Political Ruminations

Translation of Jamie Dimon’s Capitol Hill Testimony

Jamie Dimon, the current chairman, president, and chief executive officer of JPMorgan, is on Capitol Hill today giving his excuses for the recent JPMorgan meltdown to our do-nothing 112th Congress. This is, I remind you, the same Congress that fought to weaken the Dodd-Frank Act, and blankly refused any other protective measures for our economy after the enormous worldwide financial catastrophe caused by Republicans in 2008.

Charles P. Pierce with a translation of Dimon’s testimony today:

Translation from the original Ass-Coverish:

1) The people who worked for me didn't know what they were doing.

2) The people who worked for me didn't know what to do when things went bad because they didn't know what they were doing in the first place.

3) The people who worked for me didn't know how to manage the things that went bad because they didn't know what they were doing in the first place.

4) We were replacing some of the people who didn't know what they were doing in the first place with some new people who didn't know what they were doing in the first place, either.

And, 5) Jesus Christ On My Private Jet, I hired me some meatheads.

Republicans Love the Banksters

Not only would it essentially repeal President Obama’s Wall Street financial reform law, Dodd-Frank, but it would encourage more of the too-big-to-fail entities we bailed out in 2008. Ezra Klein via Bob Cesca:

On financial regulation, Paul Ryan’s 2013 budget basically cuts-and-pastes its recommendations from last year: it wants to repeal parts of Dodd-Frank that give new power to federal regulators to break up big banks, arguing that the regulations actually make bailouts more likely, not less so. Ryan isn’t proposing an alternative, however, so his plan to repeal the government’s new “resolution authority” would bring us back to the pre-Dodd Frank era — which was also, of course, the era in which bank bailouts proved necessary.

Under Wall Street reform, financial institutions that are deemed “systemically significant” are subject to a host of new regulations, including a new rule that requires them to submit “living wills” that explain what would happen if the firm went belly up. They’re required to submit such plans to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which has new authority to help liquidate troubled firms so as to avoid systemic catastrophe and prompt taxpayer bailouts.

Republicans (with the help of Bill Clinton who supported the repeal of Glass-Steagall) caused the financial crisis of 2008, and the repeal of Glass-Steagall allowed banks to become the behemoths that we now refer to as “to big to fail”.

Apparently, once wasn’t enough for the GOP.

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