities that ‘Occupy’ bemoans truly are vitiating the very system which supports the excesses of so many companies’ remuneration packages for executives.
However, in the above-referenced scrivening from Morgenson most recently, there were a few entertaining, and revealing, paragraphs concerning just why it was fdic settled with 3 WaMu execs for 65 MM USD while letting the execs keep an aggregate stash of approximately 95 MM USD. It seems the execs’ contracts included indemnification for problems like WaMu created/encountered.
And oversight remains fairly opaque, and hindered at many turns in the legal system. Essentially, the execs could advance court actions for contractual refunds of whatever else beyond the 65 MM the fdic managed to take. Deal settled. Fdic got some modicum of cash. The execs got to laugh, provided they had planned retirements that could keep some semblance of nouveau riche grandeur and flamboyance upon their halved savings after Fdic’s settlement scooped up the 65 MM.
This is the kind of stuff that motivates congress members to oppose Elizabeth Warren. I keep reading the maudlin saga of Duke Cunningham and the wads of cash. Elections matter for something. I hope the Democratic party platform has a little more zest next year. These are classic issues pretty well aligned with what the Democratic party always has tried to do for well more than a simple plurality of the people.
@John Forde: John Forde! Merry Christmas dude! Catherine too!
Nobody really knows how much ANY of these banks have in derivative, securitization and debt swap casino markers. That is part of the problem.
Krugman mentions it, too – he’s really getting pissed these days. He says he and the OW movement arent’t saying rich people are bad, they’re asking them to pay a fair share of taxes, and stop gaming the system.
Note “Demon” isn’t addressing the real issue – typical .1%er, Tea Party front man, Republican obstructionist corporatists shill tactics.
Besides, we love us some rich people, even Warren Buffet who has come out for increasing taxes on the very wealthy.
Righteous! Love the plaintiff wail. (And the plaintive wail.)
Randians are the biggest fucking whiners on the planet.
The top execs at the place I work, and its parent company, make maybe 8 or 9 million a year, but some of them have twenty or so years of experience with the companies involved. They aren’t all ‘financiers’ like Dimon, so they may actually be earning part of that money. Even so, the stockholders are trying to get some control over those paychecks, and the directors keep trying to deflect those attempts.
more tangential: my state’s AG, Kamala Harris, seems to have upped the ante. i say “seems” cause i’m still a bit skeptical as to her end game on the mortgage mess, however this i’ll take:
I’m struggling to piece together just what is happening with the cash these bandits are holding vs. the real estate development industry. I dunno, but it sure seems as though a “deal” was struck between the banks & home builders, Pulte, Winchester, NV, Centex. I’m trying to puzzle it out — possibly absorbing land and its value to hedge the balance sheets? Not only is there significant construction on going in urban centers (NY, DC, Phila)– why the residential construction — are there really buyers for it? But, unbelievably, there have been some major suburban and ex-suburban developments approved by local planning agencies recently — developments of thousands of units. Why?
To enhance the “paper” land value to hedge the balance sheets? It all suggests money moving around behind the scenes. Oh, and these developer applicants are the most white-knuckled bunch about every single unit of housing. They need their yield, you know, for the investors. Bah!
with respect to corporate executive compensation,
there is NO corporate executive in the universe of u.s, corporations whose personal contribution to the success/well-being of the corporation should exceed say, $3-5 million per year. the only exception i would make would be for those who create their own company, e.g., gates, but definitely not steve ballmer; marcus, but definitely not nardelli.
the solutions are simple:
– members of corporate search and of corporate compensation committees must front and personally guarantee any compensation in excess of $3-5 million.
– all executive compensation at the highest levels of a corporation must be “adjusted” down from 3-5 mill where there is diminished corporate performance in a year,
– quarterly “reports” and executive conversations with “analysts” must be paid for in advance by a tax on the corporation and on senior executives, if not made illegal outright.
bottom line?
many $billions of american corporate productivity have been raked off the top by executives like daemon and nardelli in the same way that casino execs skim the profits. it’s past time for this looting behavior to stop.
@rosalind:
i doubt there is any reason whatsoever to trust kamela harris to do anything but promote her political future.
reviewing her political past, what actions of hers have suggested otherwise?
Well, Mr. Sir Dimon, we denigrate the whole because there’s been no accountability, and your “bad apple” has been dancing all the way to the bank — oh, wait, that’s such an archaic way to deposit your money. I guess the bad apple is dancing as he transmits his ill-gotten gains by EFT to his Swiss bank account. Yes, Mr. Dimon, sir, if we had a way to tell who are the bad apples and who aren’t, we wouldn’t denigrate the whole. But since Timmeh and the SEC don’t believe in that kind of accountability, the whole batch of you are denigrated. And you deserve much worse denigration than you’re getting, IMHO.
But wait! Congress is fixin’ to put the SEC folks in the dock and have them explain why no one has been held accountable. I hope this will be more than a charade, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.
Bob in AZ
@posaune: I think the developers serve as a platform or pretext for all the subsequent money generation that we’ve come to know so well. Remember, the payoff doesn’t come at the end with some kind of successful marketing that terminates the run, but rather the minute the flow comes by you and you can divert your portion. The modern business man or woman is freed of the pressure to earn a profit on actual operations.
If memory serves, Bill Black gives some hints about this in his book, which however was written before Loot-e-Vac XXXL hit the scene. Or maybe it was Pizzo et al., Inside Job, another account of the S&L looting.
There’s one feature of the system that has not been talked about enough– i.e., the whole system is gamed for short-term benefits. The shareholders only care about the bottom line on this year’s profit & loss. So this only encourages executives to steal from their future to pad this year’s bottom line. At least, that’s what seems to be driving the TBTF executives’ exorbitant salaries in the midst of the sinking ship. They don’t give a damx about what shape the company’s going to be in, in ten years, because they are counting on cashing out well before its time to pay the piper. Besides, I’ll bet that a bunch of them have taken out “insurance” against any real dangers to their near-term future, including bankruptcy, etc. We need much more light on the shadow banking system.
Bob in AZ
Gah! I was getting ready for a fun bitchfest about these whingers (those were good ones, maddog and JPEvans), and here bmaz has to pinch a loaf in the punch bowl with that FDIC appointment.
Sorry. I know he’s evil, I’ve known it from the start. But it is just still so depressing and demoralizing that Obama is presented as the least of the evils from which we get choose our fates. It’s like having an abusive father (the implacable republicans) and a mother who enables him (Obama, Reid, Pelosi, etc) and realizing you’re stuck with them for the next 12 year.
Good news for the 99%:
An Army of Schneidermans: Court Finds Private Right of Action in Securities Fraud Law in New York
Nothing says fuck you quite as effectively as your lawyer suing them for fraud. Unless Holder would get off his butt and criminally prosecute them (hint: he may have to do this before all the suits take all the cash before it can be confiscated – and yes, he is that crass).