The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Jamie Dimon, Wall Street’s Golden Boy

This just makes me positively giddy with delight! Talk about poetic justice and answered wishes!!



You ready? Here we gooooo! www.alternet.org...

More than just a tawdry tale, Dimon’s demise is a critique of the American Dream.
...
Now the truth is out, and Wall Street’s golden boy, Jamie Dimon, has fallen to earth with a thud.

Why did it take so long? Why did the American media treat him with kid gloves? In a populist moment, how did he manage to escape the scorn heaped on his colleagues?

To understand this, you have to follow the yellow brick rode all the way back to the beginning, back to when the gold-plated American Dream was forged in the smithy of the Puritan soul.

Then it talks about his childhood, and his personality and drive to - above all - be rich and noticed. Several very telling little episodes are in the article.

It also discusses how 'venerated' and 'shrewd' and 'excellent' Wall Street saw him....

Dimon was one of the country’s highest-paid bank CEOs, with a fat package of $23 million, and nobody really seemed to mind. JPM was the largest and most profitable U.S. bank. Life was good. Dimon’s three daughters were among “Wall Street's Hottest Offspring,” including Laura, a Barnard student who called in the fall of 2007 to ask, “Dad, what’s a financial crisis?”

How the Mighty Have Fallen

Fast-forward to summer 2012, when it seemed that the Great Gatsby ran into Moby Dick while taking his yacht for a spin. A nasty, behemoth of a trading #-up dubbed the “London Whale” sent billions of dollars up in smoke when a hedging strategy – at least that’s what the bank claimed – went wrong. At first, Dimon pooh-poohed the disaster as a "tempest in a teapot.” Then he tried to spin it as an isolated risk management problem that had been fully addressed.

Criminal investigators weren’t buying it, and they began to probe into the bank’s activities. By January 2013, Dimon’s pay was cut by more than half, down to $11.5 million. Even so, the bank’s board of directors praised Dimon for “forcefully responding” to the trading loss.

Then, fast forward:

Then came the Big Reveal. Last Thursday, a 300-page Senate report delving into the details of the $6.2 billion London Whale loss pointed the finger of blame directly at Jamie Dimon. An email containing the words “I approve” made it clear that the guy known for micromanagement and checking out data knew exactly what was going on at JPM. He had specifically told his people to take on riskier business and he approved new ways of hiding it.

The New York Times is no longer singing Dimon’s praises. Gretchen Morgenson and others have been filling the business pages for the last two weeks with tales of Dimon’s follies and the reckless behavior of JPM. Morgenson had two words when she read the Senate report: “Be afraid.” For all the Dodd-Franking and the tough talk of reining in big banks, JPM, she concluded, is a ticking time-bomb rife with stupid risk-taking, bad management and a penchant for misleading investors and the public.

Here's another article from January, from Forbes magazine, no less!!
Davos: How Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase Endanger the Public Safety

But let's get back to the headline article:
David Dayen, a blogger, wrote a scathing bit of truth:

Dayen’s piece told the tale: “New Report Exposes JPMorgan Chase as Mostly a Criminal Enterprise.” Dayen, a veteran reporter of dastardly Wall Street deeds, was aghast at the list of frauds and malfeasance covered in Rosner’s report, including everything from illegal flood insurance claims to auto-finance rip-offs to shifting trading losses to customer accounts. (If you can stomach it, read the full report here.)

In the original article, you can click on all these other reports to read the related stuff, and I urge you to do so!!

Here's the sum-up:

Maybe Jamie Dimon was a cut above his fellow bankers. Given the looks of that crowd, that’s pretty lousy praise. Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he’s just a run-of-the-mill hustler, no better than the rest of them. He pretended to be in control of a too-big-to-manage bank and when things went awry – which they always do – he tried to fake his way out of trouble. This Golden Boy just got away with it longer than some.

Jamie Dimon is EVIL. He's a "land shark" (if you recall the "Golden Days of SNL" so long ago.
He is a monster, without one shred of morals, and his soul is a veritable vacuum of compassion.
I have despised this man for several years, after being bludgeoned unjustly by Chase after a divorce, in which my idiot ex was judged responsible for the enormous credit card debt that had been used to buy his truck and tools - and when he defaulted - they came after ME! Even though I sent fax after fax of documents, and told his minions over and over again that I would not pay it - they RUINED my excellent credit.

Said they didn't give a toss if the judge said so, they were going to make me pay. They failed, by the way, you do not make me do anything. It went round and round - and eventually they laid off of me, but the damage was never undone.

I know a few others on here have in the past shared my contempt for this vile bipedal monstrosity, and I just wanted to share my joy and give a virtual shout-out and high-five to those of us who wanted his downfall....

Today's the day!!
Read and rejoice!!

The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value

Here's another beauty from Forbes, linked (along with several other linked articles) in the Forbes article by Davos from above.

It directly confronts how profit has risen above customers...
ugh, how I despise the stock markets.

“It isn’t just about the money for shareholders,” writes Martin, “or even the dubious CEO behavior that our theories encourage. It’s much bigger than that. Our theories of shareholder value maximization and stock-based compensation have the ability to destroy our economy and rot out the core of American capitalism. These theories underpin regulatory fixes instituted after each market bubble and crash. Because the fixes begin from the wrong premise, they will be ineffectual; until we change the theories, future crashes are inevitable.”

Let's fix it CORRECTLY this time, folks.

Oh, this IS a happy day!

I too have despised that walking, talking pile of bovine excrement for a very long time. JPMorgan is probably the most crooked of all the big banks, and Jamie Dimon is the poster child for everything that is wrong and evil about Wall Street.

Yes, the press used to treat him like American royalty. We daytrade stocks, and JPMorgan's malevolent fingerprints are all over certain stocks which are obviously manipulated....particularly silver, and gold to a lesser extent. Yet, JPMorgan just won a lawsuit which was brought against it claiming they were naked shorting silver to keep the price down. It was in a Manhattan court (big surprise). It wouldn't shock me to see the judge which dismissed the suit lounging by Dimon's pool, or on his yacht.

JPMorgan also is the bank in which everybody's food stamp card goes through, so the more people that are on food stamps, the better JPMorgan does.

The only problem is, there are nothing but Jamie Dimons in banks. Swaggering, evil little fakers who are constantly trying to find ways to make a lot of money illegally. He is but the most noticable and irritating of the many heads of the Hydra.

I see no cure for our financial system, unless these banks fail and are broken up. Until then, it'll be business as usual, even as we swirl round the toilet bowl, fixing to go down.

reply to post by FissionSurplus

Haha!! Let's do a chicken dance of joy....
virtually, of course.


Thanks for commenting

Nice that he's no longer the golden boy of ripoffscams . . . but I hardly doubt that he and his approximated $400 million net worth actually give two floating turds in a bowl about what anyone thinks anymore.

reply to post by GoalPoster


True, but perhaps he'll get what's coming to him - like, blacklisted from employment ever, being STRIPPED of his wealth entirely, and exiled forever from every country in the world. He can go hide in a cave, and no one would want to find him.
Or, maybe he'll run for POTUS in 2016. Reminds me of Romney.
Character fail. Both of them. Fails.

reply to post by GoalPoster


LOL, I was just saying that same thing to my husband. So Jamie Dimon is disgraced. I'm sure he's sitting on his millions and crying for his loss of status in the press.

As far as his peers go, I'm sure he's still getting high-fives and pats on the back.

I, like many of the average people in the world, had never heard of Jamie Dimon until he suddenly started showing up in all the headlines, and showing his perfectly coiffed hair and light-coloured suits on every news show. He immediately looked like the poster-boy for greed and excess, and a living example of how much better than you the banking executives are.

My initial appraisal of his appearance in public: This is a made-up human who this whole financial mess will be blamed on, so that when he is assassinated, we'll all feel better that the bad apple was removed from the barrel.

"Oh good. All of that is dealt with now."

The entire narrative surrounding him seemed geared toward making us hate him and blame him for our woes... so that if he were tragically removed from office, we could be duped into thinking all the problems would go with him.

Am I alone in that?

reply to post by CrikeyMagnet


No, I don't think you're alone.
Lots of people don't know who he is (or didn't know) - I knew because of my battle with Chase. I've despised the man for years, but people who haven't been screwed over by Chase probably wouldn't know who he is. The entire banking racket certainly knows who he is, and anyone working in that world of greed and excess at the expense of others.

I do hate him, yes, and what he stands for. I took it personally because it was personal. Will the problems end with his disgrace? I doubt it. But it's a start.

It doesn't matter to me. I hate all bankers equally. One going down is but a small victory to me, though a victory worth celebrating. Though if it ever hits the fan I'm blaming every last one I can get my hands on.

These people are the true villains of our world, not the politicians. I know to follow the money, and scum like the man (whom I deem unfit to utter his name) in the OP are the chief reasons behind our problems.

reply to post by Krazysh0t


I know, his name literally nauseates me.
Still, it is a victory!! And a precedent. NO ONE should be above impeachment or prosecution. He should lose everything else along with his reputation, and be sent to a general-population prison. No house arrest with videos and popcorn and catered meals in a swank "safe house" somewhere. No. To the gutter.

Originally posted by wildtimes
No house arrest with videos and popcorn and catered meals in a swank "safe house" somewhere. No. To the gutter.

A decent war cry for our times. "To the gutter!"

reply to post by CrikeyMagnet


YEAH!! TO THE GUTTER! *roar!!!!*

I like it.

Yeah, I sent in my mortgage payment today, at the last minute to avoid late fees.

Above the address window I wrote:
"The man running this company who belongs in prison." on the front of the envelope.
On the back flap I wrote:
"Jamie Dimon Should Be in Prison."
Not the first time I've done that, either. Freedom of speech, right?
Yeah, like it will make a difference.