Matt Taibbi ~ Senators Grovel, Embarrass Themselves At Dimon Hearing
OPINION ~ I was unable to watch J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s Senate testimony live the other day, so I had to get up yesterday morning and check it out on the Banking Committee’s web site. I had an inkling, from the generally slavish news reports about the hearing that started to come out Wednesday night, that it would be a hard thing to watch.
But I wasn’t prepared for just how bad it was. If not for Oregon’s Jeff Merkley, who was the only senator who understood the importance of taking the right tone with Dimon, the hearing would have been a total fiasco. Most of the rest of the senators not only supplicated before the blow-dried banker like love-struck schoolgirls or hotel bellhops, they also almost all revealed themselves to be total ignoramuses with no grasp of the material they were supposed to be investigating.
That most of them had absolutely no conception of even the basics of the derivatives market was obvious. But what was even more amazing was that several of them had serious trouble even reading aloud the questions their more learned staffers prepared for them. Many seemed to be reading their own questions for the first time.
It would be one thing if this had been a bunch of hick congressmen from the plains asking a panel of MIT professors about, say, ozone depletion, or the potential dangers of nuclear fallout. But these were members of the Senate Banking Committee, asking Dimon questions as though he were an alien from another world: “Tell us, Mr. CEO, what is this ‘derivative trading’ to which you refer? How long has it been in use on your planet?” The whole tenor of the proceeding was incredibly embarrassing, and showed just how unlikely it is that you’ll ever get anything like real questioning in a Senate hearing when a) the level of general expertise among the members is so shamefully low, and b) the witness is a man who controls millions of dollars of campaign contributions.
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This is a guy who just committed a massive blunder with federally-insured money, a guy who is here answering questions because his company, at his direction, clearly and intentionally violated the spirit of the Volcker rule, and these clowns on the Banking Committee are asking Dimon for advice on how to write the rule! It was incredible. Can you imagine senators asking the captain of the Exxon Valdez what his ideas are for new shipping safety regulations – and taking him seriously when he says he doesn’t think they’re a good idea?
http://shiftfrequency.com/matt-taibbi-senators-grovel-embarrass-themselves-at-dimon-hearing/#more-11155
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Last edited Sun Jun 17, 2012, 08:58 AM - Edit history (5)
On their knees, fighting for prime position to fellate their top campaign donors.
The Senate Banking Committee does sweet fuck all, year in and out. They're so casual in fact that the banking industry collapsed. They then pass a "reform" called Dodd-Frank after two of the worst bankster enablers in history, and no more than two years later JP Morgan is losing (FDIC insured) money in risky proprietary trading and showing how impressed and chastened they are by the "new rules". They couldn't care less. And see then how tough our public defenders get with them! Oh Mr. Dimon, you are so wise and good. Do you think it would be too forward of me if I were to undo your zipper - like this?
The Banking Committee in the House actually has three rows of seats for members.
Ooops! FOUR rows of seats for committee members. Why did they do that for an industry which for decades has largely been left to regulate itself? Because it happens to be the richest industry in the country now - so far has manufacturing declined. Every member on that committee is going to get nice little envelopes for their campaign funds. The banking industry is thus a clientele of the committee. Little thought is given to the interest of constituents - the committee exists to service the clientele - the people who pay. Whichever party is in power wants as many of its connected people placed on that committee as possible, because the biggest industries can pay the biggest "donations" - and the only way to get more is to expand the size of the (mostly useless) committee.
The Insurance Mafia is another aspect of the Financial Insurance Real Estate sector that has displaced the real economy of making stuff and innovating. Health insurance goons handle about one sixth of all the national GDP - hospitals, doctors and drug companies receive payment through this useless middleman. Doctors and drug companies, no matter how much criticism they come in for, actually innovate and perform irreplaceable services. Health insurance companies on the other hand just SKIM RENT off those services. If Obamacare is upheld, the triple decker seat packing, the obsequious fawning and transparent bribery of the Banking Committees will be duplicated in the committee with purview over insurance. All the committee members will get their envelopes, stuffed with money taken from YOU in forcibly extracted premiums. You can forget about health care becoming more affordable. For one thing, you're gonna have all those bribes to pay.
Many people have a false idea of how we got such a twisted outcome in health care reform. They imagine that legislators were afraid that their constituents back home would reject a public funding approach like Medicare For All or 55+ , or even the pitifully weak Public Option. Couldn't be more wrong. Polls showed overwhelming support for a public approach despite all the years of RW propaganda in the media trying to turn people against it. No, as in most other cases, the Democrat's constituencies were dead last in the thinking of their representatives. Democrats were not cowed at all by public opinion (which loathes them) but on the contrary showed a great boldness in screwing their constituents over right to their faces. They were doggedly pursuing their own interests, which is money : campaign loot for now, and lucrative contacts to be cashed in after their public career is over. The focus and signature move of this "uniquely American" approach to health care distribution was in creating this permanent clientele for the Democrats. Instead of shoving aside the Insurance Cartel which had made a catastrophic and lethal mess everywhere, the Democrats gave them the official govt imprimatur of Our American Health Care System, but in exchange they get to share in the revenue stream. Those little envelopes, which as Max Baucus can tell you are already quite generous, are going to keep coming. Every year, the insurance companies are going to have business before the committee(s). Every year they're going to need protection from angry victims and voters. Every year they're going to want a little favor done. If we had enacted Single Payer instead of partnering up with the insurance mafia, those little envelopes would cease coming forever - no, no it's too horrible to imagine!
In closing, Mr. Dimon, since you are finished with us, and I'm sure we have no need to discuss any new rules on your praiseworthy institution, I just want to thank you for coming. (burp)
