Every day that passes, I get the sense that the people who run the big banks are even more brazen in their view that we, the people of the country, are just sharecroppers on their financial plantations. We work, we give--and they take and take...and, then, when they are done with us, we get tossed off their little island.
J.P. Morgan is competing with Bank of America for the honor of worst overlord on the plantation--and in this story one can grasp the reason for the rage we see in the land.
Kudos to the Times' Michael Powell for his story today about Mimi Pierre Johnson:
She and her husband bought their four-bedroom home in Elmont, on Long Island, for $413,000 in 2005. Then the recession blew in. Her husband lost his construction job, her real estate work slowed and their boiler wheezed and died. Their once-reasonable mortgage resembled a forbidding mountain.
She dialed her bank, JPMorgan Chase, seeking a lifeline. The bank gave her a temporary modification, but then canceled it. It lost her documents. It did not return her calls. Late fees and lawyer bills piled up. “I’m a Realtor; I know I’m doomed,” Ms. Johnson said. “But I want to say to Chase, ‘Hello!? The government gave you a bailout to help people like me.’ ”
Here, Ms. Johnson is mistaken. Presidents George W. Bush and Obama spent more than $1 trillion in taxpayer money to bail out our largest banks and corporations. But they exacted no quid pro quo. JPMorgan Chase has recorded splendid profits and has no obligation to bail out hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing dispossession. [emphasis added]
Whether you believe the banks should have gotten the money or not, and whether you believe that we should have let the banks fail (I do not because of the wreckage that would have caused), it is absolutely clear that this is an important point: they basically got the money with almost no strings attached. The banks were supposed to give the money out in the form of loans to help the economy--and they have not, by in large.
And, even worse, they have been completely willing to take taxpayer money--and throw people like Mimi Pierre Johnson out of their homes--homes that became endangered because of the financial implosion caused by the big banks.
Two more points to make from this story. First, too many of our elected officials have caved into the banks and are rushing to let them off the hook. What is the rush exactly? Aside from worrying about campaign contributions? I'd like to hear the explanation for that one.
That rush, as I've written before, has not been joined by New York's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who first would not sign off on the sweetheart deal with Bank of America, and then had to endure pressure from the Obama Administration and an unethical attack by a Fed officialbecause he refused to give the banks a pass.
The story of Mimi Pierre Johnson is a simple reinforcement that Schneiderman's choice to stand up for the people against the banks is the moral and courageous one.
Second, I have argued, along with other, that the reason we have such a toxic political environment right now is because of a "bi-partisan" problem. Not, as the Very Serious People would tell you a lack of "bi-partisan" compromise on the phony debt and deficit crisis.
No--it's the "bi-partisan" acceptance that nothing should happen of consequence to the bankers, and the rest of the criminals who destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth and millions of jobs.
No jail time.
Nada--other than little slaps on the wrist.
Why does J.P. Morgan treat people like Mimi Pierre Johnson as if they were dirt? Because J.P. Morgan paid a pathetic fine to settle securities charges--a fine that is almost a rounding, tax deductible error for a bank with billions of dollars in assets.
The message is: screw the people and pay a little fine.
Got the source of the anger now?