I may make this a recurring feature. Add this to the list of modern torture devices. Testifying before a Senate committee:
JPMorgan’s chief executive Jamie Dimon is appearing before the Senate Banking Committee in Washington, D.C. this morning to testify about the $2 billion trading loss the bank revealed last month.
On May 10th, JPMorgan disclosed a multi-billion dollar trading loss in the bank’s Chief Investment Office in London related to derivatives trades.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Justice Department and the FBI are all said to be looking into the trading loss.
The modern equivalent of the rack. It’s used to extract campaign contributions from Wall Street bankers.
It works! In aggregate the members of the Senate Banking Committee have extracted $877,798.00 in campaign contributions from JPMorgan alone.
Paying $900,000 when you lose $2 billion? What do you have to pay the Committee when you actually make money?
Anyone wonder why I hate bigger government?
The bigger the government, the more of a swamp it becomes, where deals are parsed and egregious transactions seem to get lost in all the murky rhetoric.
Why people continually want government to grow is beyond me. It’s like adding too much weight to one’s body, which ends up belaboring it’s healthy functioning.
The same is true of everything: businesses, non-profit organizations, church hierarchies, hospitals, you name it. That’s the reason for my preference for smallness.
I’m pretty sure the shareholders would approve of more torture:
Jamie Dimon speaks, makes JPMorgan shareholders $2 billion richer:
I’m more concerned about members of that committee so ignorant of how the banking system works they can say:
“So I guess if I could just leave you with any one thing, if you could come back this time next year and talk about how the industry has put together large-scale, best-practice committees, that would help us keep banking as a private enterprise rather than as a government institution.”
I don’t know what would be worse: a belief that banking really is private, or being aware of the Reserve System and thinking it SHOULD be treated as private.
They don’t need to know anything. They’re senators. In fact, not knowing anything is practically a prerequisite for the job.
Dave Schuler,
A radio commentator has a favorite phase: “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.” It’s in sync with your comment for a ‘preference for smallness.’
Heh…have you been reading Radley Balko?
They don’t need to know anything. They’re senators. In fact, not knowing anything is practically a prerequisite for the job.
Thank God that we had out choice of Senators for President in 2008.