A meeting of senior U.S. government leaders will be held at the White House, today, where the initial portion of the discussion will be the reintroduction of the President’s Grand Bargain into the national spotlight debt ceiling. A variety of other topics are also not on the meeting agenda (see farther down, below), such as the “Fast-Track” passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and keeping JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s top managers, including (the lead person responsible for the bank's corporate governance through early 2011) former White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, out of jail; and, generally speaking, telling AIG CEO Robert Benmosche to just shut the hell up.
(Diarist’s Note: Yes, there’s truth in all humor a little snark in the previous paragraph. But, unfortunately, most of the balance of this post is as serious as a heart attack.)
Dimon, bank executives to meet Obama on Wednesday over debt ceiling: WSJ
Varun Aggarwal in Bangalore
Reuters
Mon Sep 30, 2013 9:25pm EDT
(Reuters) - JP Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon is headed for a scheduled meeting, along with other bank executives, with President Barack Obama on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported.
While talking to WSJ, an industry participant said concern over the debt ceiling battle would be raised during the meeting.
Speaking to WSJ, a White House official said, "The president will meet members of the Financial Services Forum at the White House while they are in town for their annual meeting."
JP Morgan was not immediately available for comments.
Yes,
“JP Morgan was not immediately available for comments” because he’s been dead for a couple of generations. However, as noted below (and in
recent posts in this community), his spirit lives on; and, that will be well-represented at Wednesday’s meeting by current JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, per the Reuters article, above. (More about that in a moment.)
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The Financial Services Forum is comprised of the CEOs (this list is at least a year old, and slightly outdated—i.e.: Vikram Pandit is no longer the CEO of Citigroup) of the following firms…
AIG, Robert Benmosche
Allstate Insurance Company, Thomas Wilson
Bank of America, Brian Moynihan
BNY Mellon, Gerald Hassell
Citigroup Inc., Vikram Pandit Michael L. Corbat
Credit Suisse, Brady W. Dugan
Deutsche Bank AG, Anshu Jain
Edward Jones, James D. Weddle
Fidelity Investments, Edward Johnson, III
GE Capital Corp., Michael A. Neal
Goldman Sachs, Lloyd C. Blankfein
HSBC, Douglas Flint
JP Morgan Chase & Co., James Dimon
MetLife, Steven Kandarian
Morgan Stanley, James P. Gorman
Prudential Financial, John R. Strangfeld
State Street Corporation, Jay Hooley
UBS AG, Sergio P. Ermotti
US Bancorp, Richard K. Davis
Wells Fargo, John Stumpf
More from Wikipedia on the
Financial Services Forum…
The Financial Services Forum is a non-partisan financial and economic policy organization comprising the CEOs of 20 of the largest and most diversified financial services institutions doing business in the United States.[1]
Recent News
On November 25th, Bloomberg TV interviewed The Financial Services Forum President and CEO Rob Nichols, where he discussed the fiscal cliff, the financial sector's relationship with the Administration, and ongoing implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act. [2]
Mission
The Financial Services Forum (which should not be confused with the United Kingdom's Financial Services Forum),[3] is a non-partisan financial and economic policy organization comprising the CEOs of 20 of the largest and most diversified financial services institutions doing business in the United States.
The purpose of the Forum is to pursue policies that encourage savings and investment, promote an open and competitive global marketplace, and ensure the opportunity of people everywhere to participate fully and productively in the 21st century global economy.
As a group, the Forum's member institutions employ more than 2 million people in 175 countries and hold combined assets of more than $21 trillion—an amount greater than the annual economic output of the United States, China and the United Kingdom combined.
Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs, is the Forum’chairman.
Rob Nichols, former assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department, serves as the Forum's president and CEO.[4]
Also, the Forum is the chairing institution of the Engage China Coalition, a coalition of twelve financial services trade associations.
Origin of the Forum
The Financial Services Forum was organized by a core group of financial institution CEOs in February 2000 following the enactment of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Modernization Act of 1999 (GLBA).
Issues
Issues comprising the Forum’s recent agenda include: reform and modernization of the U.S. framework of financial supervision;[5] enhancing the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets; educating policymakers regarding the importance of private capital in fueling economic growth and development around the world; preserving the 50-year consensus for free trade by promoting policies that help more Americans participate in the gains of globalization; financial sector modernization and expanded market access in China; CFIUS reform and encouraging cross-border investment; and litigation and tax policy reform…
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As noted above, from CEO Jamie Dimon, on down the line, the entire management of America’s largest bank is in hot water right now, to say the least. And, I’ll let Wall Street On Parade’s Pam Martens fill you in on the details…
Wall Street Journal Goes Bonkers In Effort to Defend JPMorgan
By Pam Martens
Wall Street On Parade Blog
October 1, 2013
It’s come to the point that one must forego sipping anything hot while reading the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal in order to avoid gasps of hot liquid spewing onto one’s skin or business attire.
On September 27, 2013, the Wall Street Journal ran the headline “Robbery at J.P. Morgan” over an unsigned editorial. Curious to see if the Occupy Wall Street crowd might have made off with Jamie Dimon’s Presidential cufflinks, I read on.
The next sentence was gasp-worthy: “Government lawyers are backing up the truck again at J.P. Morgan Chase to extract another haul from the country’s largest bank.” And, mind you, it’s not because J.P. Morgan has broken the law or done anything seriously wrong, it’s because the bank is the “Obama Administration’s favorite Wall Street target” because of its independent-thinking CEO, Jamie Dimon, who “keeps deviating from the Obama script.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial scribes then proceed to outline a full blown political conspiracy against Jamie Dimon: “First the CEO explained how the rhetoric about the Dodd-Frank financial reform wasn’t matched by its costly and confusing regulations,” then he patriotically opined that “Washington’s antibusiness rhetoric was a drag on confidence that hurt the recovery.” And then he really committed the ultimate unforgiveable sin by hinting that “he preferred a change in the White House.”
It was all of this you see, not a serial and systemic history of JPMorgan breaking the law, “that gave the regulators motive to dislike Mr. Dimon...”
...
...Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University Law School in Michigan must have had a similar near miss with hot coffee upon reading the editorial. Professor Henning penned an 1100-word treatise for the New York Times yesterday, making the fact-based case that JPMorgan is a “recidivist” law breaker that promises to go straight but never does.
First the professor details the sordid history of settlements and charges against the bank:
In just the past two months:
• $410 million settlement on charges of manipulating electric markets [charging as much as 80 times the going rate];
• $920 million settlement related to the London Whale derivatives trading scheme [which saw losses of over $6 billion using the bank’s depositor monies];
In the last decade:
• $135 million to settle charges of aiding the accounting fraud at Enron;
• $25 million penalty and $647 million forfeiture in termination fees to settle charges related to illegal payments to win bond business from Jefferson County, Alabama;
• $153 million in penalties and forfeited profits for misleading investors in a synthetic derivatives deal….
Ms. Martens is just getting started, and I strongly encourage a read of her entire piece, which you may access by clicking upon the link, above.
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While Martens notes just a small portion of the bank’s most recent transgressions in her bullet points, immediately above, a few months ago, one-time Kossack and freelance journalist David Dayen provided us with a much lengthier reminder of the bank's recidivism, in another (but still partial) list of JPMC’s sociopathological “accomplishments,” as noted here (from my May 13th post)...
...Independent blogger and one-time Kossack David Dayen recently noted this about JPMorgan Chase…
Mirabile Dictu! JP Morgan Finally on Regulatory Hot Seat for Widespread Control Failures and Alleged Lying by Blythe Masters Under Oath
David Dayen
Naked Capitalism
May 3rd, 2013
…The fact that JP Morgan is in hot water isn’t news. Josh Rosner revealed in an extensive report released in early March that the bank had paid out over $8.5 billion in fines since 2009, nearly 12% of its net income, for violations across virtually all of its operations. This account showed the carefully cultivated picture of JP Morgan as a well-managed operation was an artful fabrication. As Dave Dayen wrote here in his overview:
….as you read the report, it’s hard to see the bank as anything but a criminal racket just days away from imploding, were it not propped up by implicit bailout guarantees and light-touch regulators. Rosner paints a picture of a corporation saddled with pervasive internal control problems, which end up costing shareholders, and which “could materially impact profitability in the future.”
….It’s hard to summarize all of the documented instances in this report of JPM has been breaking the law, but here’s my best shot….
Bank Secrecy Act violations;
Money laundering for drug cartels;
Violations of sanction orders against Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and former Liberian strongman Charles Taylor;
Violations related to the Vatican Bank scandal (get on this, Pope Francis!);
Violations of the Commodities Exchange Act;
Failure to segregate customer funds (including one CFTC case where the bank failed to segregate $725 million of its own money from a $9.6 billion account) in the US and UK;
Knowingly executing fictitious trades where the customer, with full knowledge of the bank, was on both sides of the deal;
Various SEC enforcement actions for misrepresentations of CDOs and mortgage-backed securities;
The AG settlement on foreclosure fraud;
The OCC settlement on foreclosure fraud;
Violations of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act;
Illegal flood insurance commissions;
Fraudulent sale of unregistered securities;
Auto-finance ripoffs;
Illegal increases of overdraft penalties;
Violations of federal ERISA laws as well as those of the state of New York;
Municipal bond market manipulations and acts of bid-rigging, including violations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act;
Filing of unverified affidavits for credit card debt collections (“as a result of internal control failures that sound eerily similar to the industry’s mortgage servicing failures and foreclosure abuses”);
Energy market manipulation that triggered FERC lawsuits;
“Artificial market making” at Japanese affiliates;
Shifting trading losses on a currency trade to a customer account;
Fraudulent sales of derivatives to the city of Milan, Italy;
Obstruction of justice (including refusing the release of documents in the Bernie Madoff case as well as the case of Peregrine Financial).
In other words, the New York Times account is a pale rendition of the rap sheet against the bank…
And, if you’ve been following JPMC over the past few years, even Dayen’s only giving us a sampling of a much lengthier list.
Speaking of lengthier lists, here’s one which I’m sure will account for a good two seconds’ worth of the discussion/agenda at the WH meeting, later this morning…
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(Diarist's Note: Blogger George Washington provides a blanket authorization for reproduction of their posts, in their entirety and with proper attribution, as noted on the top page of their website.)
5 Years After the Financial Crisis, The Big Banks Are Still Committing Massive Crimes
Washington’s Blog
September 19, 2013
Preface: Not all banks are criminal enterprises. The wrongdoing of a particular bank cannot be attributed to other banks without proof. But – as documented below – many of the biggest banks have engaged in unimaginably bad behavior.
YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT THEY'VE DONE...
Here are just some of the improprieties by big banks over the last century (you’ll see that many shenanigans are continuing today):
• Laundering money for terrorists (the HSBC employee who blew the whistle on the banks’ money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels says that the giant bank is still laundering money, saying: “The public needs to know that money is still being funneled through HSBC to directly buy guns and bullets to kill our soldiers …. Banks financing … terrorists affects every single American.” He also said: “It is disgusting that our banks are STILL financing terror on 9/11 2013“. And see this)
• Funding the Nazis
• Financing illegal arms deals, and funding the manufacture of cluster bombs (and see this and this) and other arms which are banned in most of the world
• [http://www.washingtonsblog.com/... Launching a coup against the President of the United States
• Handling money for rogue military operations
• Laundering money for drug cartels. See this, this, this and this (indeed, drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis). A whistleblower said: “America is losing the drug war because our banks are [still financing the cartels“], and “Banks financing drug cartels … affects every single American“. And see this.)
• Engaging in mafia-style big-rigging fraud against local governments. See this, this and this
• Shaving money off of virtually every pension transaction they handled over the course of decades, stealing collectively billions of dollars from pensions worldwide. Details here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here
• Manipulating aluminum and copper prices
• Manipulating gold prices … on a daily basis
• Charging “storage fees” to store gold bullion … without even buying or storing any gold . And raiding allocated gold accounts
• Committing massive and pervasive fraud both when they initiated mortgage loans and when they foreclosed on them (and see this)
• Pledging the same mortgage multiple times to different buyers. See this, this, this, this and this. This would be like selling your car, and collecting money from 10 different buyers for the same car
• Cheating homeowners by gaming laws meant to protect people from unfair foreclosure
• Committing massive fraud in an $800 trillion dollar market which effects everything from mortgages, student loans, small business loans and city financing
• Manipulating the hundred trillion dollar derivatives market
• Engaging in insider trading of the most important financial information
• Pushing investments which they knew were terrible, and then betting against the same investments to make money for themselves. See this, this, this, this and this
• Engaging in unlawful “frontrunning” to manipulate markets. See this, this, this, this, this and this
• Engaging in unlawful “Wash Trades” to manipulate asset prices. See this and this
• Manipulating corporate bonds through derivatives schemes
• Otherwise manipulating markets. And see this
• Participating in various Ponzi schemes. See this
• Charging veterans unlawful mortgage fees
• Helping the richest to illegally hide assets
• Cooking their books (and see this)
• Bribing and bullying ratings agencies to inflate ratings on their risky investments
• Violently cracking down on peaceful protesters
The executives of the big banks invariably pretend that the hanky-panky was only committed by a couple of low-level rogue employees. But studies show that most of the fraud is committed by management.
Indeed, one of the world’s top fraud experts – professor of law and economics, and former senior S&L regulator Bill Black – says that most financial fraud is “control fraud”, where the people who own the banks are the ones who implement systemic fraud. See this, this and this.
Even the bank with the reputation as being the “best managed bank” in the U.S., JP Morgan, has engaged in massive fraud. For example, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report today quoting an examiner at the Office of Comptroller of the Currency – JPMorgan’s regulator – saying he felt the bank had “lied to” and “deceived” the agency over the question of whether the bank had mismarked its books to hide the extent of losses. And Joshua Rosner – noted bond analyst, and Managing Director at independent research consultancy Graham Fisher & Co – notes that JP Morgan had many similar anti money laundering laws violations as HSBC, failed to segregate accounts a la MF Global, and paid almost 12% of its 2009-12 net income on regulatory and legal settlements.But at least the big banks do good things for society, like loaning money to Main Street, right?
Actually:
• The big banks no longer do very much traditional banking. Most of their business is from financial speculation. For example, less than 10% of Bank of America’s assets come from traditional banking deposits. Instead, they are mainly engaged in financial speculation and derivatives. (and see this)
• The big banks have slashed lending since they were bailed out by taxpayers … while smaller banks have increased lending. See this, this and this
• A huge portion of the banks’ profits comes from taxpayer bailouts. For example, 77% of JP Morgan’s net income comes from taxpayer subsidies
• The big banks are looting, killing the economy … and waging war on the people of the world
• And our democracy and republican form of government as well
Indeed, top experts say that fraud caused the Great Depression and the 2008 crisis, and that failing to rein in fraud is dooming our economy.
We can almost understand why Thomas Jefferson warned:
And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies ….
John Adams said:
Banks have done more injury to religion, morality, tranquillity, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they have done or ever will do good.
And Lord Acton argued:
The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks.
No wonder a stunning list of prominent economists, financial experts and bankers say we need to break up the big banks.
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Yes, it looks like Jamie Dimon’s in for another long day, today.
But, rest assured, just 36 hours after the government shutdown commenced, it’s nice to see—even if it is just one meeting--that the folks that “run the place” are back on the job!
Then again, it is only one meeting. But, for at least a few moments, today, we’ll get a quick reminder that things might be returning to normal in D.C. faster than we’d thought!
So, until it’s official--and while millions of kids might go without food in the interim, especially if the shutdown lasts more than 10 or 14 days--and our government returns to some degree of normalcy, furloughed government employees might not be able to read their emails, but at least the NSA will be able to read them!
Throughout it all, it’s good to know that the NSA will still be on the job, standing guard, listening to our calls without missing a beat, making sure we’re safe from terrorist harm.
Damn those intransigent Republicans! Forward!
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