Returning to the ancestral void

underthemountainbunker:

Dimon On Whether JP Morgan’s $2 Billion Loss Proves Banks Are Still Too Risky: ‘I Don’t Think So’ – [JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie] Dimon has been one of the biggest critics of the Volcker Rule, which is meant to prevent banks from making massive bets with federally insured dollars. […] Of course, the point isn’t whether JP Morgan, the biggest bank in the U.S., can survive a trade like this. It’s whether the financial system can sustain this sort of trading by all of the big banks, many of which are not in the same financial shape as JP Morgan. As the New York Times detailed yesterday, JP Morgan and the rest of the nation’s biggest banks have been fighting to widen exemptions to the Volcker Rule that would allow banks to continue making risky trades of this sort. ”I hope that the final [Volcker] rule will prevent this,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), whose name graces the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, on ABC today. “The Volcker Rule is still being formulated.” — Think Progress

• One Month Ago, Dimon Called Critics Of Big Bank Trading ‘Infantile’ And ‘Nonfactual’

• RNC Chief: Leave Wall Street alone – Host David Gregory asked a straightforward question: “In light of the losses on Wall Street this week, you think we need less financial regulation rather than more?” In Preibus’ mind, it’s not even a close call: “I think we need less.” The RNC chief added that Democrats have “made things worse” by approving new safeguards and adding new layers of accountability to the financial system. It reminded me of an Upton Sinclair line: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” — Steve Benen

• Democratic Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren called for JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to resign his position as a director at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In a statement posted on her website, Warren said Dimon stepping down would “send a signal to the American people that Wall Street bankers get it and to show that they understand the need for responsibility and accountability.” – The Hill

• JPMorgan Chase has been lobbying to make exactly the kind of trades that just lost the company billions of dollars. – Edward Wyatt in The New York Times
• JPMorgan Chase’s loss proves the need for bank regulation. – Paul Krugman in The New York Times
• More from Ezra Klein…

• How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform – The fate of Dodd-Frank over the past two years is an object lesson in the government’s inability to institute even the simplest and most obvious reforms, especially if those reforms happen to clash with powerful financial interests. From the moment it was signed into law, lobbyists and lawyers have fought regulators over every line in the rulemaking process. Congressmen and presidents may be able to get a law passed once in a while – but they can no longer make sure it stays passed. You win the modern financial-regulation game by filing the most motions, attending the most hearings, giving the most money to the most politicians and, above all, by keeping at it, day after day, year after fiscal year, until stealing is legal again. “It’s like a scorched-earth policy,” says Michael Greenberger, a former regulator who was heavily involved with the drafting of Dodd-Frank. “It requires constant combat. And it never, ever ends.” That the banks have just about succeeded in strangling Dodd-Frank is probably not news to most Americans – it’s how they succeeded that’s the scary part. –  Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

(via oldenough2burmom)