Murdoch’s New York Post had a screaming headline yesterday ‘UNCLE SCAM’ , alluding to the upcoming $13 billion fine to be levied against JP MorganChase. The thrust of that article was that the big, bad government was staging bank robbery by extracting hard-earned cash from an upstanding pillar of the economy headed by perfectly nice Jamie Dimon.
The Post follows up today with another piece outlining that Dimon’s only real sin was his opposition to Obama’s unhealthy economic policies such that the big fines were political punishment.
You really have to have the balls of an elephant to pull off a cynical exercise like this (Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism shreds the supposedly big fine here), but Obama and the Dems left themselves open to an attack of this staggering chutzpah by coddling the financial sector and refusing to expose their crimes. The country was primed to extract real concessions from the banking sector after the meltdown of 2008, and the public could easily have been educated about what had taken place if the light had been shined on Dimon and his colleagues publicly. What an educational opportunity was lost when the Obama team refused to hold public hearings on what went wrong. We needed a modern Sam Ervin to grill these banker-anarchists until the truth came out for all to see.
Instead of a Pecora Commission like the one set up under FDR to probe the causes of the 1930s Depression, we got Democratic cover for the banks that bankroll both parties and a full bailout with no change of management. Now the counterattack from the guys who asses were saved is in full swing. Like Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz staging protests at the veterans memorial over the shutdown THEY engineered, Democratic collusion with the bankers’ crimes provided the demagogues with a giant opportunity.
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