Thursday, February 13, 2014

The Capo of Capos

Assume that you ran a business that was found guilty of bribery, forgery, perjury, defrauding homeowners, fleecing investors, swindling consumers, cheating credit card holders, violating U.S. trade laws and cheating American servicemen and women. Can you even imagine the kind of punishment you'd get? How about zero?  No jail time. Not even a fine.  You still get to stay on as boss and get a payrise and a bonus , to boot. Plus, you gets to keep all its ill-gotten gains from the crime spree, the mansions, the cars, all the stock options. Outrageous.  Absurd. Not if  you are,  Jamie Dimon, the CEO (the Godfather capo) of JPMorgan Chase, America's biggest bank and  apparently too big to subject to the laws of the land. Rather than reproach him, his colleagues  and accomplices in crime rewarded him, raising his pay by some 70 percent to $20 million!  New Even the New York Times noted that, "To ordinary Americans," such a reward for poor performance "may seem curious."

The bizarre  thing about Wall Street Banksters is that they make a killing by defrauding millions of homeowners, customers, investors and taxpayers — then, when caught, they wonder why they are not loved. Dimon  rather than express remorse has been running a feel-sorry-for-me campaign, claiming that he's the real victim. Jamie says that everything from Wall Street's bailout to the pay of top bank executives have made people envious and jealous of bankers' success. This anti-Wall Street sentiment has spread through the public, prompting politicians and regulators to pander to this populist anger by persecuting enterprising bankers like him. He called the whole thing "unfair."

This guy builds bank profits through rip-offs, piles billions of dollars in fines on the backs of shareholders, pockets $20 million in personal pay for one year's work — and he wants us to weep for him? Being a Wall Street crime boss, you see, means never having to say you're sorry, for it's always someone else's fault.

Adapted and abridged from here

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/12

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