Courtesy of Pam Martens
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
David Dayen of American Prospect has a must-read article. The headline and subhead read: “JPMorgan Gets Back Into the Electricity Business: An El Paso, Texas, electric utility is being purchased by an investment fund with deep, undisclosed ties to the big bank.”
Dayen is not buying into the idea that it’s an investment fund at JPMorgan that’s buying El Paso Electric, a publicly traded electric utility, but that the deal is simply being “laundered through an allegedly independent investment fund,” due to the fact that “48 executives of the investment fund are actually paid employees of JPMorgan….”
Why wouldn’t JPMorgan Chase want to admit that it plans to make an outright purchase of an electric utility company serving 429,000 customers in Texas and New Mexico?
For starters, the bank has been charged, and admitted to, three criminal felony counts within the past five years and is currently under a criminal probe for running a criminal enterprise out of its precious metals desk. And then there is their prior history ripping off electric customers.
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