We now live in a world in which we're trying to recover from the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. And we just learned today that JP Morgan Chase lost two billion dollars in reckless trading, and yet at the same moment they are trying to argue that we need to undercut financial reforms before they're ever put in place.
I want to make clear my position on this. I believe we need a strong cop on the beat to make sure no one steals your purse on main street or your pension on Wall Street. That's where we need to be.
Scott Brown would likely beg to disagree. I'm sure that he thinks there should be a strong cop on the beat to make sure no one steals his financial benefactors' wallets as they saunter down Wall Street, all the while giving them leave to pillage your pension and your Social Security while make gobs of money off your parents' health care needs and your chidrens' educations.
What I really want to know, though, is if JP Morgan Chase lost $2 billion in some kind of hedging-gone-wild scheme, who won? Doesn't seem like anyone in particular is claiming to having cleaned Scott Brown's Wall Street pal and Chase CEO Jamie Dimon's clock, although Dimon is eating some humble pie.
Dimon had to face stock analysts and reporters on Thursday and confess to a "flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored" trading strategy that lost a surprise $2 billion...
...the loss came in derivatives trading, the complex financial maneuvering that -- on a much greater scale -- led to large losses and dissolved banks during the financial crisis.
Too bad the winners probably weren't the American Association to Stop Foreclosures (especially likely as they doesn't exist, but still). That would have been cool. After all, at $50,000 a pop, they could have saved 39,900 people from being foreclosed on by Dimon, with $5,000,000 left over to donate to Warren's campaign.
Look at it this way: even if a $2,000,000,000 loss isn't enough to get Dimon fired, surely financing Warren's campaign to the tune of $5,000,000 would be.
A member of the 99% can dream, can't he?
2:49 PM PT:
Elizabeth Warren @elizabethforma
JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon should resign from the NY Federal Reserve Bank Board. http://bit.ly/...