Senator Mark Warner, Leading Democratic Critic of Volcker Rule, Invests With J.P. Morgan Unit Likely Affected By Volcker Rule. Banking, Finance & Politics. JPMorgan's Lobbying Efforts. JP MORGAN CHASE & CO. Influence Explorer: Campaign Finance, Lobbying and Regulations. Tom Ferguson: Senate Banking Chair Calls Jamie Dimon to Testify -– But JP Morgan Chase is His Biggest Contributor! By Tom Ferguson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.
Cross posted from Alternet Holding your breath about the fallout from J. P. Morgan Chase’s derivatives losses? Yesterday, if you believed Politico, you could exhale. It’s good that the watchdog is barking, but we’d all better watch closely to see if it will bite. Alas, it gets worse. Don’t bank on the watchdog. Dimon Plays Humpty Dumpty to Congress. “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master— that’s all.” -Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland The House Financial Services Committee hearings on the losses in JP Morgan’s Chief Investment Office were an improvement over the Senate version, in that there was comparatively little fawning over Jamie Dimon and more earnest, even if not very successful, efforts to pry information from him (one wonders whether the fact that Chuck Schumer has been hitting Wall Street up for superPac donations was a contributing factor). Even some Republicans got a bit stroopy with him, including the Representative from Bank of America, Patrick McHenry. Let’s give a few examples of Dimon’s crude propaganda efforts.
At one point, Dimon tried calling making loans proprietary. Senators Grovel, Embarrass Themselves at Dimon Hearing. The Democrats Who Protect JP Morgan’s Incompetent Regulator. Matt Stoller is a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.
You can follow him at Last month, I reported on two amendments put forward in the House Financial Services Committee which would substantially limit the undemocratic power of the Federal Reserve and the national bank regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. They would subject these agencies to the regular appropriations process, meaning that Congress could cut off their funds if there were policy disagreements. Right now, the OCC gets its money from banks and the Fed prints its own budget (nice work if you can get it). The amendment put forward to bring the OCC into line with democracy was offered by Rep. This is especially useful to consider in light of the JP Morgan Chase debacle, because a key regulator of JP Morgan Chase is the OCC. In other words, protecting the OCC and the big banks can be laid at the feet of both the Republicans on the committee AND the seven Democrats who voted with the GOP.
Slobbering Senators Woo Dimon While They Gut Dodd-Frank. I often get asked a Wall Street variation of the Ronald Reagan 1980 campaign saw, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
To wit: Are we safer than we were four years ago? Will the 2010 Dodd-Frank law and the regulations that the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are busy writing and rewriting prevent a recurrence of the kind of financial meltdown that we experienced in 2007 and 2008? Just as in November 1980, the answer is easy: a resounding no. Neither Dodd-Frank nor the Volcker Rule nor bank-capital requirements nor the other regulations that will ultimately get written -- with a lot of help from Wall Street’s lawyers and lobbyists -- will change the behavior of the hundreds of thousands of bankers, traders and executives who work on Wall Street and who do the things every hour of every day that slowly but surely have had a tendency to lead to the collective action that cause financial crises.
Need some evidence? Corzine’s Folly.