It is too bad that so many people have aided and abetted the mass fraud and flagrant abuse of trust that the financial sector has perpetrated on the world over the past 15 years. Greed in the final throes of a self-serving frenzy is always eventually fatal. Unfortunately for many, death can take a long time. And so far, the elites most in charge have benefited a lot, while the masses bear long-lasting scars and debt obligations which will suck away funding from all other parts of a civil society for many years to come.
Yesterday as Fed-addicted capital markets began to weaken on no new QE news, JP Morgan head, Jamie Dimon, rode to the rescue, with a strategic and preemptive leak of the Fed’s most recent stress test results and the real money shot: JP Morgan would be allowed to increase its dividend and buy back its shares. The equity market (or at least the 3 robots trading) roared in approval. Sadly for those interested in truth and honest risk assessment, there was no promise from Dimon or any of the other bank wizards, to add back fair accounting and transparency to their financial disclosure. Marking their balance sheet to market is nowhere near fruition in this farcical game we call “investing” today. Nor is their a promise that the banks will not hold the nation hostage for more tax-payer bailouts in the inevitable next leg of financial crisis ahead.
Meanwhile more bank insiders are confirming our worst allegations about the morally and legally bankrupt world of financial services. This article from Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi highlights another tranche of the tyrannical tale of JP Morgan et al, see:
JP Morgan Chase’s Ugly Family Secrets Revealed.
And then we have the well-worth-reading “Why I am leaving Goldman Sachs” memoir in the NY Times this morning by departing career Goldman executive Greg Smith as he apparently takes his money and runs, disgusted, but doubtless well compensated for his time.
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Little by little, the ugly truth is being revealed. At some point in the not-too-distant future, the fact that those at the top of the financial services pyramid (and many below them, as well) were nothing but a ‘white shoe’ mafia, will become commonly accepted by the mainstream media, as it has been vociferously reported for many years by so many in ‘alternative’ media outlets. Of course, this will signal a paradigm shift in the economy has occurred because it will mean the current masters have been dethroned. Sounds impossible now, but it will happen.
A (very) small example of the truth being revealed: recall a few years back when the Fed embarked on their controversial quantitative easing program that would balloon the Fed’s balance sheet beyond all sanity. The debate over whether the Fed was simply ‘printing’ money raged in the media for months. Economists and analysts from the four corners of Wall Street twisted logic to absurdity to try and prove the Fed was not ‘printing’ money. Now the idea has become commonplace, even in the MSM. Meaning that the debate is now moot and the damage has already been done. The same will be true once the media and the government capitulate to the truth about the financial industry.
I get the surreal feeling that something very, very bad and sinister is about to run the markets, and our great country in. I don’t get that feeling very often, so I am going to trust my gut on this one this time. Good luck my friends, and may God be with you.
From the Wall Street Journal later in the day:
“We disagree with the views expressed, which we don’t think reflect the way we run our business,” a Goldman spokeswoman said. “In our view, we will only be successful if our clients are successful. This fundamental truth lies at the heart of how we conduct ourselves.”
Mr. Smith described himself as an executive director and head of Goldman’s U.S. equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
A person familiar with the matter said Mr. Smith’s role is actually vice president, a relatively junior position held by thousands of Goldman employees around the world. And Mr. Smith is the only employee in the derivatives business that he heads, this person said.
Taibbi said later in his blog that “You just knew that sooner or later, the bank was going to come out and say that Smith was actually a janitor in Goldman’s Mozambique office or something. It’s just surprising they did it so quickly.”
Granted that it has probably reached an extreme not seen in over 80 years, but the self serving nature of Wall/Bay St. and the financial services industry should not be a shock or a revelation to anyone. Fred Schwartz was writing about it as far back as 1940 in his classic book “Where Are the Customer’s Yachts?”. Anyone with a reasonable knowledge of history should be aware of and take heed of the last extreme period, the financial excesses of the 1920s that culminated in the reckoning of 1929.