I was glad to get the chance to discuss the misnamed JP Morgan settlement on Democracy Now yesterday. It’s misnamed because it’s not a single settlement, but a series of settlements, mainly if not entirely FHFA and state actions, bundled together, plus fines. Plus as you will see soon that’s far from the only way it’s been misreported!
I had been booked to get a much bigger chunk of the hour, but if you saw the show, Glenn Greenwald was up first, and he likes giving detailed and energetic answers, and Amy Goodman was happy to give him as much rope as he wanted. So on the one hand, I only got a few minutes on the main show. The flip side is coming right after Greenwald probably means I got more viewers than I would have most days.
We had a second, much longer chat for her website, so I hope you’ll look at both clips.
30 comments
Comments are closed.
Yves or anyone
I apologise for taking up space with this education question. But how does one go about becoming a financial analyst? What degrees do you have to do so you can understand it all? And also be able to apply it to investments as a commoner if possible?
I just want to learn how to be able to rattle off answers like Yves does. I read nakedcapitalism every day, yet if someone asked me to cogently explain any of this stuff, I’d be like “Spuh?”
The dilemma in resisting the temptation of biting the troll bait is that the cry for help might be authentic. Which is it…JJ?
Alejandro
I’am genuinely asking for guidance. I’am really uneducated.
You could try going through all the economics tutorials at http://www.khanacademy.org/.
I’m no expert myself, but if you believe Yves, Steve Keen (_Debunking Economics_), Richard Wolf(sp), so many others… a standard economics degree is not the route to enlightenment. Maybe if you go to UMKC, and learn MMT… that might be the ticket.
otherwise- Maybe try neweconomicperspectives.org, and see their sidebar at right with primers on MMT…
Thanks for the tips guys.
Yves yielded more pertinent information on the subject than you’d get from watching the corporate press for years. Better to know the truth than getting mislead although the politicians and the mainstream press operate on the opposite principle.
Re: that one Countrywide exec that got “thrown under the bus” — I wonder how you end up pulling that short straw, out of all the many many mid-level execs who DON’T get thrown under the bus.. Maybe it happens to people who never fit in, who were malcontents or outsider-ish? Or just random bad luck?
Yves did a fantastic job. As regular DNow viewers have noticed, Amy has a habit of punking out the last segment. Mr. Greenwald rarely pauses to take a breath. HERE’S HOPE YVES GETS @ least 1/2 the hour next time!
Good Job, I watched this news show on our local public TV station, the 2nd more alternative one, but didn’t understand what happened to your appearance, since it was so short. I’m glad to have seen the bulk of it online. You do need to be able to rework bizspeak, like prop trading. I don’t know what would be best, but at least saying the entire phrase, a proprietary trading desk where the bank trades for itself, and not for the profit of its clients, even if it is using the clients money in these short term accounts, the float. It just seems to beget more bizspeak, but I’m sure you can come across with descriptive precision and be crystal clear. You managed to work in green colored chopped meat, so I know you want to get people’s awareness provoked without inducing the ‘eyes glazed over’ syndrome. Again, good job.
Very informative segments. Granted he wasn’t all that prepared for the Merkley questions, but an arrogant b*****d such as Dimon knew that when all is said and done, he would pay the fine and continue on with the looting business.
I’ll bet Erin Burnett would love to have Yves on in the future:).
Nice job Yves, thanks. Even if they get found guilty of the most obvious and blatant crimes they get bailed. How can we win when when they lose they win? FDIC is going to swallow billions, meaning taxpayers. As you said this in no way comes close to recompense for the harm they caused – and still cause.
You made your points precisely, Yves….!!
Dr. Sankarshan Acharya
http://www.pro-prosperity.com/UnconstitutionalityOfShortsellingAndPrivateMarketClearing.html
http://www.kccllc.net/documents/0812229/0812229100615000000000011.pdf
“$140B, derived from cash flows on the WMB asserts acquired by JPMC or a total of $140+5.5 = $145.58.”
“…JPMC has stated its 2009 Earnings: $100.434 Billons
JPMC has reported its 2009 EBIT: $64.390B
JPMC has reported 2009 Tax: $4.415
JPMC’s 2009 Cash flow (for Debt & Equity) = EBIT-Tax = $59.975B
JPMC’s 2009 Cash flow as a percent of earnings = 59.975/100.434= .6
JPMC’s CEO states in his March 26,2010 memo to shareholders about $30B of earnings from WMI assets it received through FDIC Receiver in 2009. JPMC can be asked to reconfirm this figure.
Yves, you mentioned that JPM will make several Billion dollars after this settlement (contracts mostly in the secondary market). Do we know exactly how much?
Dimon’s $28B reserve fund set aside for this? How much of this was on top of bailouts, discount window borrowing and the like?
Lastly, you could further discuss or point me to a discussion of the REPO market turning into a prop trading desk. This is very interesting and helpful. Well done.
“JPMORGAN FALLS 0.6% AS DOW JONES SAYS DOJ DEAL AT RISK
It appears the ‘breakdown’ is over JPMorgan’s demands that they offset payments to the DoJ from the FDIC fund (i.e. they wanted to use funds set aside from FDIC insurance to fund this penalty). DoJ lawyers are not amused (for now)…”
Courtesy Zerohedge
Yves, thank you again for explaining things in terms the layperson can understand, and taking down the “poor Dimon” meme. That has been salt in a very deep wound for me.
Do I understand poster Ron’s info to mean that JPM made an extra $145B off of waMu assets. Is that in 2009 alone?
Also Yves, with all due respect, and at the risk of sounding like a suck up, you really did look great on the TV. Your skin is luminescent. Must be your vegetarian lifestyle.
Even better today. Impeach Obama and prosecute Eric Holder for felony-fraud. Let the tough New York judges take care of Dimon. (Please, Schneiderman, just stay away.)
The Fed will arrange to have middle-class taxpayers pay the fines and reimburse JPM triple for its expenses.
Somebody wake me up when a TBTF bank has been nationalized and the top floors have been bussed off to Sing Sing. Now that would be something. That would rank up there with the Second Coming.
I suspect it is Amy’s interview style, but I found her feigned ignorance annoying. I would hope that you (Yves) have an opportunity to discuss the implications of TBTF, Too Big to Prosecute, the scale of finance as a component of the global economy, on the very concept of democracy. Let me be clear. While we generally term the current crisis as an economic and financial crisis, at its heart, it is a crisis of governance. It seems that excessive secrecy, security, and militancy are easily recognized as threats to democracy, but the financial oligarchy, that cohort of 1%ers that is undermining democracy and our social order, work in such an ununderstandable, byzantine world, that Amy doesn’t recognize them as the threats they are. Hence, Greenwald gets 30 minutes while you get 5.
I know you have been involved in Occupy, and the miniscule left-leaning segment of the media covered that fairly well, but it is well past time that a well-versed financial analyst should have to parse her words so that her interviewer and audience can comprehend the simplest financial terms. Again, this interview leads me to call for requiring at least 2 semesters of finance/economics to obtain a high school diploma. We need to learn our oppressor’s language. I see our current ignorance as a tool for subjugation, exactly like the pre-Civil War South Carolina law that forbid teaching negroes to read.
Outstanding reading of JPMs take-down of WaMu in a Court Document;
Project West
12/14/2009 1997 Debtors’ Motion for an Order Pursuant to Bankruptcy Rule 2004 and Local Bankruptcy Rule 2004-1 Directing the Examination of Witnesses and Production of Documents from Knowledgeable Parties 29120 k 825 Pages
http://www.kccllc.net/wamu/document/0812229091214000000000008
Its a big file!
More from Dr. Sankarshan Acharya regarding JPM and WaMu
http://www.pro-prosperity.com/UnconstitutionalityOfShortsellingAndPrivateMarketClearing.html
Good showing–very enlightening. It’s interesting the mainstream media often throws its hands up and flutters them and says “oh it’s too complicated” when it comes to the financial crises. The crisis if fairly easy to understand compared to say, the situation in Syria with all the cross-currents. The issues are simple and can be reduced to one word “fraud” and fraud at the highest level.
Dimon, in the bit they showed has no respect for Congress because, he knows as well as I do, that he outranks these people including the AG and the President. What many people don’t know, also, is that these big banks are tied into the intelligence and organized crime communities as well.
Interestingly enough in this case as it pertains to that rotten Di-mon CEO of JP Morgan, the MSM are remarkably clear, at least on CNBC.
It is remarkable how the situation is presented there. Today even with Hank Paulson and the Goldman CEO, they both asserted that Dimon basically did the government & FDIC a favor in buying WaMu. You’d expect that from such insiders but the pundits and reporters are waving their pom-poms with gusto. They generally refer to all of this as a big DOJ ‘witch-hunt’ and ‘persecution’ of honest knaves, er, bankers and CEO’s.
A rather fascinating construct in manufacturing warped realities.
I feel that the single most important thing for the American people to understand is the political nature of all mainstream media outlets. All of these outlets political organizations that pretend to report the truth. CNBC has a particular point of view representing Wall Street and other outlets have other groups they serve.
The absolutely universal cheerleading the mainstream does in every lead up to war is well-known–the Syria gas crisis showed this most dramatically a few months ago.
Nice job Yves.
The pissing and moaning for Jamie and JPM are laughable. I wonder if the talking heads on CNBC and the editors at the WSJ realize how idiotic they look. They are living in a smaller and smaller bubble. It’ll be interesting to see what they do when it pops.
Great to see you on Amy’s show….
Tape it every morning……
Yes, you were kind of cut off….but, hopefully you can make a longer segment next time……
the extended version, or the after-dinner coffee, should be up on DNow’s website.
Liked seeing Jamie Dimon getting rattled in the Congressional hearing and Jeff Merkley telling him ‘this is not your hearing’ rather than something like ‘we all have a lot to learn from you sir’
Eric Holder doesn’t get it by holding a private meeting with him but Yves does by calling out his ‘dismissive’ attitude and that he is a ‘protected’ person.
Also nice to connect the dots with the Federal govt stepping in to backstop the money market funds to protecting JP Morgan’s repo exposure.
Keep up the pressure. These problems are just beginning to unravel and high rollers like Jamie Dimon may find their support systems thinner than they’d like.
He walks in with private security when he should be walking in with US Marshals…