JPMorgan Faux Hedges “European Distressed Debt”. Why?
May 17th, 2012
in Announcements
by William K. Black, New Economic Perspective.
The usual apologists have rushed to the defense of Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase’s CEO, after he announced that JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) lost over $2 billion on purported hedges. The academic apologist-in-chief, Yale Law’s Jonathan Macey, is outraged that anyone is concerned about these matters. Macey, channeling Dimon’s flacks, asserts that the facts are as follows:
“The sole purpose of hedging is to reduce risk. The particular trades that J.P. Morgan was making were designed and intended to protect the bank’s balance sheet against losses from its exposure to the apparently increasing risk of some of its European assets, including approximately $15 billion in European distressed debt.”
Seniors' Social Security Garnished for Student Debts
May 16th, 2012
in Op Ed
by Ellen Brown, Web of Debt.
The Social Security program…represents our commitment as a society to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age 
could leave them or their families destitute.
– President Jimmy Carter, December 20, 1977.
[This law] assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half century ago…[The Social Security Amendments of 1983 are] a monument to the spirit of compassion and commitment that unites us as a people.
– President Ronald Reagan, April 20, 1983.
So said Presidents Carter and Regan, but that was before 1996, when Congress voted to allow federal agencies to offset portions of Social Security payments to collect debts owed to those agencies. (31 U.S.C. §3716). Now we read of horror stories like this:
When Will We Learn? The Banks Don't Think We Ever Will, But We Must
May 15th, 2012
in Op Ed
by Elliott Morss
In 2007, the banks gambled on mortgages and lost, causing the largest global recession since 1929. They then gambled on European sovereign debt and lost. And now we hear J P Morgan Chase (JPM) just lost $2 billion on a derivatives' bet. Should this not be the last straw?
There are important lessons to be learned from all this, lessons the bank lobbyists don’t want anyone to hear.
Click on caption graphic for larger picture of modern bank regulators.
