Published in CommPRO.Biz 2013.08.16

 

Jamie’s Bad, Bad Month

Poor Jamie Dimon. These are defiantly not “Happy Days” for the Chase Bank chief and Fonzie wannabe with his 1970s retro ducktail hairstyle. With the cloud of the bank’s huge loss known as the “London Whale” looming over him and federal authorities issuing arrest warrants against two bank underlings involved in that loss – a loss much more likely the result of the culture of risk and greed Dimon has installed in the bank’s DNA –  it was bad enough.

Then an insider publication, Bank Director Magazine, released its 2013 “Bank Performance Scorecard.” The magazine has an outside independent organization rank banks on a broad scale of markers for its target audience as “An information resource for senior executives and directors of financial institutions.” It would have been an interesting “fly-on-the-wall” moment to see Dimon’s reaction when told that America’s biggest bank – his bank – came in 14^th among all banks with assets north of $50 billion dollars.

You would think it would shake even an ego the size of Dimon’s to discover that his gargantuan bank came in way down a list with two regional banks a fraction of the size of Chase in the #1 & #2 slots. And Chase didn’t just lose in some of the markers, they lost in all of them. Actually almost all of the monster banks looked pretty anemic given the advantages they enjoy. With tons of free money from the Fed to gamble on anything they please, you would think they could trounce those regional banks. Makes you wonder what members of the monster bank boards of directors who read Bank Director are thinking. More important, what of the regulators we entrust to protect us against the economic impact of these too-big-to-fail banks, what are they thinking?

This study puts the lie to Eric Holder’s thinking that criminal charges against the top executives of these monster banks could threaten their stability and therefore our economy. It seems obvious that the executives of the smaller banks that led the Performance study outperformed the monsters; and that all these banks have executives in place who could easily replace those above them.

It is also obvious that it’s past time to literally cut these monsters down to size. It is past time to return the controls installed early in the 1930s that the bank lobby conned the Congress into removing; the controls that would have prevented the current recession. The monster banks are engaged in exactly the same nonsense that triggered this recession. Nonsense that threatens our economy and that the Bank Director study indicates is of little benefit to the bank’s shareholders.

The monster banks are a looming threat to every American. Arrogant bankers epitomized by Jamie Dimon lecturing members of Congress, flashing cufflinks with the Presidential seal, secure in the knowledge that his lobbyists have bought and paid for their support. It’s time to put an end to this ethically challenged era.