Bankster Politics – Obama Can’t Knock The Hustle

When JP Morgan announced the latest financial crisis, and it is a crisis, Obama couldn’t wait to go on TV and publicly support his favorite bankster capo, Jamie Dimon.  

What does Obama, a far worse president than George Bush in my estimation, know about banking to be able to make those statements and do so credibly?  I would say just about zero.  Well, other than the personal education Dimon has given him through his large number of trips to the White House for secret meetings with Obama.  I’m sure political donations have nothing to do with those meetings.  Nor do any discussions about pandering and weak regulation.  I’m sure Dimon was invited because he’s a brilliant banker and they passed the time drinking tea and eating crumpets.  Obama has been given the best education on banking money can buy.  Lobbyist money.  Secret education.  Bankster education.

Obviously no one is perfect but I’m not really sure what kind of person can look into the camera and tell us that JP Morgan is one of the best managed banks and Jamie Dimon is one of the smartest bankers in our nation after the countless crises Dimon has created.  That includes the repeal of Glass Steagall that he most certainly helped his mentor jam through our political system with the help of a few hundred million dollars in lobbyist bribes.  

I tend to look at performance rather than political rhetoric when I want to determine the best CEOs in our banking system.   There are far fewer banks in our country than there used to be but I would guess if we add in credit unions, there are about 15-20,000 banking CEOs in our nation.  Let’s say 15,000 to give Dimon a chance to achieve a higher performance rating.  Out of 15,000 banking CEOs in this country, 14,997 of them never lost $5 billion.  The exceptions being Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and JP Morgan.  Out of those 15,000 only a handful needed a bailout by the Federal Reserve in 2008.  So, from a performance standpoint, Dimon is in the bottom two one hundredths of one percent of CEOs as far as performance.  But, his pay ranks him in the top one one hundredth of one percent of banking CEO compensation. 

Where I come from, which isn’t Harvard where both Obama and Dimon graduated into the world of clubby cronyism, and on Wall Street and Washington where systemic incompetence is rewarded through that cronyism, Dimon wears a dunce cap.  A gold-plated dunce cap.   He has proven himself to be one of the worst CEOs in our banking system.  Maybe one of the worst CEOs in the world.  Just the facts.  Not the rhetoric.

Dimon’s close ties to Obama, whom he knew well when both were based in Chicago, were at moments tested by Obama’s feints into populism, but fellow Chicagoans Daley and Rahm Emanuel, who preceded Daley as chief of staff, made it clear that disagreements between the White House and Dimon were merely rhetorical. How much more influence could Dimon have wanted than having his former lobbyist controlling the president’s schedule?
It was a charade: Dimon pretended to welcome some banking regulation and Obama responded with the weakest of reforms.