JP Morgan CEO Jaime Dimon appeared before the Senate banking committee on the recent $2 billion + (estimates up to $7 billion) gambling loss with the very kind of financial instruments responsible for the last disaster. And Republicans couldn't have been more obsequious and submissive had they asked for Vaseline and bent over. Jon Stewart shows clips of Bob Corker and Jim DeMint basically jerking Dimon off in preparation for going all the way down. Mike Johanns says to Dimon: "You're just huge." Stewart responds, speaking as Johanns: "I don't mean to embarrass you, but staggering. Is there a Mrs. Dimon?"
In the second clip Stewart berates DeMint for saying Congress loses more money every day than Dimon lost of the bad deal. He inquires whether DeMint thinks spending money is the same as losing money. He mocks him by acting like DeMint while saying: "You know I had $10 million here yesterday but now all I see is this fucking highway." It's just more evidence that Republicans don't understand public investment in things that help all of us; it's just lost money. Let's have private investment take over everything, like they'd build that highway for every one's use out of the goodness of their heart.
One might wonder why they are inclined this way. Perhaps that JP Morgan is the biggest campaign donor to many members of the banking committee? So what does that money buy? The Republicans in the meeting are asking for Dimon on advice as to how to write legislation that oversees Dimon! Corker complained that the Dodd-Frank bill has not made our banking system safer. And yet Corker is the one that voted against provisions banning naked default swaps, keeping banks from getting to big to fail and opposed reinstating Glass-Steagall. Stewert: "It must be fun being a Republican because you get the fun of breaking shit and the joy of complaining that the shit you just broke doesn't work."
Yes, the Republicans not only blew Dimon but they swallowed, hook line and sinker. And the mess is written all over their faces and they are not even ashamed enough to wash it off, instead wearing it like a badge of honor. And these same guys don't like gay men? If figures, being repressed homosexuals themselves. Only they prefer making a public exhibition of their fellatio.
Also see Matt Taibbi's great article on this.* As usual he is specific and factual, two things the banking committee was not. If fact, he is amazed how the meeting demonstrably highlighted just how ill-equipped most of its members are when it comes to what they're are supposed to know, banking. They were so ignorant that many had trouble even reading their technical questions supported by staff. Dimon, for his part, knowing of their ignorance, rattled off "jargon-rich clouds of contradictory verbiage ...in the hope that the intimidated listener stands down and accepts it all as true and correct and not what it is, i.e. incoherent bullshit." Please see Taibbi's piece.
ReplyDelete* http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/senators-grovel-embarrass-themselves-at-dimon-hearing-20120615