Establishment "Democrat" Jamie Dimon Joins Mitch McConnell On The Losing Side Of History

 

The "Losing Side of History" phraseology comes from yesterday's column about #MoscowMitch in Politico Magazine by John Harris. Harris wrote that McConnell's (and the GOP's) "sprint to install a justice for a lifetime appointment this year, either days before a presidential election or in the lame-duck session afterward, looks a lot like the dying spasms of a political movement that began five decades ago."

Now, at 78, McConnell is leading a party that depends on exploiting every avenue to preserve power despite not commanding national majorities. Starting in 1992, in seven presidential elections, Republicans have won the popular vote just once.

The national electorate is younger, more diverse, and less traditional in cultural attitudes, and more enthusiastic about a robust role for government. The Republican Party for most of this century draws overwhelmingly from people who are older, white, and socially conservative. In recent years, college-educated voters are taking flight from the GOP.

Republicans have won power in significant measure through institutions that buffer the influence of national majorities: The Electoral College, the Senate, and, above all, the Supreme Court.

A conservative movement that in youth worked to rein in the Supreme Court’s unelected power in the name of democracy now hopes in old age to harness the Supreme Court’s unelected power to protect it from the hazards of too much democracy.

These institutions can slow long-term demographic and ideological trends but they are unlikely to halt them. This means that, in due course-- whether this year or sometime in the future-- we will learn how closely Democrats have been studying the McConnell methods and whether they will choose to emulate them.

So what's all that got to do with JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon? Well... do you recall when Team Biden was touting Dimon as a strong contender for Biden’s dream team-- Secretary of the Treasury was where they saw this Clintonite turd. There was such an uproar that Dimon put out a statement assuring voters he wasn't interested. Still, that was already about as alarming a statement about those advising Biden, and their kowtow to Wall Street, as one can imagine. Now Pam and Russ Martens have revealed that Dimon and JPMorgan's PAC are financially supporting McConnell's reelection bid. Nice, huh?

Dimon, a billionaire, and his PAC have given thousands of dollars to McConnell and McConnell operations. "McConnell doesn’t like taxes on the rich," wrote the Martens. "Perhaps that’s a good enough reason for Dimon to donate to his political campaign and not give a hoot about how that might earn him the hostility of his workforce or doom the country." Actually Dimon says he doesn't really mind if the rich get taxed on their incomes... just not on their wealth.

Biden should be careful to be aware when making cabinet picks of people, like Dimon, who say things like this: "I've gotten disturbed at some of the Democrats' anti-business behavior, the attacks on work ethic and successful people. I think it's very counterproductive... It doesn't mean I don't have their values. I want jobs. I want a more equitable society. I don't mind paying higher taxes... I do think we're our brother's keeper but I think that attacking that which creates all things, is not the right way to go about it." Or perhaps Biden has the same mindset.

In fact, yesterday, David Sirota suggested that Biden is jeopardizing the election by alienating progressives by shitting on them. He's beating Trumop in poll after poll but his enthusiasm gap is wide, even if Republican elites-- though not masses of GOP voters-- seem to like him. Sirota wrote that "he should stop triangulating against the base of his party and publicly dunking on the millions of Democratic voters who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders in the party’s last two presidential primaries.

During an interview with a local Fox affiliate in Wisconsin today, Biden took a shot at Sanders in response to a reporter’s loaded question about “voters that are worried about socialism and you raising taxes.”

There are plenty of ways to answer that question. You can reject the arguments over labels. You can pivot to talking about expanding health care and fighting the pandemic-- two issues that are top concerns to Wisconsin voters, according to the latest Ipsos poll.

Instead, Biden used the opportunity to dunk on Bernie Sanders-- the third most popular Democrat in America, ahead of Biden, according to YouGov’s national poll.

“I beat the socialist. That’s how I got elected. That’s how I got the nomination,” Biden said. “Do I look like a socialist? Look at my career, my whole career. I’m not a socialist.”

That’s certainly true-- Biden has tried to cut Social Security, supported bank deregulation, and is opposed to Medicare for All. The only part of Biden’s record that could be called socialist was his vote to bail out Wall Street executives-- but that was a form of corporate socialism that enriched the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country after they ruined millions of Americans’ lives.

So, yeah, while Biden is no socialist, none of his record proving that is anything to brag about. More important, Biden’s instinct to crap on progressives, rather than energizing them, is totally counterproductive to the effort to defeat Donald Trump. It not only helps Trump by validating his Red Scare framing of the election, but it also tells progressives that Biden may not be the ally he is promising to be.

...A few weeks ago, Biden’s campaign made headlines echoing Republican talking points about the deficit and insinuating that a Biden administration wouldn’t follow through on its budget promises. Biden also told his Wall Street donors that despite his public promises, “I’m not proposing any” legislation to change corporate behavior. That followed his previous promise to his big donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” for them under a Biden administration.

Congress Needs More Members In The Squad But That Isn't The Only Way To Make A Valuable Contribution: Katie Porter

The CNN.com headline yesterday, Katie Porter isn't part of 'The Squad.' But the freshman House Democrat is stirring up trouble for Trump, was... meh. True, Katie Porter isn't part of The Squad. And true, Katie is "stirring up trouble for Trump." But... there's a lot more to it. Each member of The Squad can boast a ProgressivePunch crucial vote record of "A"-- three of them, perfect 100% scores, in fact. Katie's ProgressivePunch crucial vote score isn't as robust. And instead of their A, hers is F. Here are their raw scores plus the PVI of their districts:

• Ayanna Pressley- 100 (D+34)
• Rashida Tlaib- 100 (D+33)
• AOC- 100 (D+29)
• Ilhan Omar- 97.50 (D+26)
• Katie Porter- 72.50 (R+3)

Let's put that another way. Republicans didn't bother running candidates against Ayanna or Rashida. AOC beat Republican Anthony Pappas 110,318 (78.2%) to 19,202 (13.6%). Ilhan beat Republican Jennifer Zielinski 267,703 (78.0%) to 74,440 (21.7%). Katie had a more series problem. She ran against entrenched Republican incumbent Mimi Walters (after beating a DCCC-preferred New Dem in the primary). Walters spent $5,244,605 (+ $7,758,258 town in against Porter by Republican outside groups). In the end-- Porter managed to beat Walters 158,906 (52.1%) to 146,383 (47.9%). Trump did badly in all 5 districts-- 11.9% in Ayanna's, 18.1% in Rashida's, 18.5% in Ilhan's, 19.8% in AOC's... and 44.4% in Katie's. I'm not making an excuses for her voting record, but it's a lot easier to vote straight down the line progressive in a district where only 12% of the people back Trump that in one where 44% do.

On the other hand, few freshmen have been as valuable in their committees as Porter has been in the House Financial Services Committee, where she has used her expertise to hold banksters' and Trump appointed regulators' feet to the fire. And, as Katie Lobosco, the CNN.com reporter put it, "she's emerged as a viral star when it comes to how banks and the government treat the working poor and puncturing Trump's claims about the economy. She's carving out a Warren-esque role for herself that's included asking top officials do basic math under oath. Her targets so far have included major Wall Street players like JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Equifax CEO Mark Begor and now-former Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan."

It was March when Porter grilled Sloan-- who was already facing calls from Warren and others to step down-- at a House Financial Services Committee hearing about Wells Fargo's numerous scandals over fake accounts, inappropriate mortgage fees, and charging borrowers for auto insurance they didn't need.

When it came her turn, Porter began by asking why the public should trust Sloan's promises that Wells Fargo was changing its ways. Then, she ducked under the table to bring up a poster board printed with huge text, displaying what Wells Fargo attorneys had said in court.

"Why Mr. Sloan, if you don't mind me asking, are your lawyers in federal court arguing that those exact statements I read are quote 'paradigmatic examples of non-actionable corporate puffery, on which no reliable investor could rely,'" she asked.

"I don't know why our lawyers are arguing that," Sloan responded.

Porter kept going.

"It's convenient for your lawyers to deflect blame in court, and say your rebranding campaign can be ignored as hyperbolic marketing, but when then you come to Congress, you want us to take you at your word," she said. "And I think that's the disconnect, that's why the American public has trouble trusting Wells Fargo."

Two weeks later, Wells Fargo announced Sloan was out.

Porter has targeted top Trump administration officials, too. She whipped out a copy of the text book she wrote, "Modern Consumer Law," to quiz Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chief Kathy Kraninger. She then posed a hypothetical math problem: A single mom takes out a two-week $200 payday loan with an origination fee of $20, at a rate of 10%. What is the APR? One of Porter's aides handed Kraninger a calculator.

She didn't do the math, even after Porter repeated the question, asking her to ballpark the calculation.

"I understand where you're getting. At the end of the day, the issue is certainly: When you actually are able to repay that loan and whether or not you take out an additional loan," Kraninger said.

"This is not a math exercise, though. This is a policy conversation," she added.

This week, in her office, Porter said she hopes the video clip gets people thinking about the issue.

"Like, what does it mean that calculating the APR is so hard that the vast majority of us can't do it? I guess it means that those disclosures that do it for you are pretty useful," she said.

In June, Porter asked Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson why the Federal Housing Administration is "lousy at servicing mortgages." When Carson said he had not had any discussions about that issue but that he would "look it up," Porter pushed further, asking him to explain the rate of foreclosures among those with mortgages backed by his department. She used the term REO-- which stands for real estate-owned, and refers to properties owned by a lender after an unsuccessful foreclosure-- an acronym she didn't expect to stump the head of the agency tasked with monitoring them.

"Do you know what an REO is?" Porter asked Carson.

Carson replied, "An Oreo?"

"No, not an Oreo," Porter said. "An R-E-O. REO."




Video of the exchange went viral and Carson attempted to laugh it off by sending the Congresswoman a box of the cookies.

Porter says her goal isn't to highlight incompetence, but instead to make esoteric topics more accessible-- like she did in the consumer finance law classes she taught at the University of California, Irvine.

"What I did as a professor is not that different than what I do in hearings," Porter said this week.

An average voter might not be able to articulate their position on payday loans, she said, "but when you start talking about that hypothetical exchange I had with Kraninger, people began to engage."

Like Warren, she believes that debates about protecting the ability to make a living, buy a home, and afford college are really conversations about the "heart and soul of America."

Her back-and-forth with Dimon, she said, was meant to highlight the issue of CEO pay disparity. Porter ran through a hypothetical Chase bank employee's budget, this time with a white board.

"She's short $567, what would you suggest she do?" asked the bank CEO.

"I don't know, I'd have to think about that," Dimon said.

Whether or not the professor-turned-congresswoman can turn her unique way of questioning government officials and Wall Street executives into making real legislative change remains to be seen. A bicameral bill she brought forth with Democratic Sens. Warren, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Tom Udall of New Mexico would bolster the power of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau so that it could oversee student loan servicers. Porter has also introduced legislation with Harris that would strengthen the power of state attorneys general to monitor banks.

So far none of these bills have major support from Republicans. But a bill she introduced that would raise the civil penalties assessed to security law violators was marked up by committee last week and a similar Senate bill is cosponsored by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. Two of her other bills-- one on mental health and the other addressing homecare for seniors-- have some support from across the aisle.

The Democrat could be vulnerable in her reelection bid. When she won in 2018, it was the first time her Southern California district had gone blue since its creation in 1983. That was in part because two-term incumbent Republican Mimi Walters was consistently voting in line with Trump in a district Clinton won by five percentage points.

But last month, Porter became one of the first Democrats who won Republican districts in 2018 to come out in support of impeaching Trump. The move seemed to win her some support. Her campaign brought in more than $1 million in the second quarter, out-fundraising many other vulnerable Democrats.

Porter said she is working to be a voice for families concerned about how they're going to pay the bills, something she believes Trump's candidacy also tapped into.

"The financial instability and sometimes insecurity that families feel, deeply motivates how they respond politically," Porter said last week.

"I think one thing he (Trump) played into was fear about 'Am I going to be able to make ends meet, and is there going be a job for my kids?' Those are real concerns, and as a mom I have them, too."

So far Katie has half a dozen GOP opponents running against her in the open primary, alphabetically Deputy District Attorney Ray Gennawey, Yorba Linda City Councilor and Deputy Attorney General Peggy Huang, random person Julie Proctor, Mission Viejo City Councilman Greg Raths, Laguna Hills City Councilman Don Sedgwick, Orange County Board of Education Member Lisa Sparks ad a second random person, Brenton Woolworth. And some of them are raising real money:

• Don Sedgwick: $621,120
• Peggy Huang (self-funder)- $263,791
• Greg Raths (self funder)- $209,770
• Lisa Sparks Triggers- $151,251
• Ray Gennawey- $73,210
• Brenton Woolworth- $8,845

But, speaking of The Squad, with the Republican Party having nothing to run on, they've decided to take their racism and xenophobia and turn it into an issue, an issue that shows the public exactly who and what they are. This is from the Illinois Republican Party. I have a feeling the California GOP is going to back away from using it, but... who really knows for sure. It looks like the kind of thing that Don Sedgwick and Greg Rath would absolutely love.

Does Status Quo Joe Want Jamie Dimon As His Treasury Secretary? Bernie Doesn't

Jamie Dimon is the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, America’s biggest bank. His net worth is over a billion dollars. Th U.S. Treasury gave JPMorgan $25 billion in taxpayer money to keep the bak afloat in 2008 after Dimon had gambled in speculative mortgages. Many in the Obama administration urged him to appoint Dimon Treasury Secretary but he picked Timothy Geithner instead. Dimon had instant access to the Obama adminstration and he was their favorite bankster. But by 2012 he was describing himself as “barely a Democrat,” and certainly not a Bernie Sanders kind of Democrat. “I’ve gotten disturbed at some of the Democrats anti-business behavior, the attacks on work ethic and successful people. I think it’s very counterproductive… [I]t doesn't mean I don't have their values. I want jobs. I want a more equitable society. I don't mind paying higher taxes… I do think we're our brother's keeper. But I think that… attacking that which creates all things, is not the right way to go about it.”

That which creates all things isn’t likely to be the way Bernie would describe banksters, Dimon or Wall Street and today he responded to an attack on him by Dimon is a tweet. “Jamie Dimon is the billionaire CEO of a Wall Street bank that was fined $13 billion for mortgage fraud, paid a settlement for bribing foreign officials and received a $416 billion taxpayer bailout. Jamie,” he wrote, “Thanks so much for your advice.”

On Friday, Dimon had done a broadcast interview with Yahoo Finance Editor Andy Serwer, punching out at Bernie, Elizabeth Warren and AOC. “Just because it resonates, doesn’t make it right,” Dimon said, when asked about criticism of him and Wall Street by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie and Senator Elizabeth Warren.”

The comments came just before Warren on Friday sent a letter to Dimon raising concerns about the reinstatement of the company’s forced arbitration policy for credit card holders, which disallows customers from holding the bank accountable in court for potential wrongdoing.




At a hearing on Capitol Hill in April, Ocasio-Cortez sat alongside lawmakers who targeted the tens of millions in compensation received by top bank executives, including Dimon, who received $31 million in compensation last year. The ratio between CEO pay and entry-level wages at JPMorgan Chase stands at 381:1, ranking it second highest among the large banks, after Citigroup.

But juxtaposition of CEO and entry-level pay is “comparing apples and oranges,” Dimon tells Yahoo Finance Editor-in-chief Andy Serwer, calling the calculation “a complete waste of time.”

“People don't think clearly about stuff like that,” he adds. “We treat our people well, we educate our people, we give them a huge opportunity— and that's what we should do.”

The minimum starting wage at JPMorgan Chase is $16.50 per hour, though it can start at $18 for workers in high-cost regions. Meanwhile, Bank of America announced in April that its hourly pay will rise to $17 in May and increase to $20 by 2021.

Dimon pointed to the benefits package the company offers entry-level employees, recounting how the company improved its health-care coverage when he found out some employees couldn’t afford the deductibles.

“The second we found out for our lower paid folks making under $60,000 a year, we cut the deductible to the extent that if they do the wellness programs it's effectively zero,” he says.

Dimon also pointed to the competitive pressure that compels him to pay enough to hire and retain effective workers.

“To act like somehow I can steal from them and do a good job at my company is a little bit crazy,” he says.

…According to Dimon, populist critics misrepresent the actions of wealthy people and big banks. Still, he acknowledged these critics tap into genuine discontent held by people struggling to gain access to services like quality education and health care.

“We should acknowledge the problems in society that are causing the anger,” he says.

“But those problems are we can't build infrastructure,” he adds. “Those problems are the inner-city schools are not graduating our kids. Our litigation system is capricious. Health care is huge— we should get all health care to the 40 million people who don't have it.”

Leading progressives Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have attacked Dimon in recent months.

In March, Dimon criticized the potential negative economic consequences of Green New Deal legislation proposed by Ocasio-Cortez. The next day, the freshman New York Congresswoman responded, pointing to Dimon’s participation in a $13 billion settlement over allegations that JPMorgan Chase fraudulently misrepresented the mortgages it was selling to investors ahead of the 2008 recession. She also criticized the bank’s financing of fossil fuel pipelines.

“So maybe they aren’t the best authority on prioritizing economic wellbeing of everyday people & the planet,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

Earlier this month, Dimon condemned socialism, saying it “means that the government owns and controls companies” for “political purposes, for jobs and votes.”

Sanders objected to the comments, saying he “didn't hear Jamie Dimon criticizing socialism when Wall Street begged for the largest federal bailout in American history— some $700 billion from the Treasury and even more from the Fed.”

In the interview with Serwer, Dimon said he and JPMorgan Chase grasp the issues facing low-level employees and have sought to improve their lives.

“We understand,” he says. “We have a heart.”

Kalamazoo area state Rep Jon Hoadley is contesting the 6th congressional district in southwest Michigan, a swing seat currently occupied by serial Trump-Enabler Fred Upton. This morning, Hadley noted that "The absurd difference between CEO pay and average worker pay is indicative of a tax code that prioritizes wealthy people over working people. Basically the opposite of what happened under the Trump tax scam, our tax code should be investing in working people while encouraging investments to do more work."

Kara Eastman is the progressive Democrat running for the GOP-held seat in Omaha. She’snot the Wall Street candidate and not the Cheri Bustos candidate; she’s the grassroots candidate, a mother and a community activist. “The time has come for us,” she told me last night, “to acknowledge the overwhelming power and influence that millionaires and billionaires have in our country. Their voice has been the loudest— resulting in government handouts to corporations while regular working people are continuously held back. It used to be that if you worked hard in the United States, you could support a family— you could get ahead. This is no longer the case. But there are people running to change the system and candidates like me who will never stop fighting for working people.”

Democratic socialist Shaniyat Chowdhury is running for a southeast Queens congressional seat held by corrupt New Dem Gregory Meeks— the Queens County machine boss. Chowdhury has strong beliefs he’ll be bringing with him to Washington. “With all that money,” he told me this morning, “you would think Mr. Dimon would know that socialism actually empowers the people who do the labor. The means of production and profit belong to the people, not billionaires who believe being poor is on a moral compass.”
 

#3 In Our Series About The Freshmen: What About Katie Porter?

Last cycle, the NRCC was so certain that they would hold CA-45 in Orange County that they didn't even bother putting incumbent Mimi Walters into their Patriot Program for vulnerable House members. That may have been a mistake. The district, which went into the race with a PVI of R+3, had given Romney a 55-43% win over Obama but gave Hillary 49% to Trump's 44%. With a $92,378 median income, it's the 13th richest congressional district in the country. Ethnically, it's 53.2% White, 22.4% Asian. 18.7% Latino and 1.7% Black. It seemed safer than any of the other Orange County districts. The GOP hadn't really thought that every one of them would get caught up in the anti-red/anti-Trump 2018 wave. But they did. Walters lost to first-time candidate Katie Porter:

Porter's campaign was largely based on her promise to "to hold Donald Trump and the powerful special interests in Washington accountable on behalf of Orange County families" and her pledge to support Medicare-For-All. She has signed on as an original co-sponsor of Pramila Jayapal's new-and-improved Medicare-For-All Act and her work in the House Financial Services Committee holding the Wall Street special interests' feet to the fire has become her trademark already.

Katie was backed by Blue America and we were a little nonplused when her voting record quickly started diverging from progressives. Even now, her ProgressivePunch crucial vote score is nothing to write home about-- a "D," tied with 5 New Dems, like Susie Lee, Chrissy Houlahan and Dean Phillips. An endorsement committee of a board I'm on asked me what was wrong and if we should consider not re-endorsing her. My advise based on two things-- 1- that she is doing incredible work in her committee and 2- that there are still too few votes to make a decision like that, even if we'd rather see her voting with AOC and Mike Levin (in the district next door) than like conservatives like Lee, Houlahan and Phillips. They have nothing going for them-- just the poor voting record-- while she is fulfilling her campaign promise to hold special interests accountable... and in a way few freshman members can match.

Blue America is still watching and waiting to see how her first year looks before we re-endorse. But the other board... I voted yes, to endorse again. I suspect Blue America will as well. She may need the help too. There are already 4 Republicans in the primary, Don Sedgwick, a Laguna Hills City Councilman, who has raised big money ($140,977), Ray Gennawey, Mission Viego Mayor Greg Raths and Yorba Linda City Councilwoman Peggy Huang. At one point, Mimi Walters said she would like a rematch and filed paper work with the FEC but she's been quiet and hasn't raised any money so far. Voter registration in CA-45 favors Republicans by about 5 points over Democrats.



She has roughed up congressional witnesses in her committee, like billionaire Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase and Well Fargo CEO Tim Sloan, as well as the top dogs at Equifax and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She's already considered the best financial affairs interrogator in Congress. But aside from making a name for herself for nailing banksters' and Trump officials' hides to the wall-- watch the 3 videos on this page-- Porter has raised an impressive $416,122.85 for her reelection campaign.

When compulsive liar and Trumpist press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders asserted last week that congressional Democrats are not "smart enough" to review Trump’s tax returns, Porter went on CNN to respond and offered to "take that bet anytime... I’m trained in tax law. I’m a legal professor. I’m ready to take a look." Huckabee hasn't brought the taxes over for her to look at-- nor, apparently chastened-- has she responded in any other way.

Stephen Hawking on What Killed the World of the Jetsons. Prelude to Thoughts on a Guaranteed Jobs Program

The Jetson's life in one is which so little work is done by humans that leisure time has expanded exponentially and no one is poor. In the image above, even the robot maid has robots to serve her. What's the unspoken assumption behind the Jetson's world?

by Gaius Publius

the swarthy Furies stalk the man
gone rich beyond all rights
–Aeschylus, Agamemnon

I'm about to start writing about the new proposal from Stephanie Kelton and her colleagues at the Levy Institute on the guaranteed jobs program, a proposal, by the way, that's starting to get some serious notice.

But ahead of that work I want to consider an extreme case, but not an unlikely one. What if, in the future, there simply aren't enough jobs for everyone? What then?

Put more simply, what's the underlying assumption behind the world of the Jetsons? The late Stephen Hawking, in his last Reddit AMA appearance, has the answer.

Technological Unemployment

Here's what was asked of Stephen Hawking in that last AMA session by one Reddit questioner (emphasis mine):

I'm rather late to the question-asking party, but I'll ask anyway and hope. Have you thought about the possibility of technological unemployment, where we develop automated processes that ultimately cause large unemployment by performing jobs faster and/or cheaper than people can perform them? Some compare this thought to the thoughts of the Luddites, whose revolt was caused in part by perceived technological unemployment over 100 years ago. In particular, do you foresee a world where people work less because so much work is automated? Do you think people will always either find work or manufacture more work to be done? Thank you for your time and your contributions. I’ve found research to be a largely social endeavor, and you've been an inspiration to so many.

A fascinating question. But first a note: Technological unemployment is the term for exactly what we mentioned at the beginning, "the loss of jobs caused by technological change." As Wikipedia explains, "Such change typically includes the introduction of labour-saving 'mechanical-muscle' machines or more efficient 'mechanical-mind' processes (automation)."

Wikipedia continues: "Historical examples include artisan weavers reduced to poverty after the introduction of mechanised looms. During World War II, Alan Turing's Bombe machine compressed and decoded thousands of man-years worth of encrypted data in a matter of hours. A contemporary example of technological unemployment is the displacement of retail cashiers by self-service tills [automated checkout machines]."

It's hard to imagine a world without enough jobs if you're living reasonably comfortably in the U.S. But consider India, to pick just one example. What could possibly happen in the Indian economy that would allow its 1.3 billion people — a population four times the U.S. population — all to live "reasonably comfortably"? India already doesn't have enough good jobs for its people — and that's before considering the the pressures of automation.

Considered globally, there are already not enough jobs in the world for all the people in it.

But the problem posed by job-killing automation (robots, in the popular imagination) still needs a solution. What if, even in developed countries, the average number of working hours available is fewer than eight per day, perhaps far fewer?

This is Stephen Hawking's answer, and it's the same solution in the future case of mathematically too few jobs as in the present case (emphasis mine):

If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.

In a world where more and more people are squeezed by fewer jobs, lower-paying jobs, and the relentless flow of newly created wealth into fewer and fewer hands, the only solution is, as Hawking says, "wealth redistribution." The alternative is stark: organized society will simply crumble into poverty — and in my view, rebellion.

The Most Dangerous Time for Our Planet: How Will Elites React?

I've been saying that both the U.S. and the rest of the world are in a "pre-revolutionary state." Hawking, in an earlier Guardian article, says something similar. He calls the increasing inequality "socially destructive," and for that and other reasons names this "the most dangerous time for our planet":

The concerns underlying these votes [Brexit and the election of Donald Trump] about the economic consequences of globalisation and accelerating technological change are absolutely understandable. The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.

This in turn will accelerate the already widening economic inequality around the world. The internet and the platforms that it makes possible allow very small groups of individuals to make enormous profits while employing very few people. This is inevitable, it is progress, but it is also socially destructive.

We need to put this alongside the financial crash, which brought home to people that a very few individuals working in the financial sector can accrue huge rewards and that the rest of us underwrite that success and pick up the bill when their greed leads us astray. So taken together we are living in a world of widening, not diminishing, financial inequality, in which many people can see not just their standard of living, but their ability to earn a living at all, disappearing. It is no wonder then that they are searching for a new deal, which Trump and Brexit might have appeared to represent.

Hawking identifies the solution. He does not call for reaction and resistance by the ruled, since he considers the Brexit vote and the election of Trump already to be reactions to inequality. He calls instead for intelligent response by those with actual power, the elites themselves:

What matters now, far more than the choices made by these two electorates, is how the elites react. Should we [he considers himself, correctly, one of the "cultural elites"], in turn, reject these votes as outpourings of crude populism that fail to take account of the facts, and attempt to circumvent or circumscribe the choices that they represent? I would argue that this would be a terrible mistake.

I agree with his last statement above. I've been putting it this way:

It's up to the rich to stand down. It's up to police to stand down. It's up to the predators to stop feeding on us, eating our money, our labor — and in the case of the torturers in our "security" community — our pain, which they give us to please themselves.

If the rich are determined to extract the last drop of blood ... expect the victims to put up a fuss. And don't expect that fuss to be pretty.

When all power belongs to the state and the rulers who guide it, the people can only make their needs known. And if those needs are ignored, all they can then do is destroy the world of their betters, prior, perhaps, to taking power themselves, an event which often never occurs. In the face of elites resistance, especially extreme resistance, only destruction of the old will allow the powerless to create the new, if that's indeed what they do.

Prise de la Bastille, Jean-Pierre Houël, Bibliothèque nationale de France (source; click to enlarge)

The most orderly modern form of "taking power for themselves" occurred in 2016 — the electoral rebellion against the Clintonist-Obamist neoliberal rulers of the Democratic Party by people supporting Bernie Sanders. That revolt was put down, as Party elites pulled every lever available to retain control.

There may be one more orderly, electoral attempt in 2020 — or not; the choices may be miserable. But if it does occur, unless elites stand down, unless the next electoral rebellion is permitted to succeed, the popular response to failure won't be electoral and could be decidedly disorderly.

Hawking, the "enormous optimist," puts the problem faced by the elites more politely: "We can do this, I am an enormous optimist for my species; but it will require the elites, from London to Harvard, from Cambridge to Hollywood, to learn the lessons of the past year. To learn above all a measure of humility."

I, the less-than-optimistic, nevertheless agree with him. It does indeed take "enormous optimism" to think that a class defined by their hubris will learn "a sense of humility." Jamie Dimon, beware.

GP
 

The banksters probably aren't even half as smart as they think they are -- and a lot less smart than Elizabeth Warren

"The problem is not that I don't understand the global banking system. The problem for these guys is that I fully understand the system and I understand how they make their money. And that's what they don't like about me."

-- Sen. Elizabeth Warren, on HuffPost's "So That Happened" podcast

by Ken

Can you guess which financial-sector genius Senator Warren was responding to on the HuffPost podcast?

If you guessed Jpmorganchase's Jamie "I'm So Smart, I Make Myself Sick" Dimon: right the first time. And as ThinkProgress's Bryce Covert put it in the title of his post yesterday: "A Bank CEO Said Elizabeth Warren Doesn’t Understand Wall Street. Her Response Was Perfect." Yes indeed, absolutely perfect.

It's a timely reminder both of how arrogant these bankster bastards are and of how much less smart they are than they think they are. Jamie D thinks he's some kind of genius. What he actually is is an insatiably greedy scumbag who gets his way most of the time by parlaying that greed along with his utter lack of principle and the financial clout of his company, especially in league with his international brethren. If you have the collective clout to back up your greed, and the requisite ruthlessness, yes, you can get used to getting what you want, and think you actually deserve it.

With reference to that phrase I just used, "the international brethren," no, there aren't a lot of sisters in the International Bankster Fraternity. And it occurs to me that this very likely has something to do with why it comes so easily to a half-witted slimesack like Jamie D to assume he's so much smarter than the senator. After all, she's only a grr-l.

However, as Bryce pointed out in his post (links onsite):

Warren’s résumé comes with nearly 20 years of experience teaching corporate law at Harvard University, publishing nine books, chairing the Congressional Oversight Panel that oversaw the bank bailouts in 2008 (of which JP Morgan was a beneficiary), and coming up with the idea for and helping to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has already helped consumers avoid numerous predatory lending schemes and recouped more than $4.8 billion through its enforcement actions.

None of that happened because the senator doesn't understand the international banking system, but -- as she said -- because she does. And it seems to altogether likely that, as she said, that's why she makes the international banking fratboys so darned mad. Outsiders aren't supposed to be familiar with their secret handshakes -- and financial pillaging and plundering. The nerve of her!

And they're certainly not wrong about her having plenty of nerve -- thank goodness! From what we know of her history, that nerve didn't come quickly or easily, but was built up, and earned, over decades of close scrutiny of the actual practices of the financial-services industry. By and large the people who put that kind of time and effort into figuring out how all those pieces fit together expect some kind of payoff for their labors, and usually the only way to score that kind of payday is by getting on the bankster payroll in one fashion or another. I think it would be safe to say that Jamie D and his brethren don't trust the financial bona fides of people who aren't on their payroll.

Talk about somebody who doesn't know her place! Here's Bryce again (and again, links onsite):

She has also become widely known for her tough critiques of the banking industry. She has questioned why the government didn’t break up the biggest banks, like JP Morgan, when it offered bailout money in 2008 and joined a group of Senators in 2013 to propose reinstating a Depression-era rule that separated commercial and investment banking. She’s been a staunch supporter of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and stood in opposition to Republicans’ attempts to roll parts of it back.

She’s long criticized regulators’ reluctance to go after the biggest banks for their misconduct. She questioned the Securities and Exchange Commission, Justice Department, and Federal Reserve on the lack of prosecutions for banks’ misdeeds that led up to the financial crisis, saying, “If large financial institutions can break the law and accumulate millions in profits and, if they get caught, settle by paying out of those profits, they do not have much incentive to follow the law.” She proposed a bill that would have made settlements between banks and these regulators more transparent in an effort to tamp down on the government’s exaggerations. Just last week, she sent a letter to the SEC chairman voicing her disappointment in the agency’s failure to enforce existing rules governing the financial industry and its slow pace in writing new rules as mandated by Dodd-Frank.

And she’s also stuck it to JP Morgan itself. In 2013, the bank announced that one of its traders in London, who came to be known as the “London Whale,” had made a series of bad bets that ended up costing the bank $6 billion. The bank was eventually made to pay $900 million in fines and “admit its traders acted recklessly” when it was found the trades violated rules against banks making such bets with their own capital and against market manipulation.

As the episode unfurled, Warren said it made the case for a return to “boring banking” and the institution of the Volcker Rule, which would separate investment and commercial banking, in order to alleviate the risk such trades pose to the industry as a whole.

Now the bankster boys aren't that stupid. They're well familiar with the shenanigans they've grown used to getting away with, which would be pretty much everything this side of murder -- aka "the international banking system." Which apparently makes them that much madder when this darned grr-l talks about this stuff publicly, and even tries to do something about it. How disrespectful!

Yes, the lack of respect rankles the brethren. Bryce recalls that in March Warren Buffett took aim at Senator Warren, not for her lack of understanding but for her lack of tact, for being, as Bryce put it in the title of a post he wrote at the time, "Too 'Angry' and 'Violent' With Rich People." Oh, the horror! Bryce goes on to note:

Banks have also been fighting viciously against her, threatening to withhold campaign donations to all Senate Democrats to protest her. JP Morgan told Democrats that donations hinged on a friendlier atmosphere for banks.

As Howie has pointed out frequently, the banksters have had no difficulty finding takers for their bitching, with Sen. Chuck Schumer enthusiastically taking up the cause of creating that "friendlier atmosphere for banks" by lining up as many Democratic Senate candidates as he can who, if elected, would be there to offset the unfriendliness of troublemaker senators like Elizabeth Warren. Which just goes to show that she must be doing something right!

#

So Jpmorganchase is paying Jamie Dimon $20M for 2013? My offer would have been minimum wage for 52 40-hour weeks

Says Cornelius Hurley, director of Boston University's Center for Finance, Law and Policy: "It doesn’t reconcile for JPMorgan to be paying out billions in fines while its C.E.O.’s compensation nearly doubled. You usually get fired for that, not rewarded."

by Ken

I suppose it's none of my beeswax that Jamie Dimon's compensation for last year was hiked to $20 million from the previous year's $11.5 million despite what the NYT calls in its headline a "rough year" for his company, Jpmorganchase ("Big Raise for JPMorgan's Dimon Despite a Rough Year"). After all, I don't have so much as a credit card with Jpmorganchase.

Oh, I used to have a couple of Chase credit cards, but they canceled the last one despite my never having had so much as a late payment, because I had a large amount of credit-card debit that I was paying off from my mother's -- and then my -- attempts to keep her going in her later years. (For the record, Chase had continued to shower me with balance-transfer offers. And not that long after my card was canceled. it too was paid off.) Oh wait, I do sort-of-have one Chase card: one that was my mother's, that we had her OK having my name added to so I could manage the account. I told them at the time that I didn't want a card, that I just wanted to get the account paid off, which I did. But they insisted on sending me a card, and they've kept sending me cards and reminders to activate them.

So I have no personal stake in the affairs of Jpmorganchase beyond a fervent hope that, say, the top 50 executives soon die such agonizing deaths as to make them wish they had never been born. And so it's probably neither here nor there that my solution to the question of compensating would be to make out time sheets for the 52 weeks of 2013 and have his compensation set at minimum wage according to whichever state his employment is chartered in -- I'm guessing NYS. (There would really be no trouble reconstructing those time sheets after the fact. I would be prepared to concede that he worked 40 hours each of those weeks, even though I'm not absolutely sure he could provide documentation, and since he's an executive he wouldn't be entitled to overtime anyway, right?)

As the NYT's Peter Eavis reports, the amount of the package approved by the company "will further inflame the debate over the accountability of senior bank executives," especially "after 12 months in which JPMorgan suffered several bruising legal setbacks, including a record $13 billion settlement with the Justice Department over soured mortgage securities."

suffered several bruising legal setbacks, including a record $13 billion settlement with the Justice Department over soured mortgage securities.

In justifying the $20 million package, which includes $18.5 million of JPMorgan stock as well as a base salary of $1.5 million, the board said that JPMorgan had advanced in many ways under Mr. Dimon. And to many on Wall Street, as well as some other long-serving chief executives, Mr. Dimon wholly deserves the raise. "I think he’s worth more than that," Warren E. Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, said. "Over all, I think the shareholders of JPMorgan and the American people should be happy that Jamie Dimon has been running the bank over this period."

Other senior executives at the bank also got lush compensation packages. But it is unlikely that many JPMorgan employees will be receiving an increase anywhere near the size of Mr. Dimon’s.

When JPMorgan emerged from the financial crisis of 2008 stronger than most of its peers, Mr. Dimon was widely viewed in Washington and on Wall Street as a shrewd manager of risks. But after a large trading loss in 2012, known as the London Whale debacle, questions arose about the effectiveness of JPMorgan’s management. At the same time, Mr. Dimon’s combative manner was increasingly viewed as a liability for the bank at time when it needed to make peace with regulators.

After the trading loss, the bank’s legal problems only escalated. Along with the $13 billion settlement with the Justice Department, JPMorgan last year paid out a large sum to settle allegations that some of its traders manipulated energy prices, and, most recently, federal prosecutors investigating the Ponzi scheme of Bernard L. Madoff extracted $1.7 billion from JPMorgan for failing to alert authorities to suspicions relating to Mr. Madoff’s business.

I'm relieved to see that I'm not the only ones whose eyebrows were raised by our Jamie's compensation coup.

Given the breadth of the legal onslaught, JPMorgan’s critics contend that the board should not have increased Mr. Dimon’s pay. "If there was ever a time to take a wait-and-see attitude and pay him what they paid last year, this is it," Cornelius K. Hurley, a professor at the Boston University School of Law, said. "This is a thumb in the eye of regulators and a thumb in the eye for the public."

Indeed, Mr. Dimon’s raise was opposed by a vocal minority of JPMorgan’s board who favored keeping Mr. Dimon’s pay roughly flat with 2012. But Joseph Evangelisti, a spokesman for the bank, denied that the discussions were heated. "That’s simply not true," he said. But when asked, Mr. Evangelisti did not make a member of the board available for an interview.

But hey, if Warren Buffett says Jamie's compensation package is A-OK, who am I to say no? Or even to jump on the bandwagon of spoilsports who see this development as yet another reason why a single person shouldn't hold the positions of both CEO and board chairman. Those Danny Downers seem to think that possibly such a person holds undue sway over the board.

Some banking experts say they think that the board’s approval of Mr. Dimon’s raise shows the need to remove him from his position as chairman of the board, leaving him with just the chief executive role. The bank’s shareholders overwhelmingly voted down such a move last year. Even so, those experts contend that removing Mr. Dimon from the chairman’s seat would have made the board more independent — and less likely to have given him an $8.5 million raise. "This is why you need to split the chairman and the C.E.O. roles," Paul Miller, a bank analyst at FBR Capital Markets, said. "I don’t think anyone is worth this money."

But Mr. Buffett, a JPMorgan shareholder, said he was not convinced that the roles had to be split. It is far more important, he said, that a board pick the right person to head a company. "The determining factor of whether the board is doing its job is whether they have the right C.E.O.," he said. "That trumps everything else."

Still, it seems that within not just Jpmorganchase but within much of the banking profession our Jamie is still aces.

JPMorgan says that it has taken substantial steps to beef up its controls to prevent future lapses. Several senior executives connected to the London Whale affair have left the bank, a sign that top employees do pay for serious mistakes. And despite the large payouts to government authorities last year, JPMorgan’s underlying businesses are performing well and its shareholders are earning strong returns.

JPMorgan’s supporters also assert that its biggest fines were related to shoddy mortgage practices that did not occur under Mr. Dimon’s watch. The board noted on Friday in the filing that the practices occurred at Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns, which JPMorgan bought in the heat of the financial crisis. But a significant portion of the $13 billion settlement was related to JPMorgan’s own practices. And some banking experts still say they think Mr. Dimon bears some responsibility for the penalties stemming from Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns — because, they say, he was keen to acquire both firms, even with their potential for future mortgage losses. "They bought those firms on Jamie Dimon’s watch," Mr. Hurley said.

JPMorgan still faces several government investigations, including one into whether the bank’s hiring practices in China were a form of bribery. These investigations could make life difficult for the bank and Mr. Dimon in the coming months.

Still, right now, it is hard to see what will weaken Mr. Dimon’s standing. As long as the bank’s profits continue to roll in and its share price stays elevated, he is likely to have the strong support of shareholders. "If you manage a business that size, you can do a lot of things that are very helpful to the economy, but you cannot do everything perfectly," Mr. Buffett said.

"But outside of Wall Street," reporter Eavis notes, "the pay package may be viewed differently." He concludes with another quote from Boston University School of Law's Cornelius Hurley, professor of the practice of banking law:

It doesn’t reconcile for JPMorgan to be paying out billions in fines while its C.E.O.’s compensation nearly doubled. You usually get fired for that, not rewarded.

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The Idiocracy Files (Redux), Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

[We continue our encore presentation of Noah's Idiocracy series. And don't forget Noah's new "Need a last-minute Christmas gift suggestion?," "50 Years Ago Today: The Beatles," and "A Tale of Two Popes -- the one in the Vatican and the one in North Carolina."]

"And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And, frankly, they own the place."

-- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), May 2009

by Noah

On June 13 of this year, almost exactly three years after the above quote from one of the few of the more honest men in Washington, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee gave us more of what Congress does best: a classic dog-and-pony show, a farce meant for public consumption, to be cut down, shined up and packaged for the nightly news by Washington's media accomplices.

The special guest star attraction this time was Jamie Dimon, chairman, president, and CEO of J. P. Morgan-Chase, a creature who is so warped that he can actually say, even on national TV, that he has no idea why he is so unpopular with the American public, and say it with a straight face. Gee, all he (and his bankster cohorts) did was bring the world economy to the brink of total collapse, ruin lives that are of no consequence to him, make a profit on such actions, and then hold up the taxpayers for even more of their hard-earned money. What a swell guy!

So it' was about time that this dark lord of the financial world got called on the carpet by the people in Washington who look out for us, right? You know, the people we elect to represent us? Yeah, well, somewhere between your voting booth and the Capitol building, the $enate's mission changed. Fancy that!

Hence the farce back in June when Dimon Jamie arrived for his stern, harsh, and even brutal questioning by our senators, brutal enough to remind one of the Spanish Inquisition -- or, well, perhaps something milder. Let's take a look at some of the harsh inquisitors and some highlight quotes that will show what a nasty day Dimon had. These guys didn't just remind me of Idiocracy. A famous Monty Python sketch also came to mind.



AND NOW, THE BRUTAL, INHUMAN $ENATE INQUISITORS!

1. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN)

"You're obviously renowned -- rightly so, I think -- as one of the best CEOs in the country. . . . You missed this. It's a blip on the radar screen."

A blip! Four billion dollars lost in speculative derivative trading is a blip? That's right, the score was up to $4 billion as of the "hearing." Originally Dimon told the country that his company's loss was $2 billion. Now it looks like it may be as high as $7 billion. Pocket change. Either the guy is a pathological liar or he is grossly incompetent. Makes me wonder if his great-grandfather was the captain of the Titanic.

2. Sen. Michael Crapo (R-ID)

"One of the tensions we face here is that we wanna be sure that we are adequately regulating our financial institutions, but we wanna be sure also that we basically don't have the regulators running our private sector institutions . . . and again, what should the function of the regulators be."

Unbelievable! Crap-boy is asking Dimon what the function of the regulators should be. If this assclown had a farm, he'd be asking the foxes what their role in guarding the chicken coop should be.

3. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)

Now this guy is well-known for being a world-class asswipe. Let's see what this genius from South Carolina, now moved on to run the Heritage Society, had to say.

"I would like to come away from the hearing today with some ideas on, uh, what you think we need to do."

Gee, I wonder what Jamie Dimon thinks! Why, it wouldn't shock me if he just came out and said, "I think we need to do nothing. Does nothing work for you?" After all, four years have now passed since the crash and "nothing" is what Washington has done, simply because, as Senator Durbin said, the $enate is owned by the banks. They got off even easier than BP.

No lesson will be learned. Expect a bigger crash eventually, and expect these bribe-taking cretins to say publicly that they just didn't see it comin' and who could have possibly predicted, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? It'll be like Condoleezza Rice saying that no one could have imagined terrorists flying planes into the WTC.

4. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)

What does the renowned racist from Alabamy say?

"Would you feel better in a closed hearing?"

I can imagine what that would be like: laughs, drinks, K Street-provided lap dancers, and envelopes of cash for all. Who wants another round?

* * * * * 

Crapo and Corker? Ya just can't make these names up. They're like something out of a Charles Dickens novel. It gets better. Crapo's No. 1 "campaign contributor"? J. P. Morgan-Chase. Corker's No. 1? Goldman-Sachs. Not to worry, his No. 2 is Morgan.

To be fair, and I always want to be fair, I've only called attention to the four worst of the grand inquisitors. After the committee was through wasting our time, Dimon even thanked $enator Corker for such easy questions, right out in the open; no shame, plenty of arrogance. Makes me wonder what kind of handouts were given out after the show. Were there any briefcases left behind in the Senate that day?

Of course, if it was up to me, the majority of the $enate would all be fitted for orange jump suits, or better yet salted up and dragged through glass after going before a judge, if you could find a judge that hadn't also been paid off by the same "campaign contributors."  Ask yourself who has damaged this country more, Al Qaeda or the Wall Street criminal element and their Washington enablers? Who is even responsible for more deaths? I have no doubt that if Jerry Sandusky gave $enators the same kind of money as the banksters, they'd treat him the same.

Money buys a lot of ass-kissing in Washington. Sure, we already knew that. It's just that Washington business is getting done in a much more brazen manner these days, as evidenced by the June 2012 inquistition of Jamie Dimon. Ever wonder what the janitors use to clean the slimy ooze from the Capitol floor and furniture every night?

JAMIE DIMON: I think that no matter how good you are, how competent people are, you never, ever get complacent in risk. Challenge everything. . . .

Yeah, Dimon. You are so good. What a great guy! Not. Great smirk too. Try arrogant creep, for starters. Yeesh. We've already seen how money can buy infinite heaps of arrogance by observing the likes of Romney. How many more of these arrogant, insensitive crap-spewers do we have to put up with before the combined rage and indignation of the world just says enough and heaves these a-holes into the shark-infested waters off their Cayman Islands? I'd like to see if the sharks would even touch them.

To his credit, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who actually tried to grill Dimon and even reminded him that "this is not your hearing" when Dimon arrogantly tried to talk over his questions, made an attempt to do the people's business, but, as we know, the majority of the Democrats aren't much better.

Our corporatist President Obama, in a May interview on The View, called Dimon "one of the smartest bankers we've got" and called Morgan "one of the best-managed banks there is." Obama went on to say that even smart people make mistakes. True enough, but ideally they don't lie about the size of the mistake every time a microphone is placed in front of their face, oath or not. Besides, no one ever said bad guys weren't smart sometimes.

Now there's talk that Dimon might be the clown that replaces Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary. More of that fox-guarding-the-chickens stuff. Ain't Washington grand?

Lots of people say the problem with Washington can only be solved if we somehow get the money out of politics. Of course, there isn't much chance of that happening when the people that make the laws are the same ones that take the cash. If any progress is to be made before the 2014 elections in increasing the awareness of just how low Washington has sunk, there is a lot of work to be done.

THE IDIOCRACY FILES

The world of Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy, projected for 500 years into the future, arrives 494 years early!

"As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent, but as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution doesn't necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."

-- The Narrator, Idiocracy

Part 1: 2012: The Year That Idiocracy Moments Broke the Scale
Part 2: More Idiocracy Moments for 2012
Part 3: Republicans Seek to Create a New Country. It's Called Crackpotopia!!!
Part 4: Special Arkansas Edition
Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

#

The Idiocracy Files, Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

"And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And, frankly, they own the place."

-- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), May 2009

by Noah

On June 13 of this year, almost exactly three years after the above quote from one of the few of the more honest men in Washington, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee gave us more of what Congress does best: a classic dog-and-pony show, a farce meant for public consumption, to be cut down, shined up and packaged for the nightly news by Washington's media accomplices.

The special guest star attraction this time was Jamie Dimon, chairman, president, and CEO of J. P. Morgan-Chase, a creature who is so warped that he can actually say, even on national TV, that he has no idea why he is so unpopular with the American public, and say it with a straight face. Gee, all he (and his bankster cohorts) did was bring the world economy to the brink of total collapse, ruin lives that are of no consequence to him, make a profit on such actions, and then hold up the taxpayers for even more of their hard-earned money. What a swell guy!

So it' was about time that this dark lord of the financial world got called on the carpet by the people in Washington who look out for us, right? You know, the people we elect to represent us? Yeah, well, somewhere between your voting booth and the Capitol building, the $enate's mission changed. Fancy that!

Hence the farce back in June when Dimon Jamie arrived for his stern, harsh, and even brutal questioning by our senators, brutal enough to remind one of the Spanish Inquisition -- or, well, perhaps something milder. Let's take a look at some of the harsh inquisitors and some highlight quotes that will show what a nasty day Dimon had. These guys didn't just remind me of Idiocracy. A famous Monty Python sketch also came to mind.



AND NOW, THE BRUTAL, INHUMAN $ENATE INQUISITORS!

1. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN)

"You're obviously renowned -- rightly so, I think -- as one of the best CEOs in the country. . . . You missed this. It's a blip on the radar screen."

A blip! Four billion dollars lost in speculative derivative trading is a blip? That's right, the score was up to $4 billion as of the "hearing." Originally Dimon told the country that his company's loss was $2 billion. Now it looks like it may be as high as $7 billion. Pocket change. Either the guy is a pathological liar or he is grossly incompetent. Makes me wonder if his great-grandfather was the captain of the Titanic.

2. Sen. Michael Crapo (R-ID)

"One of the tensions we face here is that we wanna be sure that we are adequately regulating our financial institutions, but we wanna be sure also that we basically don't have the regulators running our private sector institutions . . . and again, what should the function of the regulators be."

Unbelievable! Crap-boy is asking Dimon what the function of the regulators should be. If this assclown had a farm, he'd be asking the foxes what their role in guarding the chicken coop should be.

3. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)

Now this guy is well-known for being a world-class asswipe. Let's see what this genius from South Carolina, now moved on to run the Heritage Society, had to say.

"I would like to come away from the hearing today with some ideas on, uh, what you think we need to do."

Gee, I wonder what Jamie Dimon thinks! Why, it wouldn't shock me if he just came out and said, "I think we need to do nothing. Does nothing work for you?" After all, four years have now passed since the crash and "nothing" is what Washington has done, simply because, as Senator Durbin said, the $enate is owned by the banks. They got off even easier than BP.

No lesson will be learned. Expect a bigger crash eventually, and expect these bribe-taking cretins to say publicly that they just didn't see it comin' and who could have possibly predicted, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? It'll be like Condoleezza Rice saying that no one could have imagined terrorists flying planes into the WTC.

4. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)

What does the renowned racist from Alabamy say?

"Would you feel better in a closed hearing?"

I can imagine what that would be like: laughs, drinks, K Street-provided lap dancers, and envelopes of cash for all. Who wants another round?

* * * * * 

Crapo and Corker? Ya just can't make these names up. They're like something out of a Charles Dickens novel. It gets better. Crapo's No. 1 "campaign contributor"? J. P. Morgan-Chase. Corker's No. 1? Goldman-Sachs. Not to worry, his No. 2 is Morgan.

To be fair, and I always want to be fair, I've only called attention to the four worst of the grand inquisitors. After the committee was through wasting our time, Dimon even thanked $enator Corker for such easy questions, right out in the open; no shame, plenty of arrogance. Makes me wonder what kind of handouts were given out after the show. Were there any briefcases left behind in the Senate that day?

Of course, if it was up to me, the majority of the $enate would all be fitted for orange jump suits, or better yet salted up and dragged through glass after going before a judge, if you could find a judge that hadn't also been paid off by the same "campaign contributors."  Ask yourself who has damaged this country more, Al Qaeda or the Wall Street criminal element and their Washington enablers? Who is even responsible for more deaths? I have no doubt that if Jerry Sandusky gave $enators the same kind of money as the banksters, they'd treat him the same.

Money buys a lot of ass-kissing in Washington. Sure, we already knew that. It's just that Washington business is getting done in a much more brazen manner these days, as evidenced by the June 2012 inquistition of Jamie Dimon. Ever wonder what the janitors use to clean the slimy ooze from the Capitol floor and furniture every night?

JAMIE DIMON: I think that no matter how good you are, how competent people are, you never, ever get complacent in risk. Challenge everything. . . .

Yeah, Dimon. You are so good. What a great guy! Not. Great smirk too. Try arrogant creep, for starters. Yeesh. We've already seen how money can buy infinite heaps of arrogance by observing the likes of Romney. How many more of these arrogant, insensitive crap-spewers do we have to put up with before the combined rage and indignation of the world just says enough and heaves these a-holes into the shark-infested waters off their Cayman Islands? I'd like to see if the sharks would even touch them.

To his credit, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who actually tried to grill Dimon and even reminded him that "this is not your hearing" when Dimon arrogantly tried to talk over his questions, made an attempt to do the people's business, but, as we know, the majority of the Democrats aren't much better.

Our corporatist President Obama, in a May interview on The View, called Dimon "one of the smartest bankers we've got" and called Morgan "one of the best-managed banks there is." Obama went on to say that even smart people make mistakes. True enough, but ideally they don't lie about the size of the mistake every time a microphone is placed in front of their face, oath or not. Besides, no one ever said bad guys weren't smart sometimes.

Now there's talk that Dimon might be the clown that replaces Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary. More of that fox-guarding-the-chickens stuff. Ain't Washington grand?

Lots of people say the problem with Washington can only be solved if we somehow get the money out of politics. Of course, there isn't much chance of that happening when the people that make the laws are the same ones that take the cash. If any progress is to be made before the 2014 elections in increasing the awareness of just how low Washington has sunk, there is a lot of work to be done.

THE IDIOCRACY FILES

The world of Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy, projected for 500 years into the future, arrives 494 years early!

"As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent, but as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution doesn't necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."

-- The Narrator, Idiocracy

Part 1: 2012: The Year That Idiocracy Moments Broke the Scale
Part 2: Beware the Girl Scouts, Sheldon Adelson, and more
Part 3: Republicans Seek to Create a New Country. It's Called Crackpotopia!!!
Part 4: Special Arkansas Edition
Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

#