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Why the Senate Won’t Touch Jamie Dimon: JPM Derivatives Prop Up U.S. Debt

Web of Debt
Ellen Brown

When Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase Bank, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on June 13, he was wearing cufflinks bearing the presidential seal.  “Was Dimon trying to send any particular message by wearing the presidential cufflinks?” asked CNBC editor John Carney.  “Was he . . . subtly hinting that he’s really the guy in charge?”

The groveling of the Senators was so obvious that Jon Stewart did a spoof news clip on it, featured in a Huffington Post piece titled “Jon Stewart Blasts Senate’s Coddling Of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon,” and Matt Taibbi wrote an op-ed called “Senators Grovel, Embarrass Themselves at Dimon Hearing.”  He said the whole thing was painful to watch.


“What is going on with this panel of senators?” asked Stewart.  “They’re sucking up to Jamie Dimon like they’re on JPMorgan’s payroll.”  The explanation in a news clip that followed was that JPMorgan Chase is the biggest campaign donor to many of the members of the Banking Committee.

That is one obvious answer, but financial analysts Jim Willie and Rob Kirby think it may be something far larger, deeper, and more ominous.  They contend that the $3 billion-plus losses in London hedging transactions that were the subject of the hearing can be traced, not to European sovereign debt (as alleged), but to the record-low interest rates maintained on U.S. government bonds.

The national debt is growing at $1.5 trillion per year.  Ultra-low interest rates MUST be maintained to prevent the debt from overwhelming the government budget.  Near-zero rates also need to be maintained because even a moderate rise would cause multi-trillion dollar derivative losses for the banks, and would remove the banks’ chief income stream, the arbitrage afforded by borrowing at 0% and investing at higher rates.

The low rates are maintained by interest rate swaps, called by Willie a “derivative tool which controls the bond market in a devious artificial manner.”  How they control it is complicated, and is explored in detail in the Willie piece here and Kirby piece here.

Kirby contends that the only organization large enough to act as counterparty to some of these trades is the U.S. Treasury itself.  He suspects the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund, a covert entity without oversight and accountable to no one. Kirby also notes that if publicly-traded companies (including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley) are deemed to be integral to U.S. national security (meaning protecting the integrity of the dollar), they can legally be excused from reporting their true financial condition.  They are allowed to keep two sets of books.

Interest rate swaps are now over 80 percent of the massive derivatives market, and JPMorgan holds about $57.5 trillion of them.  Without the protective JPMorgan swaps, interest rates on U.S. debt could follow those of Greece and climb to 30%.  CEO Dimon could, then, indeed be “the guy in charge”: he could be controlling the lever propping up the whole U.S. financial system.

Hero or Felon?

So should Dimon be regarded as a national hero?  Not if past conduct is any gauge.  Besides the recent $3 billion in JPMorgan losses, which look more like illegal speculation than legal hedging, there is JPM’s use of its conflicting positions as clearing house and creditor of MF Global to siphon off funds that should have gone into customer accounts, and its responsibility in dooming Lehman Brothers by withholding $7 billion in cash and collateral.  There is also the fact that Dimon sat on the board of the New York Federal Reserve when it lent $55 billion to JPMorgan in 2008 to buy Bear Stearns for pennies on the dollar.  Dimon then owned nearly three million shares of JPM stock and options, in clear violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 208, which makes that sort of conflict of interest a felony.

Financial analyst John Olagues, a former stock options market maker, points out that the loan was guaranteed by $55 billion of Bear Stearns assets.  If Bear had that much in assets, the Fed could have given it the loan directly, saving it from being swallowed up by JPMorgan.  But Bear did not have a director on the board of the NY Fed.

The Truth About JP Morgan’s $2 Billion Loss

Global Research via
Washingon's Blog

Chase's blue swastika

Before we can understand what’s really going on with JP Morgan’s loss (which will probably end up being a lot more than $2 billion), we need a little background.

JP Morgan:

Is the world’s largest publicly-traded company
Is the largest bank in the U.S. ... the biggest of the too big to fail banks which are killing the American economy
Is the largest derivatives dealer in the world (and see this), and derivatives are inherently destabilizing for the economy
Essentially wrote the faux “reform” legislation for derivatives, which did nothing to decrease risk, and killed any chance of real reform
Is the creator of credit default swaps – which caused the 2008 financial crisis, and is the asset class which blew up and caused the loss
Has had large potential exposures to credit default swap losses for years
Has replaced the chief investment officer who made the risky bets with a trader who worked at Long Term Capital Management ... which committed suicide by making risky bets
Went completely insolvent in the 1980s
... and again in 2007  ( and was saved both times by the government at taxpayer expense)
Heads – with Goldman Sachs – the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, which helps set government financial policy
Has a reputation of being the most risk-averse of the big Wall Street players
Was kept alive by a huge government bailout ... but used the money to invest in India and other projects which won’t really help Americans
Has made a killing by kicking companies (and see this) and governments (and here) when they are down, engaging in various types of fraud (update), allegedly manipulating the silver market, and profiting on misery by acting as the largest processor of food stamps in America
In addition, JPM’s CEO Jamie Dimon:

Is a Class A Director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is the chief bank regulator for Wall Street (including JPM).  Indeed, Dimon served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the same time that his bank received emergency loans from the Fed and was used by the Fed as a clearing bank for the Fed’s emergency lending programs. In 2008, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with $29 billion in financing to acquire Bear Stearns.  At the time, Dimon persuaded the Fed to provide JP Morgan Chase with an 18-month exemption from risk-based leverage and capital requirements. He also convinced the Fed to take risky mortgage-related assets off of Bear Stearns balance sheet before JP Morgan Chase acquired this troubled investment bank
Has a reputation of being the “golden boy” and smartest guy on Wall Street
Has been the chief spokesman and advocate for deregulation of banks, and has lectured, scolded and cajoled everyone who has questioned his banking practices
Jokes about a new financial crisis happening “every five to seven years”
What Does It Mean?
Pundits and consumers alike are reacting to JP Morgan’s loss like a startled herd of sheep.