Resignations this week at JPMorgan

As you might expect, none of the resignations this week are likely to include failed CEO Jamie Dimon. The biggest name in the resignations this week is Ina Drew, the "trader at heart" who was managing risk for JPMorgan. Whoever thought hiring a "trader" to manage a growing and now large risk team ought to be sent packing this week, but that's not likely to happen. CNBC:

According to the report, the departures involve three of the highest-ranking executives with direct connections to the losses, these people say.

Separately, the Financial Times reported, also citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, that JPMorgan Chase is investigating whether London-based traders hid the extent of losses on credit derivatives positions. The paper also reported resignations were expected within the next 24 hours.

The Wall Street Journal listed those leaving as: Ina Drew, who since 2005 has run the risk-management unit that is responsible for the losses; Achilles Macris, who is in charge of the London-based desk that placed the trades; and trader Javier Martin-Artajo, a managing director on Mr. Macris's team.

There has to come a time though when investors realize that Dimon's big mouth will cost the bank even more money so he may also be on borrowed time. He's not there yet and for the moment, there are plenty of fools (including the retired GE CEO Jack Welch who squeezed GE for a lavish retirement plan) who lapped up Dimon's TV appearance yesterday. As more losses emerge - and they almost certainly will be coming - Dimon's PR offensive will not be enough to save his job. Read the rest of this post...

Now that Romney is invoking Mormonism to woo voters, isn't it time we had a frank discussion about Mormonism?

Why is discussing Mitt Romney's Mormonism off limits when Mitt Romney is using his Mormonism to woo evangelical voters?  Either his being a Mormon is relevant or it's not; it's off limits, or it's not.  It's clearly not off limits to Mitt Romney.

Then again, Romney likes to use his family to woo votes, just like Sarah Palin did, but then if you talk about his family you're being mean.  Same goes for Mormonism. NYT:

“What we have, what we wish we had — ambitions fulfilled, ambitions disappointed, investments won, investments lost, elections won, elections lost — these things may occupy our attention, but they do not define us,” he said. “Our relationship with our maker, however, depends on none of that. It is entirely in our control, for he is always at the door, and knocks for us. Our worldly successes cannot be guaranteed, but our ability to achieve spiritual success is entirely up to us, thanks to the grace of God. The best advice I know is to give those worldly things your best but never your all — reserve the ultimate hope for the only one who can grant it.”

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Video: Auditioning for every science fiction film/show ever made

Supposedly this guy isn't an actor, just a sci-fi fan. And he wanted to create an audition for every sci-fi TV show and movie ever made.

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JPMorgan loss due to loophole Dimon lobbied to have

There's nothing quite like being the victim of your own arrogance. The ugly $2 billion loss - which is probably only the beginning since the bank still owns those positions - sits squarely on the head of CEO Jamie Dimon. As we learned during the crisis of 2008 as well as this latest Wall Street failure is that we need much more transparency in the too-big-too-fail world.

Karma, anyone?

Soon after lawmakers finished work on the nation’s new financial regulatory law, a team of JPMorgan Chase lobbyists descended on Washington. Their goal was to obtain special breaks that would allow banks to make big bets in their portfolios, including some of the types of trading that led to the $2 billion loss now rocking the bank.

Several visits over months by the bank’s well-connected chief executive, Jamie Dimon, and his top aides were aimed at persuading regulators to create a loophole in the law, known as the Volcker Rule. The rule was designed by Congress to limit the very kind of proprietary trading that JPMorgan was seeking.

Even after the official draft of the Volcker Rule regulations was released last October, JPMorgan and other banks continued their full-court press to avoid limits.

The big problem that we see once again from Wall Street is that they know Washington is a bunch of spineless jellyfish, who talk the talk but won't walk the walk. Wall Street knows that when these big banks get into trouble, the gutless will always be there to bail out the banks. Heads they win, tails they win. It's a fixed game and Wall Street knows it. Read the rest of this post...

Louisiana takes throne as prison capital of the world

Thanks to the wasteful so-called war on drugs, the US has a thriving prison business that flushes taxpayer dollars down the drain every day. Somehow the pro-austerity (mostly GOP) crowd can overlook the excessive spending on making the US the incarceration capital of the world. Our numbers exceed even China yet that's acceptable. What exactly are we getting in return for this investment, dare I ask? Someone out there is profiting from this system but it's not the country.

How's that prison system working out for you, Louisiana?

Louisiana is the world's prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran's, seven times China's and 10 times Germany's.

The hidden engine behind the state's well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash. A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt.

Several homegrown private prison companies command a slice of the market. But in a uniquely Louisiana twist, most prison entrepreneurs are rural sheriffs, who hold tremendous sway in remote parishes like Madison, Avoyelles, East Carroll and Concordia. A good portion of Louisiana law enforcement is financed with dollars legally skimmed off the top of prison operations.

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WSJ expresses doubts about austerity

WSJ via Digby:

One reason the unemployment rate may have remained persistently high: The sharp cuts in state and local government spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and the layoffs those cuts wrought.

The Labor Department’s establishment survey of employers — the jobs count that it bases its payroll figures on — shows that the government has been steadily shedding workers since the crisis struck, with 586,000 fewer jobs than in December 2008. Friday’s employment report showed the cuts continued in April, with 15,000 government jobs lost.

But the survey of households that the unemployment rate is based on suggests the government job cuts have been much, much worse.

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Video: Cool tricks with old vinyl records

This is so cool it almost looks fake.

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Poll: Global investors prefer Obama over Romney

Wait, I thought Obama was supposed to be a socialist who hates business. Is this poll suggesting that maybe Obama is not really the person the Teabaggers talk about? Well I'll be darned.

Asked who would be the better leader for the global economy, 49 percent favor Obama against 38 percent for Romney, according to a quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll. In January, the two candidates tied on the question.

By the same margin, they say Obama has a better vision for the U.S. economy, according to the survey of 1,253 Bloomberg customers, who are investors, analysts or traders.

Obama “managed the U.S. economy pretty well, solving a lot of imbalances created by the previous administration,” says poll respondent Mario Di Marcantonio, 35, a senior portfolio manager at Eurizon Capital in Milan.

Despite the GOP talk, Obama is pretty much a Rockefeller Republican and anyone with open eyes can see that he's hardly a socialist. Read the rest of this post...

VIDEO Scott Walker to billionaire: "We'll use divide-and-conquer" to turn Wisc "into right-to-work state"

Gov. Scott Walker, caught on tape — this time with a real billionaire, not a spoofed one. (Note, however, that the "reporting to the boss" tone is intact.)

In this video from January 2011, newly elected Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker tells his largest donor, billionaire Diane Hendricks, that he plans to use divide-and-conquer to turn Wisconsin into a right-to-work state.

The video just surfaced and it's a bombshell. He knew what he was doing from the beginning — and admits it here. Watch:



The second woman on the tape is Mary Willmer-Sheedy, "a community bank president for M&I; Bank," according the Journal-Sentinel.

From the complete transcript published by the Journal-Sentinel, here's the set-up to the segment shown above (the video contains most but not all of this material). For example, this gives you the context of the video's creation by Brad Lichtenstein, the videographer (my emphases throughout):

This is a transcript of a conversation between Gov. Scott Walker and Diane Hendricks, co-founder of ABC Supply, on Jan. 18, 2011. The conversation was captured by documentary filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein, who was on site to videotape a meeting of the economic development group Rock County 5.0. The conversation took place in ABC's foyer just before Hendricks escorted Walker into the Rock County 5.0 meeting.

Diane Hendricks: Can we talk just for two seconds before we get up there?

Scott Walker: Yeah, yeah, that's fine.

Hendricks: - some issues we're just going to avoid a little bit. And by the way, this is Brad and he is part of Rock County 5.0 and he has been filming everything.

Brad Lichtenstein: I've been doing a documentary -

Walker: Oh, cool.

Hendricks: - so what we're going to do and talk about right now is just concerns that Mary (Willmer-Sheedy) and I have that we probably, are a little controversial to bring up upstairs. OK? I don't want to - because there's press up there.

Walker: OK, sure.

Lichtenstein: Just so you know, nothing I do is going to see the light of day for over another year.

Walker: OK, that's fine.

And note this, from the transcript, which occurs after the clip above:

Hendricks: Which state would you mirror? Is there any state that's already . . .

Walker: Well, (Indiana Gov.) Mitch Daniels, did - now, see the beautiful thing is, he did it in Indiana, he had it by executive order that created the unions years ago, and so when he came in about a week after he eliminated through executive order. In Wisconsin, it's by the statute. So I need lawmakers to vote on it. But the key is by tying it to the budget, there's no way to unravel that. Because unless they're going to come up with $800 million for example - it's not exactly that amount, but it's close - there's no way they cannot pass that unless they're going to pass a tax increase...

Killing unions was the goal all along, and the billionaire and governor talk easily about that.

The only difference between radical-Republican Indiana and radical-Republican Wisconsin is the methodology; Daniels could use executive order and Walker has to use the legislature (which he controls). "But the key is by tying it to the budget, there's no way to unravel that."

More on from Blogging Blue, the site that published the video above:

Republican Gov. Scott Walker admits in a video recorded on January 18, 2011 that he wanted to use Act 10, the so-called budget repair bill, as a first step towards a “divide and conquer” strategy against unions in Wisconsin, with the end goal of turning Wisconsin into a “right to work” state. At the time the video was shot, Gov. Walker had not yet “dropped the bomb” in the form of Act 10, but as the recording clearly indicates, Act 10 was intended as an attack on public employee unions, not as an actual “budget repair” bill.

And there's an interesting quid-pro-quo with Ms. Hendricks from Blogging Blue:

Gov. Walker made the comments to Beloit billionaire Diane Hendricks, since Gov. Walker’s promises to her has given $510,000 to the governor’s campaign, making her Walker’s single-largest donor and the largest known donor to a candidate in state history.

Again, killing the unions is the plan all along. The difference between the radical Indiana and radical Wisconsin plans is just the methodology.

Still more at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Uncle Straight Talk sez: — The radical Republican governors are the template for the next Republican president, including Mitt Romney.

Every step in the Movement Conservative Project started by Paul Weirich and others in the 1970s requires each Republican office holder to move the ball further down the field than the last one. So Reagan built on Nixon; Bush I built on Reagan; Bush II built on Bush I.

Even Clinton (I) and Obama did their parts. Clinton — repeal of Glass-Steagall, Telecom "reform," NAFTA, and his aborted attempt to start the roll-back of Social Security, just to name a few. Obama — NDAA, drone murder based on "data signatures" rather than target identification, the push to approve the planet-killing Keystone Pipeline, just to name a few of his sins.

I don't personally think we can afford to let another Republican win. But the current Democratic "alternatives" are not much to write home about. How 'bout we fix that, shall we?

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Mitt Romney's untraditional grandson

I can't swear to know every word in the Book of Mormon, but I'm pretty sure that when Mitt Romney spouted off the other day about his reverence for the 3,000 year old definition of marriage, nowhere in that definition did it include a man, his wife, and the unnamed other woman who gave birth to their twin sons.

(Well, actually, the only place you would find multiple women mothering the same child is in Mormon tradition.)

But that's exactly what Romney's son Tagg did, he used a surrogate.  Even though it's a pretty big no no in Mormonism:

Mitt Romney and his five sons are all practicing Mormons, and according to the handbook of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the church “strongly discourages” both surrogacy and in vitro fertilization.

“The Church discourages surrogate motherhood but leaves the decision to individual members,” said Michael Purdy, a church spokesman.

Put aside the fact that in traditional Mormon marriages if one of your wives was infertile you could simply go to one of your other wives.  I do find it interesting that Mitt Romney is happy to take potshots at our families for "discarding tradition" while his own family isn't exactly a font of tradition either.  Yet another Romney flip-flop.

Get ready for someone to claim that it's a low-blow criticizing Mitt's kids, while three days ago Mitt had no problem going after ours.

Jesus didn't have two mommies, Mitt.*

*(Though he did have two daddies.) Read the rest of this post...

Merkel's pro-austerity party crushed in elections on Sunday

And yet another blow to the failing austerity program in Europe.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party was defeated in its worst result since World War II in elections in Germany’s most populous state that saw the Social Democrats extend their influence across the country’s regions.

The Social Democrats, the main opposition party nationally, took 38.3 percent to win today’s vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, while Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union had 26.1 percent, ZDF television projections showed as of 7 p.m. The Greens took 12.1 percent, giving a majority to SPD Prime Minister Hannelore Kraft’s SPD-Greens coalition that ruled for two years in a minority government in the state capital Dusseldorf.

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Does it matter if Mark Zuckerberg wears a hoodie to meet investors?

For starters, I'm no fan of Facebook and spend very little time caring about their CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Lots of people love Facebook and if that's what they like and they don't care about the privacy issues the way I do, good for them. Really. We all can like different things.

Where I do agree with Zuckerberg is his insistence to living his life the way he wants to live his life, Wall Street investors be damned. If the guy wants to wear a hoodie, his PJ's or whatever else that he likes, he should be able to do it. Listening to Wall Street investors talking about who is serious or not is about as laughable as it gets.

Oh fine, the Wall Street crowd wears suits and ties that are more expensive than most of us can afford but that doesn't make them any more honest or serious, does it? The same guys who sold the world slightly polished turds that went down the drain, blowing to pieces many retirement plans really should just shut their mouths about who is serious and who isn't.

For me, after twenty years of meetings at Global 5000 corporate sites, I have much less trust in someone wearing a suit and tie than someone wearing a hoodie at a business meeting. Ken Lay had "the look" that these investors loved but that didn't mean much. So did Chuck Prince, Robert Rubin, Angelo Mozilo and more recently, Jamie Dimon. If someone can convince me that any of those guys are more professional or honest than Zuckerberg and his hoodie, please step forward and explain away. Read the rest of this post...