Jamie Dimon

We've just learned about the Federal Reserve's extraordinary secret bailout of the country's big banks. We now know that the TARP bailout program was only the tip of the iceberg, and that financial institutions received a total of $1.2 trillion in loans and other funds while the rest of the country was left to struggle for economic survival.

We also know that, despite all that "we got our money back" rhetoric, these loans represent a cash giveaway to the banks that totals up to tens of billions of dollars - while homeowners and student loan borrowers continue to struggle.

Here's what we now know about this secret bailout, thanks to a Bloomberg report, along with what we already knew - and what we still don't know:

We now know that the 10 biggest banks in America received $669 billion in emergency loans from the Fed.

We already knew that the same 10 banks now own 77% of the country's banking assets, more than before the crisis, making them even more "too big to fail" than ever. more »

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Rupert Murdoch's got problems. His employees are being arrested, he's losing his latest acquisition, and he's just been called to testify before Parliament. But there's an easy way for Mr. Murdoch to protect himself from these inquiries and save his company at the same time: Turn the News Corporation into a Wall Street bank. There won't be any prosecutions, and the government will even sweeten the deal with billions of dollars in easy money. And if Murdoch follows the trail blazed by bankers like Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase, soon they'll be begging him to acquire more companies.

Murdoch and Dimon. One runs an organization that, as we now know, broke the law so many times it could be called a criminal syndicate. And the other is Rupert Murdoch. Yet Murdoch's fighting for his corporation's future while Dimon's name is being floated as a possible Treasury Secretary. Murdoch's losing his chance to expand market share, while our government helped Dimon's bank become more too-big-to-fail than ever by grabbing up Morgan Stanley.

Now that's juice. Murdoch's been a power broker on three continents and his Fox empire has reshaped this country's political landscape, but Dimon's taken the power game to a whole 'nother level. more »

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Why are people still interested in what Jamie Dimon has to say? As CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Mr. Dimon presides over a serial corporate criminal whose long list of misbehaviors[1] got longer only last week. As an investment and economics "expert" he failed to anticipate the worst financial crisis in modern history.

Now Jamie Dimon's come up with a list of economic concerns for the economy that would be amusingly clueless, if it weren't such a sad example of the Marie Antoinette-like detachment and hauteur of our financial leaders.

Dimon had a lengthy interview with an Australian newspaper, which Business Insider distilled into five reasons why (according to Mr. Dimon) people are negative about the economy: more »

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In a piece called "Wall Street: Not Guilty," financial columnist Roger Lowenstein attempts to defend Wall Street against allegations that it's a viper's nest of rampant criminality. His mischaracterization, mockery, and vague suggestions of McCarthyism are strident, flat, and fail to get the job done. But Lowenstein's piece is well worth reading, if only as a case study in the moral and cognitive blindness that's reached epidemic proportions in influential Washington and Wall Street circles.

Lowenstein shows us how people who are undoubtedly thoughtful and ethically-minded in their personal lives can lose their way when confronted with complex moral and legal issues, especially ones involving people they know personally. And his misdirection and vituperation suggests how unsettled they become when their worldview is challenged.

It's a shame. The analytical and moral flaws in Lowenstein's piece obscure some of the very sound points he makes about the wrongheadedness of our country's financial culture, a topic that deserves more thoughtful discussion. Without a clear rebuttal, this wrongheaded view is likely to become tomorrow's conventional wisdom.

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Some of the headlines about the conviction of hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam are misleading or just plain wrong. The Rajaratnam guilty verdict won't "change the way Wall Street does business" - not where it matters most. Too Big to Fail banks will continue to endanger the economy because they know they'll be rescued again. And they'll keep on breaking the law, knowing that even if they're caught they'll be protected from prosecution.

And yet, instead of being grateful, bankers like JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon will continue to publicly sulk about their own perceived mistreatment. That can be annoying, since the U.S. taxpayer saved their corporations, their careers, and their wealth from the consequences of their own mismanagement.

But in the end all this public posturing is just a form of territorial primate display, like mandrills showing their brightly-colored posteriors to zoo visitors. These bankers are reminding us that this country's economy and government are their territory and we're just trespassing on their mating grounds. To paraphrase an old Sam and Dave song, "It's their world, we're just living in it."

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Writers love coming up with absurd stories on April Fool's Day and then trying to pass them off as real news. So let's play a game: Which of these stories are real and which are just April Fool's Day pranks?

Meet my friend Berkshire and his wife, Anne: A review of past stock performance suggested that the stock price for Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway corporation goes up whenever movie star Anne Hathaway is in the news.

News reports about the release of new Anne Hathaway movies like Rachel Getting Married, or her performance co-hosting the Oscars, may have increased the value of the billionaire Sage of Omaha's stock portfolio.

Lazy Dog Millionaire: A major bank's employees had a party for everyone who received a bonus in the million dollar range - which was a lot of people.

As one employee said, million-dollar bonuses were handed out "even if a guy is really lazy and has done s***."

Und you will like it! A few weeks later that bank's Chairman of the Board stood up at a financial gathering and said - in a German accent, no less - that "populations are not ready to voluntarily discipline themselves in more work, less rewards, and less security."

In a particularly Strangelovian turn of phrase, the banker said that we must "reinvigorate ourselves."

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Fukushima is "a very huge disaster that has caused very large damage at a nuclear power generation plant on a scale that we had not expected," according to the deputy director general of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

But the risk of disaster was easily calculated, and an effective regulator would have demanded that the Tokyo Electric Power Company take the appropriate precautions. That didn't happen. The ugly truth, here and in Japan, is this: Unless government regains the will and the ability to regulate private industry, more catastrophes are all but inevitable.

Corporate money has come to dominate politics, so change won't come easily. Citizens will need to push for it as if their lives depended on it - because they do.

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Jamie's going to Japan. Dealbreaker has a memo from JPMorgan Chase's senior executive in Japan which says CEO Jamie Dimon is on his way: "Colleagues from around the globe are heading here to pitch in. In addition to Jamie, we will be seeing ... others who are now booking their trips. more »

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Why don't the CEOs of AIG and JPMorgan Chase give a damn what you think? Because they don't have to. The Third Chamber of government, that unelected body of lobbyists and wealthy executives symbolized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has insulated them from public outrage.

Chase CEO Jamie Dimon's nonstop narcissistic tirade against any and all criticism of banks is entering its third quarter. The CEO of AIG, a company I know from the inside, just insulted millions of his company's owners, rescuers, and customers. Every day brings more evidence of the Third Chamber's growing power. These CEOs and others like them will continue to be protected and enriched at public expense until more pressure is brought on politicians from the President on down to make it stop. more »

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A lot of people in the media are so afraid of offending anyone with controversial truths that they can't even tell the truth about the man whose holiday we're celebrating this weekend. Their coverage could give you the impression that the purpose of Martin Luther King, Jr's life was simply to make everybody in this country feel good about themselves—so good, in fact, that we deserve a day off just for having the wisdom to be born American.

You might be forgiven for thinking that everybody liked and admired Dr. King while he was alive - except maybe for a few angry old white people down South, who later realized the errors of their ways and were very sorry. The media have been so reluctant to convey Dr. King's true message that Glenn Beck can claim to have inherited his mantle and millions of people believe him. They're so afraid of telling his truth that a Pentagon official can claim that the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, the spiritual heir to Gandhi's mantle of nonviolence, would have supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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