Courtesy of Pam Martens.
James Freeman, Assistant Editor of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, Previously Referred to the JPMorgan $13 Billion Settlement as a “Plunder by Washington”
Yesterday, Emily Glazer and Christina Rexrode penned an article for the Wall Street Journal on the regulatory focus that is coming to bear on the culture in the biggest Wall Street banks. (We’d link to the story did it not have a paywall blocking the contents.)
Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Gerard Baker gave the article a plug in his column yesterday with a jab – not at the banks but at the regulators: “The banking sector, already under fierce regulatory scrutiny since the financial crisis that has resulted in tens of billions of dollars in fines, faces a new and apparently even more arbitrary intervention from the regulators. Our story looks at how the issue of ‘culture’ is taking on added urgency as U.S. banks await feedback expected around March from the Fed’s annual ‘stress tests,’ which are supposed to ensure that firms will be able to deal with another financial crisis without government assistance…” (Italic emphasis added.)
The words chosen by Baker send the following message to Wall Street: even though you caused the greatest economic collapse to your country since the Great Depression, you didn’t deserve “fierce regulatory scrutiny”; despite your serial crime spree since that collapse, regulators have one hell of a nerve trying to pull back the curtain on the culture you’re breeding inside your secretive, financial Petri dish; but, pay no heed to these nosy jackals, you can always count on the Wall Street Journal opinion pages to shoot the messenger and cover your jaded backsides.
Baker’s barbs at the regulators was in perfect symmetry with a Wall Street Journal editorial that appeared on October 20, 2013, a month before JPMorgan settled with regulators for $13 billion over its packaging of bogus mortgages which it had peddled to unwary investors. The stunning, unsigned editorial was headlined, “The Morgan Shakedown,” and accused regulators of “confiscating roughly half of a company’s annual earnings for no other reason than because they can and because they want to appease their left-wing populist allies.”
In an earlier video clip on September 25, 2013, a Wall Street Journal editorial page editor, James Freeman, calls the Department of Justice’s monetary demands on JPMorgan a “plunder by Washington.”
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