Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Peter Henning, Professor of Law, Wayne State University Law School
It’s come to the point that one must forego sipping anything hot while reading the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal in order to avoid gasps of hot liquid spewing onto one’s skin or business attire.
On September 27, 2013, the Wall Street Journal ran the headline “Robbery at J.P. Morgan” over an unsigned editorial. Curious to see if the Occupy Wall Street crowd might have made off with Jamie Dimon’s Presidential cufflinks, I read on.
The next sentence was gasp-worthy: “Government lawyers are backing up the truck again at J.P. Morgan Chase to extract another haul from the country’s largest bank.” And, mind you, it’s not because J.P. Morgan has broken the law or done anything seriously wrong, it’s because the bank is the “Obama Administration’s favorite Wall Street target” because of its independent-thinking CEO, Jamie Dimon, who “keeps deviating from the Obama script.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial scribes then proceed to outline a full blown political conspiracy against Jamie Dimon: “First the CEO explained how the rhetoric about the Dodd-Frank financial reform wasn’t matched by its costly and confusing regulations,” then he patriotically opined that “Washington’s antibusiness rhetoric was a drag on confidence that hurt the recovery.” And then he really committed the ultimate unforgiveable sin by hinting that “he preferred a change in the White House.”
It was all of this you see, not a serial and systemic history of JPMorgan breaking the law, “that gave the regulators motive to dislike Mr. Dimon.”
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