Jamie Dimon’s $10 Million Raise is a ''Common Sense'' Fraud Reward
By William K. Black
New Economic Perspectives, February 1, 2014
Andrew Ross Sorkin (and his “Deal Book” team at the New York Times) seemed to have built an insurmountable lead in the race to be declared the most unctuous panderer to the financial plutocrats who grew wealthy by leading the frauds that blew up our economy. As I wrote recently, Politico became my instant dark horse candidate for the Street’s sycophant-in-chief with Ben White’s fantasy that “In 2009, Washington went to war against big Wall Street banks.” I noted that the “war” consisted of the Treasury and the Fed dumping trillions of dollars on the biggest Wall Street banks and evoked Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof: “May the Lord smite me with (such a “war”). And may I never recover!”
SNIP...
The Real "Common Sense" as Penned by Thomas Paine
In his introduction to his third edition, Paine warned about the Deal Bookers of his day who accepted the legitimacy of the powerful dominating and plundering the people because it had always been that way. Paine decried the fact that this lazy failure to question the domination of the powerful led inexorably to a defense of their exploitation in the form of an unthinking reflex in favor of “custom.”
“(A) long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”
Paine championed the need for the American people to pierce through the “pretensions” of the elites and exercise the peoples’ right to “reject” the usurpations of power by the King and the English parliament.
“(T)he good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either.”
Lord Acton made famous the phrase: power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Paine’s pamphlet, long before Acton’s birth, shared the same key understanding.
“First. — That the King it not to be trusted without being looked after; or in other words, that a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy.”
In our day, we see that “thirst” in what scholars have dubbed our “Imperial CEOs.” In Paine’s era, the King was the most powerful, but Paine refused to fawn over the powerful. He advised that if we had the sense to strip away the pomp and the myths spread by sycophants we would find a “plunderer.”
“(C)ould we take off the dark covering of antiquity and trace them to their first rise, we should find the first of them nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners of pre-eminence in subtilty obtained him the title of chief among plunderers; and who by increasing in power and extending his depredations, overawed the quiet and defenseless to purchase their safety by frequent contributions.”
CONTINUED...
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/02/jamie-dimons-10-million-raise-common-sense-fraud-reward.html#more-7552
William K. Black is a forensic economist who helped prosecute the Savings & Loan crooks in the late 80s, early 90s. He sees "Control Fraud" as a real problem on Wall Street and in Washington. Instead of being on the front lines tossing banksters in jail, he's on the sidelines, teaching through his classes and writings.
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Who cares if we wreck that million dollar painting?
I'm in Detroit, where we're trying to keep a few police precincts open while Gov. Kochbrotherfromanothermother tries to loot the Detroit Institute of Arts. I don't understand those who've never known want a day in their lives acting like Marie Antoinette and her drunken court.
Then, something happened. The capitalists decided to skip the Green Stamps and institute a cash loyalty program for the satrap class.
Neil Barofsky Gave Us The Best Explanation For Washington's Dysfunction We've Ever Heard
Linette Lopez
Business Insider, Aug. 1, 2012, 2:57 PM
Neil Barofsky was the Inspector General for TARP, and just wrote a book about his time in D.C. called Bailout: An Insider Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street.
SNIP...
Bottom line: Barofsky said the incentive structure in our nation's capitol is all wrong. There's a revolving door between bureaucrats in Washington and Wall Street banks, and politicians just want to keep their jobs.
For regulators it's something like this:
"You can play ball and good things can happen to you get a big pot of gold at the end of the Wall Street rainbow or you can do your job be aggressive and face personal ruin...We really need to rethink how we govern and how regulate," Barofsky said.
CONTINUED... http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-barofsky-2012-8
Oh well. Because they've shut down William K. Black and institutionalized systemic corruption, it looks like for the 90-percent plus of us it's always going to be Austerity Time. Unless, that is, more people wake up.
"When you tell your readers that Dimon is the best bank CEO in the world how do you overcome your gag reflex?"
