Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase
Since last evening, corporate media has been in a fierce competition to spin another toothless settlement on Wall Street as a win for the new tough cop on the beat, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair, Mary Jo White. It takes quite the creative imagination to frame this as anything more than the continuance of Wall Street’s business model of looting billions and paying back millions. Crime is still the best profit center Wall Street has going for it — having thoroughly dissuaded its customers against trusting its advice on investments.
According to leaks, the settlement tab to JPMorgan Chase to make most of its civil regulatory problems disappear regarding the London Whale trades will be $700 to $800 million. (There still may be open criminal probes by the U.S. Justice Department and FBI. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission may bring its own civil enforcement action.) Using the Washington Post’s projection of $750 million, that represents 3.5 percent of the global banking behemoth’s profits from last year. A drop in the bucket.
The Washington Post attempts to salvage the pittance with this artful phrase: “The bank may make a rare declaration of wrongdoing in its agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which recently introduced a policy demanding admissions of misconduct in certain types of civil settlements, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.”
The Wall Street Journal spins it like this: “An acknowledgment of wrongdoing by the company in the London whale matter would be a high-profile win for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which under Chairman Mary Jo White has begun pushing for settlements that include such admissions.” The SEC has no criminal powers; only civil.
“Rare declaration of wrongdoing,” “high profile win”? Or first class sellout?
…
