Nice catch at HuffPost, Scott Brown sent a letter last week to JPMorgan which he wanted to sound like he was expressing concern. The problem is that the letter didn’t really say anything.
Scott Brown’s, ahem, concerns:
In that letter, Brown calls for only one thing: a clawback on the compensation of “the responsible parties in your company.” The problem is that Dimon already said that was likely to happen.
How tough and independent — telling a bank to do what it already said it would do!
What’s more, the Dodd-Frank Act makes clawbacks mandatory in some cases. So what does Brown do? He tells Dimon that clawbacks are mandatory in some cases. What a maverick.
Just in case anyone at JPMorgan thought he was in any way serious, Brown made sure further down in the letter that *wink* *wink* *nod* *nod* that he’s still Wall Street’s favorite Senator:
Lest his pointless letter seem too threatening to his scores of friends on Wall Street, Brown slips in some language that they would understand: “While regulations are necessary, it is also very important that when unprecedented mistakes do occur, banks will use the internal policies that they have set up to promote employee accountability.”
Translation: When Wall Street screws up on an unprecedented scale and engages in risky behavior that undermines confidence in the market, they should treat it as an internal matter. No need for the government to get involved — just move along, folks.
This, incidentally, is the same message as the one being spread by extreme conservatives like Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Of course, it was the lack of government involvement that allowed the financial crisis to happen in the first place.
I’m sure Scott Brown doesn’t want anyone to remember his role in Dodd-Frank was to water down regulations on risky trading which was at the center of the 2008 banking crisis. Taxpayer backed JPMorgan’s now 3 billion dollar loss to some is a test scenario to see if the rule should be strengthened.
Sounds like Scott Brown is singing a different tune, keep the money comin’:
image via Kos
I’ve earned it!
demeter11 says
How is it that the “liberal” press has spilled so much ink and pervaded our airwaves with the Elizabeth Warren’s family heritage and largely given Scott Brown a pass on the JP Morgan money and New York Fundraising committee?
I’m not saying they haven’t duly covered the story once — and even in those stories they go over the Warren kerfuffle –but they haven’t hammered it day after day that he will not disclose these pertinent facts.
Ironically, I found this quote in a letter from him explaining why he voted against the DISCLOSE Act, which would have required donor info:
“… my election to the U.S. Senate sent a message that the American people are tired of the politics-as-usual mentality, and want to restore real checks and balances in Washington. Unfortunately, the DISCLOSE Act does not do enough to require transparency, accountability and fair play. Therefore, I cannot support the DISCLOSE Act.”
Scott, if the Act didn’t do enough you can do your part right now and disclose.
And any press out there, can you ask him about this every single day?
johnk says
FOIA request done by MA Dems will bring this back in the news.
Christopher says
Just like his current TV ads!
danfromwaltham says
How many times has Dimon visited Obama at rhe White House? Do we look the other way? Just keeping it real here, asking questions.
johnk says
That might be a start.
Bob Neer says
From John below:
whosmindingdemint says
.
centralmassdad says
I do not understand why this JP Morgan thing has been a political issue, much less something that requires political attention. What was the thing that is scandalous?
johnk says
basically gambling in government backed deposits. This type of gambling is what caused the market crash and taxpayers cover their bet. Now if they were not a bank, hell, they can do whatever they want and investors and choose however they want to invest their money. If they want to gamble for a chance for a big reward, all the power to them. But that’s not what we are talking about here. We are talking banking dollars for gambling which is protected by the FDIC.
The market crash brought a few things to everyone attention, something is f’ed up at Wall St. and we eroded our regulations enough that banks can investment companies can merge and become this large entity which is “too big to fail”. Dodd-Frank passed adding some regulation back, but derivative trading is something that the financial industry wants, Brown enters the picture here as he’s the guy that added the loophole in the Volcker rule to keep doing those trade with money they shouldn’t be gambling with. It’s also an area which can be later exploited, which already started happening, JPMorgan was involved in further weakening the Volcker rule this year (political issue), Republicans want to further weaken the rule.
Then JPMorgan drops a bomb, we lost 3 billion, maybe more, it’s complicated we can’t tell how much we lost yet. It was an out of control derivative hedge trading that cost us, they kept on sinking money in but it kept on tanking and we had to bail.
So Republicans want to weaken the rule, Democrats wanted to maintain the rule as passed in Dodd-Frank. But now that JPMorgan had such a significant loss it might be something that we need to revisit. Would Dodd-Frank do enough to reign in this activity?
So, Scott is in the eye of the storm, he’s the guy that delivered the loophole and now is getting bucks in February this year from JPMorgan when they were trying to further weaken the regulation. Enter MA Dems, exactly what was Scott doing.
Best I can sum up what’s going on politically.
Mr. Lynne says
… explaining to the world how it is that they didn’t need tighter regulation because their (and the market’s) business acumen mitigated any systemic risk. This assertion was given from the firm that boasted the best acumen among similar businesses.
Then the world saw that actually their greed made the stupid and everyone had a flashback to the last time major investment firms were made brave by under-regulation and under-transparency.
Mr. Lynne says
… here.
(I’d do the embed, but it seems not to work and I don’t know why.)
centralmassdad says
.
rogerfritz says
There’s one small problem with trying to attack Scott Brown as Wall Street’s favorite Senator. First off it’s not true, secondly at the top of the list are Charles Schumer and Kristen Gillenbrand BOTH DEMOCRATS.
Mark L. Bail says
Brown is Wall Street’s favorite Massachusetts senator and favorite out of the Massachusetts delegation. None of us will be voting for Schumer or Gillenbrand any time soon.
dcsohl says
How about favorite out-of-state Senator? Both the Senators you mention are, after all, actually Wall Street’s Senators (NY).