These quotes from Jamie Dimon’s upcoming appearance this weekend on Meet the Press are a bit out of character:

David Gregory: Did the bank break any laws? Did it violate any accounting rules or SEC rules?

Jamie Dimon: So we’ve had audit, legal, risk, compliance, some of our best people looking at all of that. We know were sloppy. We know we were stupid. We know there was bad judgment. We don’t know if any of that’s true yet. Of course, regulators should look at something like this, that’s their job. We are totally open to regulators, and they will come to their own conclusions. But we intend to fix it, learn from it and be a better company when it’s done.

If you can find another CEO answer a point-blank question about whether or not their company broke the law with, essentially, “I don’t know, the regulators should come in and find out,” you win a cookie. That’s an especially interesting angle to take for Jamie Dimon, who has spent the last two years telling the regulators to get off the backs of the financial industry so they can go ahead and master the universe.

The legal issues stem from disclosures and statements made to investors about the “Fail Whale” trades before the inevitable admission of losses. They have little to do, as far as I can tell, with the trades themselves, which nobody contests are legal at the moment, and which sadly probably would be legal under the Proposed Volcker rule, which allows the very kind of portfolio hedging that the legislative history of the Volcker rule would seem to prevent.

Worse for JPMorgan Chase, the rating agencies have descended upon them.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), the largest and most profitable U.S. bank, had its credit grade lowered one level by Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor’s said it may follow after the bank revealed a $2 billion trading loss.

The lender’s long-term issuer default rating was cut to A+ from AA-, and the short-term grade was lowered to F1 from F1+, Fitch said yesterday in a statement. Fitch placed all parent and subsidiary long-term ratings on rating watch negative.

Standard & Poor’s cited the possibility of broader problems with JPMorgan’s hedging strategies, which the credit rater said isn’t “consistent with what we have viewed as the company’s sound risk-management practices.” A downgrade might result if the missteps prove to be wider, or if management “is pursuing a more aggressive investment strategy than we originally believed” and misses financial targets, according to an S&P statement. S&P affirmed JPMorgan’s A rating.

I’ve seen analysts call this a “Texas hedge,” making the point that it wasn’t really a hedge at all. It was an enormous bet on its own, called a hedge to make it look better to the regulators.

I’m pleased to see the pile-on against Dimon and in favor of actual constraints on the Wall Street casino, and so should anyone who doesn’t want to continue to finance a lavish lifestyle for the people who wrecked the economy.

It would be nice to see a signature on an Executive Order, too.

President Obama’s views on marriage equality have now evolved, thanks in part to the example set for him by his daughters and their classmates. You’ve got to love an adult who is unafraid to learn from children.

Then there’s Mitt Romney, who laughed earlier this week when reminded of his bullying ways in high school, and who did not stand up for his own foreign policy spokesperson, Richard Grenell, when pressure mounted against Grenell for being gay and Romney for hiring him. Oh, and he’s not just against gays and lesbians getting married, but doesn’t want them to adopt children either. Oh, and a senior Romney aide reacted with glee (so to speak) in outing a transgendered member of the Massachusetts House.

Growing vs. caving . . . not a hard choice for me, but apparently it is for some. Maybe Mitt should hang out at Malia and Sasha’s school for a while. But I digress . . .

Obama’s come a long way from the 2008 campaign, where he courted gays on the one hand and took the stage with (and praised) homophobic Donnie McClurkin on the other. But as far as he’s come, he’s still got a long way to go.

I wonder how LGBTs and their allies in North Carolina felt when Obama offered his executive opinion in favor of marriage equality, the day *after* Amendment One was passed. North Carolina is a state Obama won in 2008, so it’s not like he doesn’t have any friends and supporters there. I can’t help but think that if Obama had made his opinion known before last Tuesday rather than after, it might have helped energize the forces of equality.

Actually, thanks to Pam, I don’t wonder too much.

It reminds me a great deal of the reaction the day after the 2008 elections, when progressives across the country were celebrating Obama’s victory. In California, though, the celebration was muted because of the victory of Prop 8 — a campaign where the anti-gay forces successfully used Obama’s words in robocalls as a way of reaching out to Obama supporters to vote for the discriminatory Prop 8. As Ian Welch wrote back then,

I’m glad Obama was elected, but four states just turned gays into official second class citizens. And Obama, with his ambivalence towards gay marriage, was at the heart of it. As late as yesterday robocalls going out from the bigots claimed, accurately, that Obama opposed gay marriage and suggested that voters should join Obama supporters in rejecting gay marriage in California. Given how close it was, this probably was the margin of victory.

I’m glad Obama has evolved in his opinions on marriage equality, but opinions are not enough.

As various commentators have noted, as momentous as this presidential opinion is, it changes absolutely nothing for the people the president referred to in his remarks. Given the demographics of the school where Malia and Sasha attend, it’s a pretty good bet that some of those parents are government contractors. It sure would be nice if there was not just an executive opinion saying “these folks deserve equality” but an executive order protecting LGBTs from discrimination in the federal workplace.

You know, the workplace that President Obama presides over.

____

photo h/t to Pete Souza, official White House photographer. Note, please, that the use of this photo does not in any way suggest approval or endorsement of this post by the President, the First Family, or the White House.

But it sure would be nice if they did endorse it. You know, with a signature on an executive order.

Robert Meeropol (photo: Joe Mabel/wikipedia)

Is Justice Possible?

Is it possible for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), his co-defendants and the victims of their alleged crimes to receive justice? Can their torture and harsh conditions of confinement be ignored at the defendants’ trial? The Obama administration answers both questions affirmatively. The chief prosecutor at the “Military Commission” hearing stated, “The remedy for torture … is not to just dismiss all charges…” He continued, “[I]t doesn’t pass the common sense test that everything … is polluted and tainted by an instance of torture[.] That means everybody goes free? That’s not justice.”

In fact, the Obama administration’s rules prohibit the defendants’ attorneys from even conferring with their clients about whether they were abused by their jailers. Apparently the Justice Department believes that how these defendants have been treated during almost a decade of confinement has no bearing on their receiving a just outcome.

Many people object to the farce going on at Guantánamo, but most of those appear to believe it would be fair to try KSM in a civilian court. I disagree. I believe our government cannot deliver “justice” in any of its courts after holding KSM without charges since 2003, water boarding him 183 times and committing other human rights violations against his person. I think that the fact that one branch of the government (Executive) perpetrated this travesty, a second (Legislative) applauded it and a third (Judiciary) provided no remedy, renders our government incapable of meting out justice in his case.

The problem with permitting even our civilian court system to sit in judgment of these defendants is that to convict them while ignoring how we treated them, while simultaneously allowing those who committed crimes against them during their imprisonment to avoid responsibility, would amount to tacit acceptance of torture by our judicial system. The Obama administration and the Judiciary have made it clear that neither KSM’s tormentors, nor those higher-ups responsible for initiating the policies that led to his torture, will face any discipline in the foreseeable future. Thus, whatever body tries KSM and his co-defendants will be declaring that it is okay to ignore torture.

Some might respond, “But we can’t just let mass murderers go free.” And they have a point. If KSM really did “mastermind’ the September 9/11 attacks how can setting him free be right? Where’s the justice in that for the victims’ family members?

I’ve suggested in an earlier blog that the government hand these defendants over to the International Tribunal at The Hague. There they would be in the hands of a competent court that played no role in violating their human rights. However, given that the International Tribunal has handed out 15 to 20 year prison sentences for those responsible for thousands of deaths in Bosnia, and that it might view their mistreatment as a mitigating factor in sentencing, the Tribunal could release these defendants shortly after their trial even if they were convicted.

For those who see no justice in this result, I’ve thought of another possibility. First disband the “Commissions.” Next, while there ultimately should be a domestic civilian trial, that action must be postponed until the conditions of KSM and his co-defendants’ confinement have been thoroughly investigated, publicized and adjudicated. Finally, these defendants’ trials should not commence until those responsible for human rights violations, including those at the very pinnacle of power who originated the policies in question, have been punished.

These proceedings may take years more to reach their ultimate conclusion, and releasing KSM and his co-defendants while they wait for their trial is not an option. However, in view of their almost decade-long detention at Guantánamo under terrible conditions, until their trials are completed they should be held in what amounts to house arrest, in a much more comfortable setting with extensive visiting rights and other “privileges”.

I have no illusions that what I’ve proposed here has any chance of being adopted. In fact, I would expect my ideas to be met with howls of protest from the vast majority of my fellow citizens. “How could you espouse coddling such evil people?” is what I imagine most would say. But what I propose would protect the public, and would hold torturers accountable. And allowing the detainees to live in relative comfort, while a bitter pill to swallow for some, might exact a high enough price from the government to deter similar human rights violations in the future.

I believe our government’s actions have made it impossible to render justice in this instance. If they are guilty of killing thousands, releasing KSM and his co-defendants is not just, but trying them as if the torture never happened isn’t either. I know what I propose is far from perfect, but I hope it will inject a little fairness and salvage a bit of justice. I welcome any alternative solutions from anyone who reads this.