The three directors who oversee risk at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) include a museum head who sat on American International Group Inc.’s governance committee in 2008, the grandson of a billionaire and the chief executive officer of a company that makes flight controls and work boots.
What the risk committee of the biggest U.S. lender lacks, and what the five next largest competitors have, are directors who worked at a bank or as financial risk managers. The only member with any Wall Street experience, James Crown, hasn’t been employed in the industry for more than 25 years.
“It seems hard to believe that this is good enough,” said Anat Admati, a professor of finance at Stanford University who studies corporate governance. “It’s a massive task to watch the risk of JPMorgan.”
Boy, that's the understatement of the year. Why, it's almost as if they wanted unqualified people!
The bank has been under siege since CEO Jamie Dimon said May 10 that the firm’s chief investment office suffered a $2 billion loss trading credit derivatives. He later called it “a Risk 101 mistake.” Shares of the New York-based company have fallen about 18 percent since, and at least half a dozen agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, are investigating.
The probes began after traders in the London office, which manages the bank’s excess cash, made wrong-way bets on illiquid credit derivatives, some of them so large they distorted market prices. Dimon transformed the division under Ina Drew, who resigned over the losses, from a sleepy haven for traders of U.S. Treasuries into a profit center with an increasing appetite for exotic wagers.
Crown, 58, who is president of Chicago-based Henry Crown & Co. and lead director of defense contractor General Dynamics Corp. (GD), sits on the risk committee with Ellen Futter and David Cote. Futter, 62, is president of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and Cote, 59, is CEO of Honeywell International Inc.
The committee, which met seven times last year and hasn’t changed its composition since 2008, approves the bank’s risk-appetite policy and oversees the chief risk officer, according to the company’s April 4 proxy statement
The race has tightened up and Barrett's within striking distance, so hopefully this recall election will pull it off and kick Walker out:
MADISON — Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, down in the polls to Gov. Scott Walker, aggressively went after Walker in a debate Friday and accused him of purposefully dividing the state and triggering the June 5 recall election.
Barrett kept Walker on the defensive throughout much of the hour-long debate in Milwaukee, which was broadcast live statewide just 11 days before the election. Walker is only the nation’s third governor to ever stand for recall. The previous two, most recently California Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, were defeated.
Polls show a tight race, with Walker holding a narrow lead within the margin of error of two publicly released polls within the past 10 days.
Walker, who defeated Barrett in 2010 by 5 points to win election as governor, was targeted for recall after successfully passing a law last year that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers.
Barrett said that proposal, which sparked massive protests for weeks and made Wisconsin the center of a national debate over collective bargaining powers, tore the state apart. Walker said his measure, which also forced most workers to pay more for pensions and health insurance, was needed to help deal with a $3.6 billion state budget deficit.
“You decided to use a budget crisis to try and divide and conquer this state,” Barrett said, speaking directly to Walker as the two stood near each other behind podiums in a television studio. “That’s what happened. That’s what led to all of this. And you succeeded. You succeeded in dividing this state.”
Walker said he was focused on moving the state forward and didn’t want to relive the past.
[...] Barrett also prodded Walker to release more information about his involvement with an ongoing criminal investigation that so far has focused on aides and associates of his during his time as Milwaukee County executive. Five people have been charged on allegations including embezzling money from a veterans trust fund and campaigning on county time.
Walker has not been charged, but he created a legal defense fund and said he would answer questions from the district attorney’s office. Walker has said he’s been told he is not the center of the probe.
Walker called Barrett’s focus on the investigation a desperate move meant to distract from other issues.
“I will continue to have high integrity,” Walker said.
I found this picture online, but no information about it. It's one of the most powerful pictures I've seen.
This is something I wrote for Memorial Day 2005 and I run it every year:
Soldiers are not chunks of identical clay; each of them has a story, their own reasons for being caught in a war.
Brave? Maybe - sometimes, under some conditions. Scared, mostly. The younger they are, the more likely their presence had to do with restlessness, cockiness. The need to be part of a winning team, the desire to even a score. Kick ass, take names. Kill them all, let God sort them out.
The older they are, the more realistic they are. This was a steady paycheck, or a way to supplement the one they already had. When they join, it's with their eyes on the future benefit. When they're in the middle of a war, they think only of surviving the next five minutes. Please, God, please. Let me see my family again.
And when they die in the war, each death leaves a hole in the world. It's important to remember that, to not see them as a monolithic casualty list or as an acceptable loss.
No loss is acceptable. Ask the parents, the spouses, the children. They try. They tell themselves stories of nobility, sacrifice, a greater cause. They cover it up with the ritual rhetoric. But deep down, they must wonder.
Photo: Aaron Thompson
Here is how to count the cost: In high school graduation pictures that will never be replaced with wedding pictures. In wedding rings that will never be worn smooth by years. By the daughters who will walk down the aisle with an uncle or brother instead of Dad. By the sons who will find themselves angry and lost, not understanding why. The children who will hear about their mother's eyes, their father's chin but won't ever see themselves reflected in that face.
By the parents who now understand the quiet obscenity of outliving their own children.
Each and every one of these deaths left a hole in the world. That is why we count them.
It's deeply disturbing to see that Fukushima's plant operators never bothered to prepare for the worst-scenario, and that their backup plans were so inadequate. And now we learn that the people exposed to this radiation are guinea pigs, since no one's really studied the health effects of this type of radiation before. Something with the potential for this kind of catastrophe shouldn't be in the hands of the private sector, since it's pretty likely that safety was sacrificed to save money:
TOKYO (Reuters) — The amount of radioactive materials released in the first days of the Fukushima nuclear disaster was almost two and a half times the initial estimate by Japanese safety regulators, the operator of the crippled plant said in a report released on Thursday.
The operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said the meltdowns it believes took place at three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant released about 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances into the air during March 2011. The accident, which followed an earthquake and a tsunami, occurred on March 11.
The latest estimate was based on measurements suggesting the amount of iodine-131 released by the nuclear accident was much larger than previous estimates, the utility said in the report. Iodine-131 is a fast-decaying radioactive substance produced by fission that takes place inside a nuclear reactor. It has a half-life of eight days and can cause thyroid cancer.
It is difficult to judge the health effects of the larger-than-reported release, since even the latest number is an estimate, and it does not clarify how much exposure people received or continue to receive from contaminated soil and food. Experts have been divided on the health impacts since the disaster because the studies of assessing radiation risks are based mainly on a different type of exposure — the large doses delivered quickly by the atomic bombs in Japan in 1945.
Although people who lived closest to the plant were evacuated, many people remain in areas with significantly higher radiation levels than normal.
Tokyo Electric said it had initially been unable to accurately judge the amount of radioactive materials released soon after the accident because radiation sensors closest to the plant were disabled in the disaster.
I saw this story all over the intertubes yesterday, usually coupled with a denunciation of "stupid white racists" - and that really rubbed me the wrong way. I know all about racists, I grew up surrounded by them and I live in a white working class neighborhood. So yeah, I know there's a problem.
But if there's one thing I do know about my racist working-class peers, it's that the racism is more of a secondary characteristic. (In my neighborhood, they turned out for Obama when he first ran in 2008. I remember being pleasantly surprised when I read the precinct returns.) The racism really comes to the forefront when times are tough, and they're really tough now.
In an election year in which the economy ranks as Americans’ top concern, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney holds significant advantages over President Obama among white voters who are struggling financially and buffeted by job loss, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Asked which candidate would do more to advance their families’ economic interests, middle-class white voters who say they are struggling to maintain their financial positions chose Romney over Obama by a large margin — 58 percent to 32 percent.
"Why do these stupid people insist on voting against their own interests?" one commenter chided. Geeze, condescend much?
Voters split evenly on whether President Obama or Mitt Romney would do more to help their families financially, but big majorities see the Republican as doing more to help wealthy Americans and Wall Street, not necessarily a win for the former governor.
The former Massachusetts governor has a similar advantage on this question among white voters who have lost a job in recent years, or who have seen a family member or close friend face unemployment.
Nonwhite voters, struggling or not, give Obama huge leads over Romney when it comes to looking after their families’ financial interests.
Are whites really voting against their own interests, or are we looking at a protest vote? Because with the exception of the auto industry bailout, I can't think of much Obama's administration has done to alleviate the economic pain of working class people. Did he push for an additional tier of unemployment benefits at a time when they were desperately needed? No, he did not. Did he do whatever he could to hold onto public sector jobs and thus keep the economy going? No. Again, he was much more concerned about Wall Street.
When the banks came to steal their houses, did Obama stop them? Nope. In fact, his administration went to work to craft an agreement between states that they wouldn't be prosecuted. Tim Geithner made sniffy comments about "moral hazard" and bent over to shine the shoes of the bankers. Did the administration really attempt to solve the housing crisis that devastated so many communities? No, they were too busy trying to prop up the zombie banks. Look at the disaster that was HARP.
And this is before the Grand Bargain is even on their radar. When that happens, working class voters will never trust the Democrats again. Because Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are the grease in the wheels that make working class life work for extended families.
The results underscore a continuing challenge for Obama and the Democratic Party with white voters, and particularly those without college degrees — who, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are significantly more likely to be unemployed than those with higher education.
Indeed, among whites who described themselves as struggling to maintain their economic footing — regardless of their current class — nearly seven in 10 lacked a college diploma. And although they lean more Republican than the population in general, it is a group that neither party can ignore. In the new poll, 31 percent of these voters described themselves as Republicans, 27 percent as Democrats.
The president's biggest achievement is the health care law, and it will definitely make parts of their lives better. But it's complicated, most people don't understand it, and they're afraid (not without reason) that they're going to get stuck with yet another monthly bill. (Remember, the Republicans have already announced they're going to defund it.) When you're out of work and just trying to survive, the benefits of this bill are largely theoretical and off in the distant future. What about right now?
And we won't even get into the constant drone of Fox News in the background and the effect on their brains.
All that said, it's still the job of the president and his administration to win the support of the voters. People vote to make their lives better, not worse. Explaining to them how much worse it could have been if the president's half-hearted stimulus package hadn't passed doesn't make a very compelling case for his reelection.
Here's a novel idea: Why not do something to actually help them?
Please, Gov. Romney, please pick Chris Christie as your running mate. Sure, there are those who say he's a nasty, unqualified bully who can't keep his mouth shut, but they're saying that because they're just jealous. (Look how much Cory Booker likes him!) I know how impressed voters of the Northeast corridor will be when you announce his name, so please give this your serious consideration. Every Democrat will thank you:
As New Jersey’s nonpartisan budget analyst testified before Assembly lawmakers about a $1.3 billion revenue shortfall, Republican Governor Chris Christie offered his own analysis of the speaker.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?” Christie said yesterday, referring to David Rosen, who reported that the governor’s budget overestimates revenue collections through June 2013.
He’s “a joke,” a “handmaiden” for Democrats who control the Senate and the Assembly, Christie said. “The Dr. Kevorkian of the numbers.”
The comparison between Rosen, whose work in the Office of Legislative Services is overseen by a bipartisan commission, and a physician who assisted suicides in the 1990s was the latest in a litany of insults from the governor. His targets say that when the facts don’t favor him, Christie resorts to calling critics “jerk,” “idiot,” “numbnuts” and the like.
“This is yet another example of the governor’s reprehensible use of name-calling whenever things don’t break his way,” said Assembly Majority Leader Louis Greenwald.
Rosen, 65, declined to comment on the governor’s remarks. The budget and finance chief, who isn’t answerable to Christie, has a doctorate in political science from Rutgers University and has worked on state spending plans since 1991.
Mittens doesn't have to win over black voters, as this reporter points out. He only has to look moderate to suburban swing voters:
Mitt Romney’s campaign team has been quietly laying plans for an outreach effort to President Obama’s most loyal supporters — black voters — not just to chip away at the huge Democratic margins but also as a way to reassure independent swing voters that Romney can be inclusive and tolerant in his thinking and approach.
Compassionate conservativism! Where have I heard that before?
That plan, still in its early stages, ran headlong into the harsh political realities on the ground in Philadelphia on Thursday, when Romney was treated to a hostile welcome on his first campaign swing through a poor black neighborhood this year.
A few dozen protesters met him with chants of “Get out, Romney, get out!”
Madaline G. Dunn, 78, who said she has lived there for 50 years, said she is “personally offended” that Romney would visit her neighborhood.
“It’s not appreciated here,” she said. “It is absolutely denigrating for him to come in here and speak his garbage.”
Romney took his campaign to the Universal Bluford Charter School in West Philadelphia aiming to highlight his education agenda but also to connect with voters who were not part of his political calculus during the primary campaign. “I come to learn, obviously, from people who are having experiences that are unique and instructive,” he said.
Despite the obvious difficulties, Romney’s outreach to black voters could reap dividends even if he is unable to significantly chip into Obama’s support. “Suburban voters will be a real battleground, and upscale white voters like to think of themselves as tolerant and they won’t vote for a candidate that is seen as exclusionary, and the Romney folks must be aware of that,” said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “He has to persuade suburban voters that he isn’t Rick Santorum. He could break the mold a little bit and do some campaigning in African American communities. It would get people talking, and it would be all gain and very little pain.”
But there was evidence on Thursday that it would not be painless. Among the protesters heckling Romney from a distance were some of Philadelphia’s most prominent officials, all of them Democrats.
Listen to these consultants (Democratic and Republican) talk about how important pro-private sector politics is as they talk to members of the for-profit education industry about how to manipulate members of Congress
The Republic Report continues to do an excellent job in ferreting out the many conflicts of interest between politicians and their support for for-profit colleges. This one's especially interesting because Lee Fang tells us Tagg Romney is involved with the private equity firm behind Full Sail University:
When asked about his plan for higher education, Mitt Romney has taken to endorsing the for-profit higher education industry, even singling out a specific college business, Full Sail University. When speaking with a local newspaper before the Iowa caucus, he volunteeredFull Sail and other for-profit colleges as an answer to the rising costs of college tuition. He has also suggested Full Sail when speaking to college students in both New Hampshire.
Full Sail, like many for-profit colleges, is an odd choice for a conservative. These schools depend on billions in taxpayer aid, much of it wasted on advertisements and bonuses for executives. And as many have demonstrated, companies like Full Sail have a less than stellar track record when it comes to future employment and debt for their students.
As the New York Times pointed out, Full Sail is owned by a private equity firm called TA Associates, which is run by C. Kevin Landry, a major donor to Mitt Romney’s super PAC. According to Bloomberg News, Landry has now given $100,000 to Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney super PAC blanketing the airwaves in Republican primary states.
But what hasn’t been reported until now is the Romney family business connection to Full Sail. In 2008, Mitt Romney’s oldest son Taggfounded Solamere Capital, a “fund of fund” investment company that offered clients the unique opportunity to co-invest with an elite set of private equity firms. Many of the private equity firms connected to Solamere, it turns out, are prominent political allies of Tagg’s father. The line between business and politics becomes even more hazy given the fact that Mitt Romney and his wife provided a $10 million investment with Tagg’s firm, and Romney’s top campaign fundraising operative, Spencer Zwick, doubles as an executive with Solamere.
If there was ever any doubt that the recently announced JPMorgan Chase "probe" was merely an early summer's entertainment to keep the masses distracted, I'd say their hire of this former SEC chief to help them has cleared up that question. The SEC is notorious for its incestuous ties with Wall Street and their all-too-forgiving ways toward their former (and possibly future) employers. (For instance, JPMorgan’s general counsel Stephen Cutler was previously head of enforcement at the SEC.) Why, it's almost like Capitol Hill!
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), the biggest U.S. bank, has hired former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement chief William McLucas to help respond to regulatory probes of the firm’s $2 billion trading loss.
The lender retained law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP, where McLucas is a partner, shortly after the bank disclosed the loss on May 10, said Kristin Lemkau, a spokeswoman for New York-based JPMorgan.
The probes began after JPMorgan traders in London built up positions in illiquid credit derivatives that were so large they distorted market prices and eventually led to what Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon called “self-inflicted” losses that may grow. That spurred reviews by the SEC, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“Our focus right now is on whether the company’s public disclosure and financial reporting is accurate,” SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said today in congressional testimony. “The agencies collectively, including the criminal authorities, are working very hard to untangle what happened at the firm.”
The SEC is reviewing the accuracy and timing of JPMorgan’s disclosure of changes in how it calculates value-at-risk, or VaR, which shows how much it could lose from trading most days, Schapiro said. The bank changed its VaR model for the chief investment office during the first quarter without telling investors. The new model, which has since been scrapped, had cut the risk estimation almost in half, Dimon told investors May 10.
Watch the Thom Hartmann video, it's quite informative. Don't you love how this game is played? The temporary Bush tax cuts, the very same ones that helped ballooned the deficit to record levels, are about to expire and the Capitol Hill Chicken Littles are running around screaming "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" So letting them expire will throw the country into recession? For those of us outside the Village, how would we even know the difference? We're already out of work, or working for peanuts.
Now, you realize where this is going: This is the scary story that's supposed to provide cover for the usual suspects who want to make the Grand Bargain on Social Security. The Greek chorus is gathering, chanting about the "obvious" solutions (hint, hint). "We'll let you have a little stimulus now, provided we can slash the hell out of your earned benefits later!"
And because this is a complicated idea, most people won't understand, the librul media can't explain because they're too hooked on access to make waves, only a few reporters will bring up the idea of simply raising new revenue, and the hollowing of Social Security and Medicare will soon be a "bipartisan" victory. Don't you love politics?
Tax hikes and spending cuts set to take effect in January would suck $607 billion out of the economy next year, plunging the nation at least briefly back into recession, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.
Unless lawmakers act, the economy is likely to contract in the first half of 2013 at an annualized rate of 1.3 percent, the CBO said, before returning to 2.3 percent growth later in the year.
