Asking the question “Is The New York Government Extortionists” actually saddens me quite a bit.
Here is the problem, the New York Attorney General is displaying bullying like behavior, and actually stands to benefit financially by going after financial firms. Now if a company is crooked, I say go for it, but I’ve seen them go after quite a few companies that were innocent and even stalwarts in the financial industry, and any reasonable person with common sense would be able to see that their lawsuits don’t make sense.
Let’s take their most recent lawsuit against JPMorgan… JPMorgan (which is one of the few companies that really didn’t need to take a bailout and runs a pretty tight ship overall, excluding the London whale fluke) was a savior during the “Great Recession”, taking a bailout that it didn’t need, and acquiring obviously toxic assets (from Bears and Sterns) to save the economy. They weren’t bottom feeding, the were acting in the best interest of American and doing their part to save the country! The government came to them (since the government realized that JPMorgan was solid) and asked JPMorgan to basically help save the economy, which JPMorgan did (actually the original JP Morgan has a history of saving the country, check out this article: Panic of 1907: J.P. Morgan Saves the Day).
So basically, JPMorgan was a critical element that help divert a financial systemic collapse of the economy! They took the broken company Bears and Stern, and basically worked on fixing the problem with that company, and at a loss to boot!
Now the New York Government, who by all accounts should know that the Bears and Stern executives aren’t managing the toxic assets anymore, and obviously have to know that JPMorgan company is like a hero to the country, are attacking the saviors, one of the saviors of the “Great Recession”!
To me, it looks like such a government offices are crooked and acting like extortionist! Perhaps honor really is dead, at least in the New York government system? To me they seem cold and unappreciative! To use an analogy, it’s like a person starving, ready to die, JPMorgan (Jaime Dimon) give that person food and shelter, then that person (much like New York) assaults and robs their house!
I have to admit, it really makes me question the intelligence and logic of the government in New York. I wonder if they don’t understand that the executives that ran Bears and Sterns was the problem, not the JPMorgan management team? Shoot, I even wonder if they are rational humans? They sure don’t appear to be on the surface.
Jaime Dimon and JPMorgan didn’t have to pick up the Bears and Stern’s toxic assets! And after such an attack said he probably wouldn’t do so in the future if the government asked him to do it again! Read his full comments here: JPMorgan’s Dimon hits back at government over Bear Stearns suit!
Mr. Dimon, having foresight even back then, said the following to those government folks asking him to buy the poisonous Bears and Stern’s assets:
Dimon went on to recount how he warned a senior regulator at the time of the deal to “please take into consideration when you want to come after us down the road for something that Bear Stearns did, that JPMorgan was asked to do this by the federal government.”
He added that JPMorgan, which will report its third-quarter earnings on Friday, will come out fine in the end. But if he is ever put in a similar position again, he said he “wouldn’t do it.”
“I’m a big boy. I’ll survive,” he said. “But I think the government should think twice before they punish business every single time things go wrong.”
To me, this is just another way the government is taking money from the shareholders and putting it in their own coffers. I honestly think that it’s an invisible tax or a form of extortion! I say extortion because most companies settle out of court because it’s cheaper that way.
What do you think? Isn’t it unjust when a government attacks companies because they know that the can extort money out of them in the form of a settlement? Please tell me if I’m missing something about JPMorgan?
Don