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5 Truly Crazy Assertions From Jamie Dimon's Barron's Cover Story

Tyler Durden's picture




 

Submitted by Pam and Russ Martens via Wall Street On Parade blog,

Barron’s should have published its gushing cover story on Jamie Dimon’s stewardship of JPMorgan todayas an April Fool’s joke.

The nation’s largest bank is operating under a deferred prosecution agreement until at least next January for two felony counts it received in the Madoff swindle, the largest Ponzi scheme in history.  It’s under a current criminal investigation over potential rigging of the foreign exchange markets with the New York Times reporting on February 10 that federal prosecutors had informed JPMorgan and three other banks “that they must enter guilty pleas to settle the cases.” Barron’s sister publication, the Wall Street Journal, reported on February 24 that JPMorgan is one of the 10 banks being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department for potential rigging of gold and other precious metals.

Against that backdrop, Barron’s comes up with this: JPMorgan is “Back on Top.” Back on top of what – its serial crime spree? The article, by Associate Editor Andrew Bary, goes downhill from there. Here’s a few howlers.

Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan, who has kept his job through a rising tide of scandals at the bank, says in the article:

“We were tried, tested, and true during the worst of times.”

Compare that assessment to the findings of former Senator Carl Levin in 2013 after his Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 306-page report on how JPMorgan had gambled with bank deposits in the infamous London Whale scandal at the bank and eventually lost at least $6.2 billion of those deposits. Levin said at the time that JPMorgan “piled on risk, hid losses, disregarded risk limits, manipulated risk models, dodged oversight, and misinformed the public.”

Bary quotes Dimon from a January call with analysts as stating that banks are “‘under assault’” from regulators, with Dimon adding that

“ ‘We have five or six regulators or people coming after us on every different issue. It’s a hard thing to deal with.’ ”

Shouldn’t the debate be why, after a nonstop 5-year crime spree, the nation’s largest bank still is being chased by regulators?

Another howler is Dimon telling the Barron’s reporter that the bank doesn’t take big trading positions and thus it is unfair for some investors to view JPMorgan as a black box, too complex to understand.

Last November, JPMorgan and other Wall Street banks again came under the cross-hairs of the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The Subcommittee released an eye-popping 396-page report on the physical commodity holdings of key Wall Street banks. The investigation found almost unfathomable giant positions at JPMorgan, reporting as follows:

“When the financial holding company’s physical commodities inventory of $6.6 billion is added to the bank’s metals inventory of approximately $8.1 billion – still excluding gold, silver, and all merchant banking commodity assets – and the bank’s copper, platinum, and palladium inventories of $2.7 billion are added in as well, the total market value of JPMorgan’s combined physical commodity inventories on September 28, 2012, was $17.4 billion. That $17.4 billion was about 11.75% of the financial holding company’s Tier 1 capital of $148 billion, which meant that it was more than twice the size allowed by the Federal Reserve’s 5% limit, were it to apply…

“In 2011 (the last complete year of figures provided to the Subcommittee), those inventories included, at various times, as much as 3.3 million metric tons of aluminum (an amount which is more than half of U.S. aluminum consumption that year), 200,000 metric tons of copper, 100,000 metric tons of lead, 6.4 million barrels of crude oil, 3.6 million barrels of heating oil, 900,000 barrels of gasoline, 3.4 million barrels of jet kerosene, and 51.9 billion cubic feet of natural gas.  In addition, JPMorgan reported owning or controlling tolling agreements at 31 power plants…

“JPMorgan Chase Bank is the only national bank that, in recent years, has engaged in extensive physical metals trading and maintained a large physical metals inventory…

Elsewhere, Bary writes in the article:

“The bank maintains that one scary figure — some $63 trillion in notional derivatives exposure — vastly overstates the risk because of offsetting positions and other factors. It puts the credit risk of those positions at about $59 billion, and almost 90% of that is exposure to high-grade companies.”

On February 12, the Office of Financial Research (OFR), a unit of the U.S. Treasury Department that was created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, released a study of the banks that posed the greatest systemic risk to the global financial system. Using systemic risk scores that evaluated size, interconnectedness, substitutability, complexity, and cross-jurisdictional activities, JPMorgan came in with the scariest score of 5.05 for U.S. mega banks. That compares with 4.27 for Citigroup; 3.06 for Bank of America; 2.60 for Morgan Stanley; 2.48 for Goldman Sachs; and 1.72 for Wells Fargo.

The OFR report found further that “A bank that has large foreign assets and large intrafinancial system liabilities is a potential source of spillover risk. If a large loss in value in foreign assets caused such an institution to fail, the losses could be transmitted to the rest of the U.S. financial system.” Both Citigroup and JPMorgan were listed as having the largest figures among U.S. banks for both foreign assets and intrafinancial system liabilities.

One of the gushiest moments in the article comes with Bary writing that “The outspoken Dimon can also come across as the smartest guy in the room, ruffling regulators and politicians. He brings experience, passion, strategic vision, and a familiarity with minute details of the bank’s vast operations.”

Dimon’s familiarity “with minute details” of JPMorgan’s “vast operations” were nowhere to be found when he told analysts in 2012 that the rumors of wild derivative trades at JPMorgan’s London offices were a “tempest in a teapot.” The tempest in a teapot turned out to be at least $6.2 billion in losses of depositor funds. Dimon was also missing in action as JPMorgan served as the primary business checking account for Bernard Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme.

Dimon’s failure to rein in the serial abuses at JPMorgan has led two attorneys, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer, to create a Wheel of Fortune showcasing the mind-numbing crimes that regulators have charged against JPMorgan while offering an on-line book that maps out the underlying culture at the firm. Laurence Kotlikoff of Forbes insightfully says this about the book: “The authors’ description of the difference between Jamie Dimon’s view of himself and reality is the best thing since Jonathan Swift.”

We highly recommend the book to Barron’s Andrew Bary

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Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:23 | 5949726 ebworthen
ebworthen's picture

When you own the government, and tell the FED what to do, hard not to be on top.

Any monkey could do it under those conditions.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:26 | 5949756 nope-1004
nope-1004's picture

Throat cancer in remission until the next lawsuit...... Jamie?

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:46 | 5949842 gafgroocK
gafgroocK's picture

 

 

What is the maximum amount of material wealth one can accumulate and still die from throat cancer?

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 16:10 | 5949927 knukles
knukles's picture

Oh, minute details.  So he know all about MFGlobal, Corzine, margin calls and his London operations, huh?
Damn!  The Dude is on Top-O-Da-Shit, bro!

                   "God sent me here to straighten this shit out"
                                                -Jamie

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 17:07 | 5950150 power steering
power steering's picture

Barron's goes TMZ. All the media truly cares about is that his bonus is secure,

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:52 | 5949864 813kml
813kml's picture

HPV, one must suck a lot of knob to get 'Back on Top'.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:29 | 5949774 DontGive
DontGive's picture

 

 

“ ‘We have five or six regulators or people coming after us on every different issue. It’s a hard thing to deal with.’ ”

Only five or six? What about the rest of the regulators (howevermany) covering your ass?

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:33 | 5949791 Big Corked Boots
Big Corked Boots's picture

Covering ass-porn on the 'net.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 16:11 | 5949941 knukles
knukles's picture

JPGetty.com Tube

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 16:35 | 5950013 Harbanger
Harbanger's picture

There will never be prosecution because the Gov needs the Banks to finance their social promises, the Banks need the Gov to maintain the debt Ponzi scheme that generates interest payments for the Banks.  This is the marriage between your gov and bankers.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:47 | 5949844 eatthebanksters
eatthebanksters's picture

They pay a LOT of money for their PR...

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 17:58 | 5950350 Harbanger
Harbanger's picture

Puerto Ricans ain't cheap.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 16:03 | 5949900 williambanzai7
williambanzai7's picture

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 17:29 | 5950224 ted41776
ted41776's picture

it's blowhole looks irritated

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 16:17 | 5949735 ted41776
Wed, 04/01/2015 - 16:13 | 5949949 knukles
knukles's picture

They both did anal with Kayne West? 
I'm confused

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:25 | 5949746 cordial savage
cordial savage's picture

Cutting a bunch of businesses that don't make them enough money puts them "back on top"?  Furthermore, what intern in his right mind put that cover together?  Malarky.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:29 | 5949769 Osmium
Osmium's picture

The nation’s largest bank is operating under a deferred prosecution agreement until at least next January for two felony counts it received in the Madoff swindle, the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

 

So When do we stop referring to it as a Ponzi scheme and use the term Madoff scheme instead?  Come on, give Bernie the credit he deserves!

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:35 | 5949799 Pootie Tang
Pootie Tang's picture

Looks like they own jusssst a bit of commodities. Nah they aren't manipulating anything, at least after paying off the regulators.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:36 | 5949801 kchrisc
kchrisc's picture

“We were tried, tested, and true during the worst of times...the snow pack in St. Moritz has been terrible the last few years, but it's back."

The banksters need to repay us.

 

"I am not a thief. I only head a firm that is."

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:36 | 5949806 JLee2027
JLee2027's picture

Why was prosecution deferred?

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:38 | 5949814 kchrisc
kchrisc's picture

So the sheeple and muppets would lose interest.

The banksters need to repay us.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 16:54 | 5950112 AE911Truth
AE911Truth's picture

Yes, the Banksters must return all they stole, back to the people they stole it from. It was our savings, and we need it to survive.

Finish this sentence. Without justice, there can be no ________.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 21:37 | 5950966 kchrisc
kchrisc's picture

"¨Finish this sentence. Without justice, there can be no ________."

I don't know, but "No guillotines, no justice."

The banksters need to repay us.

 

"The American people will gladly accept gold, silver, and heads."

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:40 | 5949825 Utah_Get_Me_2
Utah_Get_Me_2's picture

Total lack of integrity.

Willingness to follow orders.

Willingness to omit indisputable facts.

Unapologetically Sychophantic.

If you possess these traits and are interested in being a Wall Street stooge mouthpiece, please contact human resources at Barron's today!

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:44 | 5949837 Tenshin Headache
Tenshin Headache's picture

If that's not a top-is-in cover, that theory is out the window.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:52 | 5949860 q99x2
q99x2's picture

Arrest him for treason. Return the gold from his island. Don't let him get away.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 15:52 | 5949863 WillyGroper
WillyGroper's picture

Lance Gotthoffer...

Guess that's how he got back on top.

BTW, how's that throat?

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 16:09 | 5949930 JenkinsLane
JenkinsLane's picture

 

 

"Rich Cordray was still serving as director of the consumer agency under a recess appointment; he hadn’t yet been confirmed by the Senate, which meant that the agency was vulnerable to legal challenges over its work. Dimon told me what he thought it would take to get Congress to confirm a director, terms that included gutting the agency’s power to regulate banks like his. By this point I was furious. Dodd-Frank had created default provisions that would automatically go into effect if there was no confirmed director, and his bank was almost certainly not in compliance with the those rules. I told him that if that happened, 'I think you guys are breaking the law.' Suddenly Dimon got quiet. He leaned back and slowly smiled. 'So hit me with a fine. We can afford it.'"

Elizabeth Warren, “A Fighting Chance”

 

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 16:10 | 5949935 GIABO
GIABO's picture

Jamie "the Zion" Dimon... Meet nailgun... Nailgun meet Jamie...

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 16:27 | 5949984 Salsipuedes
Salsipuedes's picture

Let's ask what the Greeks think, like a test case. They can be objective!

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 16:27 | 5950011 moneybots
moneybots's picture

“The bank maintains that one scary figure — some $63 trillion in notional derivatives exposure — vastly overstates the risk because of offsetting positions and other factors. It puts the credit risk of those positions at about $59 billion, and almost 90% of that is exposure to high-grade companies.”

 

Dimon lobbied for the tax payers to pay for derivative losses.  The risk is not at all overstated.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 18:58 | 5950535 SmedleyButlersGhost
SmedleyButlersGhost's picture

Strike Lobbied   for arranged or paid (bit repetitive) or maybe procured enough congressional whores ..... something along those lines maybe?

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 17:00 | 5950130 Lmo Mutton
Lmo Mutton's picture

This article is your brain on hookers and blow.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 17:01 | 5950132 Miss Expectations
Miss Expectations's picture

 

I was hoping that the next time I saw him, he'd be bald.

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 18:05 | 5950377 SmedleyButlersGhost
SmedleyButlersGhost's picture

I was hoping he'd be Andrew Gettyed. Please tell me there is a connection

Wed, 04/01/2015 - 17:30 | 5950249 Billy Shears
Billy Shears's picture

And that's why he has more money than you do, he reads Barrons!

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