I can"t believe I actually want to defend Jamie Dimon

I found myself conflicted today with David Gregory's Meet the Press interview with JP Morgan/Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. On one hand I want to crucify what this man stands for being both the CEO of arguably one of the biggest players in the great depression of 2008, a company that had just as many boiler room MBA's creating shady derivatives that placed bets on bets and then collateralizing them as Goldman Sachs AND one of the New York's Federal Reserve Presidents that make our monetary policy for this country. This man holds more power and sway than even the president yet here he was, on national TV with humble pie all over his face leveling with the American people saying in essence, I screwed up as leader of my company. On the face alone I admire what he did and hope he enlightened many of  his peers. Peers who may be doing similar risky speculations but may not live by the personal responsibility standard this man lives by, personal responsibility that most likely will get him fired by the shareholders of that corporation.

For me, on its face is not enough. This is getting to be typical behavior from Wall Street and should be a clarion call for those that understand what this Wall Street casino climate did to our economy because of its lax over site and weak regulations. Remember how when Drexel Burnham was found out for the same type of risky derivative trading? Remember how Wall Street reassured us that they will not do these type of things again? This is just another example that our financial institutions can not police themselves and lends credibility to those who warned how the repeal of the Glass/Steagal act would blur the lines that separated safe commercial banking practices from the risky speculation and casino climate the Wall Street investment houses now practice. How these same Wall Street Banks through lobbyists are trying to do everything they can do to de-regulate the most current set of weakened regulations that were put in place just to try and protect us from another large scale meltdown with modest consumer protections. I understand when Dimon said there is a disconnect between the regulators at the SEC and the regulators at Treasury and think this is a fundamental problem with our regulatory environment because in my opinion the stronger federal law should have precedence and the agency that's tasked with the enforcement of the law should be held to account. I do not believe these banks learned any lessons since 2008 except that they must have to find another market to play and  hope they make it obscure enough that no one can decipher what they are really doing. I see this happening currently in the energy and commodities markets but I digress, this whole issue, if anything, must be about transparency.

Why transparency? I am a shareholder in my mutual funds of such pillars of our economy as JP Morgan/ Chase. I didn't chose these funds because of JP but as most Americans I tend to invest blindly in what my broker puts me into because I'm a busy guy and its his world to know. I as a shareholder think I should have a choice in what my investments do. I mean, since the Supreme Courts decision to proclaim that corporations are people and have the right to speech, shouldn't I as a shareholder have a voice on what my stock should or shouldn't be investing in? Are we not the people that are the corporation? Jamie Dimon and his decisions lost my stock a proportionate amount of that 2 billion dollar loss and the stock share price is being pressured because of it; yet Mr. Dimon and the other execs will get their millions in salary and hundreds of millions in stock options for failure? I am sure JP Morgan gives money to superpacs that fund campaigns, I am also sure JP Morgan gives millions to lobbyists to try and weaken laws on the books and probably through some fund or another actually give money to groups like ALEC to coordinate direct interaction with legislators writing their own set of rules for their hand picked legislators to vote on. Corporations that have this much power over our economy should be transparent and on public record in all its forms. Derivatives trading and tranched CDO's should be transparent and public. We need to know what corporations that receive tax dollars as subsidies, bailouts, special dispensation laws are doing at all times.

I like making money on my stock portfolio because between you and me I don't really trust the Washington crowd to keep their hands off my government medicare or social security and I want to retire someday. We already  know one side of the political equation wants to privatize it all so these huge monolithic financial corporations can get more business and large sums of money to continue the churn of risk trading. I figure since I am an owner through my stock and get voting rights, I should probably have a say in what corporations spend my hard earned investment dollars on, what schemes they cook up, and what they say as political speech. I think its fair considering that I don't believe this will be the last big financial corporation to parade out into public its executives and apologize for what their companies did. I am emphatically against the notion that they think they can self regulate themselves and abhor the fact that after damage and subsequent exposure they only get slapped on the wrist to then disappear behind the conference room door to listen to another risky hedging strategy that could take down our economy again. Jamie Dimon may be someone to be admired because of the humility he exhibited, but for his industry, I believe words just are not enough anymore. Regulate these guys please.  When will we learn? #wakeup #ows #p2

i don't take bull shit lightly, quit lying @richardRSmithJr

I have to get back to this, I get so busy with other stuff I never get to finish my thought coherently because I am a small business person and I am always working. I am the very person the GOP pretends to want to help with this mantra of low regulation and free markets. Sir, respectfully your full of BS; the GOP is destroying me with their non-regulation of industries whose only motive is to make money. This is the history: http://bit.ly/x7KJrH This law did was not help liquidity and strengthen the markets as was its intention but did allow traders on Wall Street and CBO to infuse the markets with speculator $$ meant to drive up the prices of commodities like Oil, Gas, Food & Copper, you name it (its so rabid in energy it affects everything consumers buy, prices even go higher because everything is transported using fuel). They did this by means of bets on bets (derivatives) for the future price of those essential economic materials that every American uses. This is bad calculus and fuzzy math at best as these options on futures completely changed the commodities markets making them so complex that even Alan (I spent nights fawning over Ayn Rand) Greenspan couldn't understand them and who recently came out apologizing to Americans that he didn't pay enough attention to what these time bombs would do to the real economy. Sir, there are 10's of Trillions of $$ traded on these phony baloney financial instruments whose base underlying commodity wasn't worth even a 10th of the value purported by the end price paid at contract. These speculators play spreads, plain and simple and rather unfairly because they aren't regulated closely with the regulators charged with the oversite being part of the industry they are tasked with regulating. Lets be clear, these investment bankers have the upper hand with the volumes brokerage firms and hedge funds control, they can sway markets by large swings to get upside commission fees and profits or downside commissions fees in essence for them its "win win" any way you look at it.
I as a construction person can tell you first hand that just in my industry, because of the great Bush/Greenspan depression caused not from a redlining law but from the financial industry writing any kind of mortgage instrument it could make up, package them, and sell them on derivatives markets tranched (CDO’s) up so much that some were even made up of future mortgages just for speculative trading and insult to this was they also made up insurance vehicles (CDS’s) with no capital requirements to bail them out if they failed. All fake and phony making so much $$ for a few that In my industry we are still depressed. Construction had a nuclear bomb the GOP and their de-regulation set off in 2007 and much of the fall out still hasn't killed everyone in the industry like suppliers and transport.
I'm sorry sir, energy supply is up and demand is down. We are drilling everywhere and with methods that 20 years from now will probably will be blamed for sicknesses such as cancers or pulmonary maladies. We are not consuming as much energy and lets be real honest about this, other than transportation services & true manufacturing processes, construction is a big player in consumption and our demand is at historically low levels. Let’s not forget that we are driving less as a nation and we are using more fuel efficient vehicles.

Don't Bull Shit me sir because I am awake now, I am a small businessman who understands the tactics used by the Republicans. They do not care about me or my small business and they will keep lying about what the real reason is for high gas and oil prices. They care about deregulation in industries that make some very rich industries richer even if its known it will cause the rest of us great financial pain. I know energy & financial industries have found many in media greedy and gullible enough to sell a well refined PR message to a constituency looking for a boogieman and unfortunately many will believe that message. I also know they will use every social issue they can like smoke and mirrors to hide how fascist they have become while blaming it on government. I am however optimistic the American people will see through the haze this time.

Oh and by the way; Eisenhower is the President who thought it prudent to invest in a national system of highways, President Eisenhower was a progressive. We need more progressives to save this country.