First of all, did anyone else notice that when a Big Bank loses $2,000,000,000 dollars the Very Serious People who are OUTRAGED over Gov waste just kinda shrug and goes "Oops" like Rick Perry, but if it were $500K in temporary food stamps for working class single mothers than it is an outrage and evidence of a runaway nanny state. The same people who scream SOCIALISM over the idea that we might keep our most vulnerable in society from falling into poverty and dispair just don't even register a huge company losing $2 Billion dollars. There is no scale of equivalence, $2 billion dollars is just a shrug when big business is concerned, but if $2 Billion dollars isn't cut from the government right now a fiscal budgetary disaster will befall us with horrible repercussions and won't somebody please think of the children!
So Jamie Dimon lost $2B, that's only nearly 20 times Jamie Dimon's yearly pay, which in people years is like 1000 years of working at McDonald's as hard as you can until you can own a small business of your own, which will then be stripped down by Bain Capital and sold off to JP MorganChase. It's the circle of life, and unfortunately the buyer is the prey and the supply-siders are the Predators. Survival of the TooBigToFailest.
So when the Banksters lose $2,000,000,000 and say "Oops" . . .
Occupy Wall Street was right all along. I don't want to say "I told you so", but . . .
I went on RT News Monday to talk about Jamie Dimon's $2B dollar oopsie. If Dimon bets big and wins, more bonuses for him, if he bets big and screws the pooch he may eat it if it isn't that big of a loss, but if that loss is too big and he is Too Big To Fail, guess who will have to clean up his mess? Don't pretend to yourself that the banksters won't demand more bailouts again, they will, and our politicians will give them another with no strings attached again. They got away with it last time, why wouldn't they go to the same pot again? Their plan is working, and that plan is to make their own rules and play it fast and loose, and if they screw it up the ret of us are on the hook.
We need basic rules to keep these banksters from destroying themselves again, and the rest of us along with them, because they haven't learned a thing since the economy utterly collapsed at the end of the George W. Bush Presidency.
My apologies for the lack of transcript
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While the rest of teh economy staggers along JPMorganChase is doing phenomenally well, they can afford an army of lobbyists to steer any legislative process to their benefit and if laws are enacted to regulate them they can employ a full time army of lobbyists to circumvent the law in a number of ways. Remember what Thomas Jefferson said about banks and standing armies? Armies of lobbyists are just as dangerous as armies with tanks.
So the banks are back to taking great risks. I'm sure that will end well for all of us.
Mitt Romney has pledged to repeal the Wall Street reforms that passed over a year ago. The problem in his view is that we have been too mean to the banks. You see banks aren't just Too Big To Fail, they are too big to have their feelings hurt, this makes them uncertain because banksters are apparently both our all knowing experts but also children who may wet the bed at any moment in fear of greater taxation and job-killing regulation socialism something something. We are dealing with delusional gambling addicts who are addicted to power, power and cocaine. And don't act shocked about the idea that cocaine is traded on Wall Street, they just do it in the bathrooms and not on the trading floor. Yet.
Of course, this would say that maybe we need to make rules for the banksters, but we can't the banks won't let us, they own the Senate and this is an election year and our campaign finance system is a perpetual circle jerk in an orgy on behalf of Mammon. One side wants bigger tax cuts for Golden Calves and the other side is terrified of saying anything that might offend their big campaign donors.
At this point, I say that we can't just regulate the Too Big To Fail banks. We have to break them up first so that they can't single handedly destroy the economy again and then we have to regulate them. If we don't, they will contniue to hoard money away from the rest of the economy and they will continue to gamble it recklessly within the plutonomy that exists in a place far removed from main street, and when they incur a loss so big they can't cover it they will claim Too Big To Fail again, just wait. At this point there is no accountability for Jamie Dimon so he will just keep rolling the dice until he craps out badly, and if not him, some other Bankster. The odds guarantee it until their entire business model changes, and it won't, being Too Big TO Fail and having your huge risks passed off to the taxpayer has worked out splendidly for them so far, if it is fixed in your favor why break it?
The system is fixed so that the Banksters get all the bonuses and the rest of us get all the bills. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. 30 years of stagnant wages and rising costs of living for you, bailouts, bonuses, lobbyists and caviar for them. Evere wonder why the poor can't seem to stop being so poor or how the rich got so rich? There are lobbyists for that. Guess how many lobbyists poor people have.
The financial system is broken, and ignoring that problem won't make it go away, eventually they will make another bad bet they can't cover and they will come back for more bailouts, and when that happens, and it will happen, people are not going to be satisfied with just saying "I told you so".
Occupy Wall Street is right. We need to break up these Too Big To Fail banks before they take another huge risk that they can't cover and stick the rest of us with the bill.
You can follow me on twitter @JesseLaGreca
10:53 AM PT: Just to be clear, I can not read Jamie Dimon's mind. I am not a psychic. This diary is based on my own observations and speculation. My apologies for any confusion. I have changed the title to respect this.