In his annual letter to shareholders, distributed last week, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon took aim at socialism, warning it would be “a disaster for our country,” because it produces “stagnation, corruption and often worse.”
Dimon should know. He was at the helm when JPMorgan received a $25bn socialist-like bailout in 2008, after it and other Wall Street banks almost tanked because of their reckless loans.
Dimon subsequently agreed to pay the government $13bn to settle charges that the bank overstated the quality of mortgages it was selling to investors in the run-up to the crisis. According to the Justice Department, JPMorgan acknowledged it had regularly and knowingly sold mortgages that should have never been sold. (Presumably this is where the “stagnation, corruption and often worse” comes in.)
The $13bn penalty was chicken feed to the biggest bank on Wall Street, whose profits last year alone amounted to $35bn. Besides, JPMorgan was able to deduct around $11bn of the settlement costs from its taxable income.
To state it another way, Dimon and other Wall Street CEOs helped trigger the 2008 financial crisis when the dangerous and irresponsible loans their banks were peddling – on which they made big money – finally went bust. But instead of letting the market punish the banks (which is what capitalism is supposed to do) the government bailed them out and eventually levied paltry fines which the banks treated as the cost of doing business.
If this isn’t socialism, what is it?
Yet it’s a particular form of socialism. Millions of homeowners who owed more on their homes than the homes became worth didn’t get bailed out. Millions of workers who lost their jobs or their savings, or both, didn’t get bailed out. No major banker went to jail.
Made me think about this. That's the problem with government I guess, everyone who gets in is a greedy asshole. I worked with county workers for some time (unions), same shit, just level of sophistication is much lower. Same mother fuckers otherwise, don't give a shit about the public, just constantly looking for ways to up their pensions by buying politicians.
Thanks Obama! Citigroup owned that Administration, they even received vetting powers on the Cabinet from Obama Transition Team Leader Podesta.
Madoff was a nothingburger with very little to do with the Mortgage Churn and Burn, he was the Red Herring Token Prosecution.
Iceland was the first country to recover and the only one to indict both Bank and Political leadership for bribery and other offenses. They even resisted pressure from the UK to contribute to the Socialist bailout of Icesave.
We really need a law forbidding government bank bailouts and offering a Rocket Docket of lightening asset discharge bankruptcy to liquidate them ASAP.
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