Juggling Dynamite

“The $13 billion settlement JPMorgan Chase is reportedly set to pay would be the largest imposed on a single company by U.S. regulators. News of the settlement, which broke this weekend, reaffirmed a view commonly held on Wall Street: JPMorgan (JPM) is being singled out because Jamie Dimon dared criticize the Dodd-Frank legislation and the Obama Administration used the bank’s London Whale fiasco as an excuse to exact revenge on the man previously described as “Obama’s favorite banker.”

The size of the settlement would seemingly lend credence to that view but “JPMorgan Chase is just the first domino in what’s going to be a series of large civil settlements with large payments from Wall Street,” says William Cohan, a former investment banker, BloombergView contributor and best-selling author.

“There’s going to be more of this to come,” Cohan says, suggesting the JPMorgan settlement will be the “template for other banks” that were big players in the mortgage-backed securities market.” Here is a direct video link.

Good summary stats on global wealth.

How much of the world’s wealth is held by Americans? How many millionaires and billionaires are there on the planet? Who are the .7%? Drilling into Credit Suisse’s 2013 Global Wealth Report. Here is a direct video link.

Companies are setting a low bar for expectations amid revenues that are still trending down. The main culprit cited: general economic weakness. Here is a direct video link.

See also: Faith, Hope and No Clarity for Earnings Of course who needs real customers and sales, when companies can just buy back their own shares to make their earnings per share rise…surely this can go on forever right?