Tuesday, June 19, 2012

"The blowdried banker" and "love-struck schoolgirls"

Professor Taibbi schools us again on the factors that led to Wall Street's collapse. This time it's on the occasion of Jamie Dimon testifying before a cleanly-castrated Senate Banking Committee.

Taibbi, at his Rolling Stone blog:

"You can either be a commercial bank, with all the federal support that entails, or you can be a high-risk gambler. But you shouldn't be allowed to be both. We could have Chase Commercial Bank, and Chase Investments Inc., and they can each be as big as they want, but those companies should be separate. Why do we need companies like Chase that are both things, under one tent? The real answer, from Jamie Dimon’s point of view, is simple – there’s no way he could have a $350 billion hedge fund if he didn’t have mountains of federally-insured money to play with, and a steady stream of low-interest loans from the Fed."

In last week's testimony, only Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley addressed the CEO in a manner that could be described as "confrontational." Congress sucks up so badly to Dimon, you would think he was David Patraeus' asshole.

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The Los Angeles Kings are champions of the National Hockey League, and as such, their players and personnel have possession of the Stanley Cup for a total of 100 days this year. (My cousin, Jeff Moeller, the Kings' Senior Director of Communications, will have the Cup for four hours at his home on some assigned date this year.) Jimmy Kimmel had this to say...

"There's a great tradition in hockey. Each player on the winning team gets the Stanley Cup for a night. It's similar to what happens in the NBA, but instead of a trophy, they get a Kardashian sister."

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