The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Jamie Dimon as William Holden

    By Oxy Mora on Wed, 06/06/2012 - 10:43am |

    Andrew Sorkin had a piece in the NYT yesterday suggesting questions to be asked Jamie Dimon in his upcoming testimony on Capitol Hill. 

    For example, "...when you called speculation about outsize risks in your investment office 'a tempest in a tea pot', what, if any, analysis had you personally conducted before making that statement?"

    With all due respect to Mr. Sorkin, his question has no more chance of not devolving into "Gotcha Theatre" than any other lines to be thrown at Dimon---dialog for which a Harvard Business Schoolie and actor like him is well practiced. Sorkin is playing his role, for Dimon is the "last man standing" in the generationally staged fantasy of getting something for nothing. Easy credit in a never-ending show of appreciating assets. 

    We made Jamie Dimon as we did William Holden, together with the fame and fortune that accompanied the roles. Without our complicity in the fantasy, he is just a guy with an MBA.

    In Percy's book, the Moviegoer, Binx is a fan of Holden, notes a public announcement by Holden against litterbugs, discovers Holden is in town and goes to the French Quarter in hopes of seeing him.

    And behold, who should come out of Pirates Alley but Holden himself. Binx follows a newly married couple from the boon docks who are following Holden. The young man seems disgruntled and out of sorts until he catches up to Holden who is unsuccessfully searching for someone with a match to light his cigarette.

    "By now the couple has caught up with him. The boy holds out a light, nods briefly to Holden's thanks, then passes on without a flicker of recognition. Holden walks along between them for a second; he and the boy talk briefly, look up at the sky, shake their heads. Holden gives them a pat on the shoulder and moves on ahead."

    "The boy has done it! He has won title to his own existence....He is a citizen like Holden, two men of the world they are. All at once the world is open to him.....His girl is open to him too. He puts his arm around her neck, noodled her head. She feels the difference too."

    Ultimately Dimon will pat his questioners on the shoulder and they will love it for he has the greater fame and fortune, to which they and the rest of we believers in getting something for nothing have contributed. But I am fascinated by Dimon's public pronouncements in the alternating whiney and chest beating tones which appear to be a real personality underneath the acting. Perhaps he will have been the last man standing, and the end of the generational fantasy is at hand.

    "I watch Dimon as he approaches the witness table. An aura of heightened reality moves with him and all who fell within it feel it. Now everyone is aware of him. But the questioners show no special recognition to such a distinguished actor. And his performance becomes lackluster. I wonder if Dimon is thinking that if he had chosen Hollywood over Wall St., he would be getting a lot more ass right now."

    Oh, what the hell. I'm tired of projecting onto Obama and Romney in this pathetic farce of an election. 
     

     

      

     

    Comments

    Will not the Republican congresscritters see this as a chance to bash Obama/Dem bankers/financiers without reflecting on "their own" bankers/financiers?

    Wikipedia:

    Relations with the Obama Administration

    Dimon is a Democrat and worked in Barack Obama's adopted hometown of Chicago.

    After Obama won the 2008 presidential election, there was speculation that Dimon would serve in the Obama Administration as Secretary of the Treasury. Obama eventually named the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Timothy Geithner, to the position.[30]

    Following the acquisition of Washington Mutual by JPMorgan Chase, Obama commented on Dimon's handling of the real-estate crash, credit crisis, and the banking collapse affecting corporations nationwide, including major financial institutions like Bank of America, Citibank, and Wachovia:

    You know, keep in mind, though there are a lot of banks that are actually pretty well managed, JPMorgan being a good example, Jamie Dimon, the CEO there, I don't think should be punished for doing a pretty good job managing an enormous portfolio.[31]

    Dimon is influential in the Obama White House with close ties to some there, including former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.[32] Dimon was one of three CEOs—along with Lloyd Blankfein and Vikram Pandit—said by the Associated Press to have had liberal access to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in the seven months during the financial crisis in fall 2008.[33][34] Nonetheless, Dimon has often publicly disagreed with some of Obama's policies.[35]

    On the May 15, 2012, episode of ABC's The View, Obama responded to a question from Whoopi Goldberg regarding JPMorgan Chase's recently publicized $2 billion trading losses by defending Dimon against allegations of irresponsibility, saying, "first of all, JP Morgan is one of the best managed banks there is. Jamie Dimon, the head of it, is one of the smartest bankers we've got", but added, "it's going to be investigated."[36]


    by artappraiser on Wed, 06/06/2012 - 1:59pm

    Thanks for your comments, Artsy. I just listened to the entirety, egad, of the Bernanke testimony before the joint committee and I was surprised at the lack of harassment, compared to previous sessions, from the Right on the issue of Quantitative Easing. JPM and TBTF came up several times, and with the exception of Sanders, in pretty mild form. Whether this signals anything in tone for Dimon I don't know, but there is already a construct that the position JPM took is "macro-hedging" as opposed to "proprietary trading"---therefore acceptable. I take this as a signal that as Chief Actor for JPM, Dimon will skate easily.

    It's stupid to generalize one's own experience, but as I look at the largest picture we have now with the jobs, the economy and the role of the banks, I think there are generational belief systems which are intimately involved, and may be changing, or put another way, may have to change. I look at my own perceptions of how o.k. I thought it was to take on household leverage, and how very dangerous that game became a few years ago when I was lucky enough to get out from under some properties before the bottom fell out. 

    I'm not sure how to button all these musings up, except to say I am seeing the last 35 years of financial risk taking, income consolidation, lowering of firewalls for banks, etc., as a kind of fantasy belief system in which I in many ways haplessly participated, and in which to some extent people like Dimon are role players by virtue of the power we give them with our acceptance of the game.

    I don't have the handy facts to prove it but if you take the assets and expected income of the broad middle class at the moment, I doubt if, in material terms, they are any better off than they were 35 years ago. I'm not trying to place blame, rewrite my life, or call bankers big bad men. I'm simply trying to understand the game that has been played. I think it may be self deception to be looking for serious engineering changes to the financial system without factoring in our own behaviors and beliefs in the game of finance, in particular taking on household debt.

    I am most likely a party of one in these particular musings. 


    by Oxy Mora on Thu, 06/07/2012 - 1:14pm

    I understand your interest, I do find the household leverage thing very interesting

    I am old enough to have been aware of how restricted my parents financial life was like before there were credit cards (only revolving store credit, layaway and doctors and dentists would take payments;) i.e. Dad asking to borrow some of your babysitting money because he is out of money until payday and needs to pay for parking at work.

    A life where there was no conceivable way to get a better standard of living (i.e. better than an old used car always breaking down, a color TV, a down payment on a house,) except by getting a raise or working part-time jobs until your kids no longer know you, and putting the extra in a passbook savings.

    After credit cards, then I watched people like older aunts & uncles learn about making money with money getting some of those new fangled C.D.'s, they were buying em like candy and getting toasters to boot.  And similarly everyone in the hood melting down any silver they could find, an introduction for the middle class to a commodity bubble they could get in on.  Then I watched the frenzied rise of day trading that came with both computers and de-regulation of stock purchases so that ordinary people who no stockbroker would ever give a minute in the past could play. Followed by the invention of IRA's etc.

    Though similar things have happened at other times in our history (lots of middle class people somehow managed to invest in the stock market of the 1920's, for example), I still think the opening of the world of finance to the middle class in  the last quarter of the 20th century was a very historically important revolution. To me, it still seems that it really was the first time middle class people were enabled to "gamble" like the wealthy have always "gambled," and not merely live their whole lives as lowly wage/salary earners living paycheck to paycheck.

    I probably am more sure of the "there's no going back" than you are. Once someone who has never had any opportunity to make anything more than an hourly wage (only so many hours in the day) has had a taste of successful house flipping in a real estate bubble, I just don't seem them giving that potential up for a safe wage that doesn't advance their status in life nor that of their kids. Sure, there is fear of risk right now, but they will remember once again when they didn't have it. (Not to mention that their children will inherit this way of thinking, rather than ye olde parental advice of save, save, save.)


    by artappraiser on Fri, 06/08/2012 - 12:44am

    Such great descriptions, Artsy. So in tune with my state of mind, don't know what to respond to first. But the "there's no going back" theme relates to what's gnawing at me. My developing thesis, which I'm sure is not original idea is that this ability to amplify one's life with the use of credit, to "gamble" as you say, this force, which largely accompanied the rise and fall of the baby boomers, when coupled with the size of that demographic, has created an outcome which is unique in our history. The middle class is trapped, and partly by their own doing. 

    The question is whether as a corollary to the above, we set up part of the cycle of ratcheting down the middle class every time there was a business cycle downturn. Then when there was a true financial crisis, as opposed to an inventory cycle, the effects upon consumers and job seekers was truly devastating. All I was trying to do with the William Holden allegory was to highlight our own part in this play, in which venerating some character like Jamie Dimon is part of the process. 

    The problem with the high state of consumer household leverage is that when broader economic conditions deteriorate, the individual's choices are much more limited---i.e., how to hunker down without going even further into debt or having to make a lot of bad short range. Large companies and rich individuals have options in these circumstances, and in fact can profit handsomely by fire sale asset purchases. The question is how to unwind some of this without re-writing our entire economic system. Bernanke said yesterday, in regard to a question about wealth distribution---in effect, you can't just take people's money away, you have to provide a way for the middle class to catch up.

    In summary, when you take out a Chase credit card, you buy a ticket to a one man show of Jamie Dimon waxing on how a bank needs to have a strategy for macro hedging---exciting stuff, can't wait to see the movie. 

      


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 06/08/2012 - 7:47am

    Welcome back again Oxy. I love your writing but confess to have trouble following this one. Perhaps because I haven't seen the Moviegoer.


    by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 06/06/2012 - 3:15pm

    Thanks, Genghis. Having some trouble following it myself, but I await Dimon's performance.


    by Oxy Mora on Wed, 06/06/2012 - 4:09pm

    Don't worry about Genghis, I mean I cannot for the life of me follow half of my blogs two hours after I write them.

    I do think I recall that Holden was showing a woody following a lite from the lad once his hand found itself on the kid's shoulder!

     


    by Richard Day on Wed, 06/06/2012 - 3:53pm

    Now I understand that I was channeling you, you funny guy. I'm on prednisone right now, that might help explain it. What do you use?

    A woody----hahahahahahahaha


    by Oxy Mora on Wed, 06/06/2012 - 4:11pm

    prednisone... hey, are you okay?


    by arc400 on Fri, 06/08/2012 - 10:30am

    Well, thanks for asking. Tangled with some wasps, but got it under control. Maybe it's making me a little "out there".

    I miss your writing. 


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 06/08/2012 - 12:34pm

    Tangled with some wasps, but got it under control.

    Oh good  <sigh of relief>

    I miss your writing.

    Mutual.  Glad you're back!


    by arc400 on Sat, 06/09/2012 - 8:45pm

    Ha. I always know that you'll tie your threads together in the end, but I confess that I sometimes lose track along the way. I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one. ;) 

    PS The voyage is always interesting and enlightening, even when I get lost.


    by Michael Wolraich on Wed, 06/06/2012 - 7:34pm

    Krugman chose to use a different movie in his column Dimon’s Déjà Vu Debacle on May 20:

    it goes without saying that Jamie Dimon is no Jimmy Stewart. But he has, in a way, been playing Jimmy Stewart on TV, posing as a responsible banker who knows how to manage risk

    Note that there were 773 comments.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 06/09/2012 - 3:04pm

    Thanks, Artsy, hadn't seen that. 


    by Oxy Mora on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 9:07am

    The NYT today:

    Editorial: Mr. Dimon on the Hill

    It's a new posting, only has 8 comments so far, but all of them are top-notch and obviously all respondents are following the story closely like you

     


    by artappraiser on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 4:11am