This is the fanatical system we have allowed to rule our lives.
This is the mindset of the people who run the system.
And this is why the average person will never prosper under the system and the leadership of the sociopathic individual who run the system.
Zero Hedge
Jamie Dimon: “That’s Why I Am Richer Than You”
Well, let’s say if I steal 1Mil then I’ll pay $10K in fine…and I keep the change
And I’ll keep doing it over and over again…Not to mention NO criminal charges!!
There’s a reason why Wall Street is so “beloved” by 99% of the people, and that reason is today best summarized by Jamie Dimon’s ‘witty’ retort to Mike Mayo, perhaps the most hated banking analyst, who asked the JPM CEO a simple question – why affluent customers would not pick UBS over JPM due to a mismatch in capital ratios, to which Dimon’s response is even simpler: “that’s why I’m richer than you.”
No logic, no rationale: all about the bottom line, which to Jamie at least is all that matters.
As for Mr. Dimon’s pending application to purchase a Micronesian private island, we would surmise that the wealth mismatch is far more due to the too big fail banking system which means every time Mr. Dimon uses hundreds of billions in excess deposits to corner the IG9 market or to pursue any other uber-levered venture which blows up in his face even as the firm’s highly accurate VaR.xls spreadsheet outputs the RAND() function, the government, also known as JPM’s OpCo 1, will rapidly rush to bail him, and his riches, out.
There was a time when Jamie Dimon liked everyone to believe that his JPMorgan had a “fortress balance sheet”, that he was disgusted when the US government “forced” a bailout on it, and that no matter what the market threw its way it would be just fine, thanks. Then the London Whale came, saw, and promptly blew up the “fortress” lie. But while JPM’s precarious balance sheet was no surprise to anyone (holding over $50 trillion in gross notional derivatives will make fragile fools of the best of us), what has become a bigger problem for Dimon is that slowly but surely JPM has not only become a bigger litigation magnet than Bank of America, but questions are now emerging if all of the firm’s recent success wasn’t merely due to crime. Crime of the kind that “nobody accept or denies guilt” of course – i.e., completely victimless. Except for all the fines and settlements.
Here is a summary of JPM’s recent exorbitant and seemingly endless fines.
Date: April 2011
Amount: $56 million
Behavior: JPMorgan was one of several banks called out in a class-action lawsuit for overcharging or wrongfully foreclosing on active-duty military personnel. The company apologized, paid out $27 million in cash, cut interest rates on home loans and returned houses that were wrongfully foreclosed upon.
adual shift to inflation from deflation
Date: June 2011
Amount: $153.6 million
Behavior: The Securities and Exchange Commission sued JPMorgan for misleading buyers by allegedly failing to inform investors that a hedge fund assisted in picking and betting against securities in a collateralized debt obligation JPMorgan had sold in 2007. JPMorgan paid $153.6 million to settle the charges without admitting or denying the allegations.
Date: July 2011
Amount: $229 Million
Behavior: In response to a suit by federal and state authorities, JPMorgan settled allegations that it rigged the bidding process for reinvesting bond transactions that affected 31 state governments. The bank paid $229 million to settle the charges without admitting or denying the allegations.
Date: August 2011
Amount: $88.3 Million
Behavior: Talk about shady dealings. The Treasury Department alleged the banking giant violated sanction orders by conducting transactions with people or entities tied to Iran, Sudan, Cuba, and Liberia. JPMorgan Chase settled the charges and violations by paying $88.3 million civil penalty.
Date: February 2012
Amount: $5.29 Billion
Behavior: JPMorgan and four other major mortgage servicers agreed to pay a combined $25 billion to settle charges with state attorneys general, the Justice Department, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development relating to what Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna called years of “shoddy loan servicing, illegal robo-signing, and faulty foreclosure processing.” JPMorgan Chase’s share of the settlement came to $5.29 billion.
Date: February 2012
Amount: $110 million
Behavior: Along with Bank of America and a few smaller lenders, JPMorgan settled consumer litigation that claimed the banks processed checks by size—rather than by chronological order—so they could charge unwarranted overdraft fees.
Date: March 2012
Amount: $150 million
Behavior: After being sued by pension funds and investors for investing their funds in a risky structured investment vehicle that failed at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008, JPMorgan settled the suit without admitting wrongdoing.
Date: November 2012
Amount: $296.9 million
Behavior: The Securities and Exchange Commission charged JPMorgan with misleading investors about the quality of mortgages that underlay mortgage-backed securities it sold. The bank settled the charges without admitting or denying guilt.
Date: January 2013
Amount: Unclear
Behavior: Ten banks, including JPMorgan Chase, agreed to an $8.5 billion settlement with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve over “robo-signing” and other alleged abuses of the foreclosure process. The banks were to pay $3.3 billion to harmed borrowers and provide a combined of $5.2 billion in assistance in the form of principal reductions or mortgage modifications. JPMorgan Chase didn’t disclose its share of the settlement.
Date: March 2013
Amount: $100 million
Behavior: JPMorgan Chase agreed to return $546 million to former customers of MF Global Holdings, the investment firm run by former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine that collapsed in 2011. While it did not admit wrongdoing, JPMorgan had been threatened with a lawsuit if it didn’t return the cash that had been transferred from MF Global during the firm’s chaotic final days.
Today we can add the following:
Date: July 2013
Amount: $410 million
Behavior: FERC accuses JPM of manipulating energy prices. JPM “admitted the facts” it was charged with, but “neither admitted nor denied the violations.” Instead of being shut down like Enron for engaging in essentially the same activity if to a more modest degree, JPM is fined $410 million or 0.4% of its annual projected revenue of just under $100 billion.
Added across, these “fines” amount to $6.9 billion in fines.
These are only the violations that we know of. James Bianco points out that according to the NYT there are at least eight federal agencies currently investigating the bank, while according to Josh Rosner, JPM’s litigation expenses since 2009 have totaled $16 billion.
As Bianco summarizes, “Moral: when you cheat in big enough size, it’s legal.. That is what Jeff Skilling and Jon Corzine did not understand. What they did was ok if it was 10 times larger.”
And we would also like to add that while JPM has tarnished, manipulated and otherwise engaged in illegal activity in virtually every market, it is an absolute certainty that the bank has done none, zip, zilch, no manipulation whatsoever of the precious metals, read gold and silver, market. Because that would be below even Jamie Dimon.
Finally, speaking of Dimon, we finally know the true reason why he is “richer than you.”
The Federal Reserve Is Bailing Out FOREIGN Banks … More than the American People or Economy
We’ve extensively documented that the Federal Reserve is intentionally locking up bank money so that it is not loaned out to Main Street. Specifically – due to Fed policy – 81.5% of all money created by quantitative easing is sitting there gathering dust in the form of “excess reserves” … instead of being loaned out to help Main Street or the American economy.
And we’ve extensively documented that a large percentage of the bailouts went to foreign banks (and see this and this). (A 2010 Fed audit also revealed that of the $1.25 trillion of mortgage-backed securities the central bank purchased after the housing bubble popped, some $442.7 billion – more than 35% – were bought from foreign banks.
It turns out that these themes are all connected.
Specifically, most of the Fed-created money which is gathering dust is actually being held by foreign banks.
Excess reserves are the surplus of reserves against deposits and certain other liabilities that depository institutions (loosely called “banks”) hold above the amounts that the Board requires within ranges set by federal law. The general requirement is that covered institutions maintain reserves at least equal to ten percent of liabilities payable on demand. For the first time in history, there is statistical evidence that as much as one-half or more of excess reserves are held for United States banking offices of foreign banks.
Zero Hedge reports today:
As per last night’s [Federal Reserve] H.8 update, commercial bank deposits rose by $94 billion in the week ended July 17: the fourth largest weekly increase in history …. This took total commercial bank deposits to an all-time high of $9.54 trillion.
The entire difference can be attributed to the $2+ trillion in excess reserves created by the Fed since the start of the [global financial crisis]
To nobody’s surprise, global liquidity (as created by the Fed) continues to be infinitely fungible, and increasingly benefits offshore-based (mainly European) banks.
(And see this earlier report from Zero Hedge).
We’ve repeatedly noted that loose Federal Reserve policy benefits of the super-elite at the expense of Main Street, the U.S. economy or the average American.
It now appears that the policy benefits foreign super-elite even more than the elites in the U.S.
The Federal Reserve – like many parts of the U.S. government – are sucking the prosperity out of America … and shipping it abroad.
source: www.folowthebots.com and zerohedge.com