Jim DeMint, Tea Party Be Damned, Can't Recognize That Jamie Dimon Is A Dangerous Part Of A Parasitic Elite America Needs To Be Protected From

Even Rand Paul (R-KY) thought self-styled chief Senate teabagger Jim DeMint (R-SC) was a little offbase with his snivelling suggestion that JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon should "guide" Congress when it writes banking regulations. "Probably not the best thing in the world," offered Paul dryly. I might add that though it doesn't measure up to the massive bribes taken by other friends of Dimon like John McCain ($36,531,885), John Kerry ($20,045,202), Chuck Schumer ($18,760,091), Joe Lieberman ($10,967,241) and Miss McConnell ($6,887,747), DeMint has accepted $2,925,367 in bribes from the banksters over the overly long course of his career as a federal lawmaker. The only senator on the Banking Committee with the guts to stand up to Dimon today was Oregon progressive Jeff Merkley. But just before Dimon got sworn in to testify in front of the committee, Bernie Sanders (I-VT) released the detailed findings on Dimon and other Fed board members whose banks and businesses benefited from Fed actions. Over $4 trillion in near zero-interest Federal Reserve loans and other financial assistance went to the banks and businesses of at least 18 current and former Federal Reserve regional bank directors in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse. "This [GAO] report reveals the inherent conflicts of interest that exist at the Federal Reserve. At a time when small businesses could not get affordable loans to create jobs, the Fed was providing trillions in secret loans to some of the largest banks and corporations in America that were well represented on the boards of the Federal Reserve Banks. These conflicts must end," Sanders said. I guess that's why Elizabeth Warren has been demanding that Dimon resign from the board of the Fed.

Tea party favorite Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) on Wednesday asked JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who recently announced that his company had lost at least $2 billion in the derivative market, to “guide” Congress in creating friendly banking regulations.

I'm certain it's just a coincidence, but today, over at Tyler Durden's place, just when Dimon was celebrating a reunion with some of the many senators he's bought up, economist Charles Hugh Smith was offering his insights into parasitic elites and their ability to persuade Congress to allow them to not pay any taxes. He answered the question, "Do the Parasitic Elite Pay Any Taxes?"

The parasitic financial Elite don't do any "work" in the sense of something beneficial for society, as no voluntary payment for their services exists.

If a parasite's entire income is leeched from the productive, then isn't their entire income a tax on those creating value? In this sense, the share of the parasite's income which is carved off by the Central State as tax revenues is a secondary tax: the parasite's entire income is a tax on the economy.

This distinction between legitimate wealth derived from value creation (think Steve Jobs/computer industry) and parasitic wealth skimmed from the productive (think Mitt Romney/investment banker) is the heart of Correspondent James B.'s insightful inquiry into the question: can the parasitic Elite be said to pay taxes at all, given that their income is itself a tax on legitimate wealth creation?

...If we understand the difference between parasitic wealth and real value/wealth creation, we can properly align the tax structure to reality: the tax on authentic wealth creation should be low, to encourage wealth creation and the employment (broad-based wealth creation) generated by legitimate value creation.

We must also understand that the Central State now protects and enables parasitic skimming as the primary function of the nation's financial system. Thus the entire financial system is parasitic on the wealth of the nation.

Financial parasitic incomes should be taxed at 99%. If Mitt Romney reshuffles assets created by others and skims $100 million, 99% of that parasitic wealth should be returned to the nation via taxes. The parasite still gets to keep $1 million, more than enough to live well but not enough to buy the presidency, the Congress and the regulatory machinery of the Central State.

All those who claim the Mitt Romney/investment bankers are "creating wealth" are either terribly confused about value creation and capitalism, or they are lackeys/ apologists of the parasitic Elite.

Iceland, you'll recall, defaulted on the kinds of bankster interest payments that are causing so much pain and suffering among real people in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Wisconsin, Ireland, Britain and other countries that are allowing the German and Wall Street Austerity agenda to destroy the middle class and drive teh working poor into destitution. And Iceland threw some of those banksters-- and the politicians that enabled them-- into prison. How's that working out for them? Really well, as a matter of fact. It's not quite the second anniversary of this column by Paul Krugman and he's trumpetting the astounding success they've had by telling the Germans to shove their Austerity where the sun don't shine.

Iceland is, of course, one of the great economic disaster stories of all time. An economy that produced a decent standard of living for its people was in effect hijacked by a combination of free-market ideology and crony capitalism; one of the papers (pdf) at the conference I just attended in Luxembourg shows that the benefits of the financial bubble went overwhelmingly to a small minority at the top of the income distribution.

And in the process of building short-lived financial empires, a handful of operators built up enormous debts that their fellow citizens are now expected to repay.

But there’s an odd coda to the story. Unlike other disaster economies around the European periphery-- economies that are trying to rehabilitate themselves through austerity and deflation-- Iceland built up so much debt and found itself in such dire straits that orthodoxy was out of the question. Instead, Iceland devalued its currency massively and imposed capital controls.

And a strange thing has happened: although Iceland is generally considered to have experienced the worst financial crisis in history, its punishment has actually been substantially less than that of other nations.

...The moral of the story seems to be that if you’re going to have a crisis, it’s better to have a really, really bad one. Otherwise, you’ll end up taking the advice of people who assure you that even more suffering will cure what ails you.

Yesterday he was writing that although "GDP is still below previous peak... I think one could argue, much more so than in say America, that a significant part of that peak involved a Ponzi financial sector that isn’t coming back [and]... Iceland’s heterodoxy was yielding a surprisingly not-so-terrible post-crisis outcome."


UPDATE: Bernie Sanders



Would you like to help make sure Bernie gets back into the Senate? At least he recognizes that Wall Street regulates Congress instead of Congress regulating Wall Street. Here's where you can help Bernie be reelected.