Remember, this is the same guy who was widely rumored to be next in line after Tim Geithner leaves Treasury. Boy, they really do live in a bubble, don't they? I think we all know how badly they want to get their manicured little fingers on our
May 7, 2012

Remember, this is the same guy who was widely rumored to be next in line after Tim Geithner leaves Treasury. Boy, they really do live in a bubble, don't they? I think we all know how badly they want to get their manicured little fingers on our Social Security:

Jamie Dimon did his thing, and people liked it. The chairman and CEO of what many consider to be the best bank in the U.S. came out guns blazing and touched on every issue related to regulation and banking.

Dimon was speaking his mind Thursday at a a conference put on by the Simon School at the University of Rochester, where he received the “Executive Of The Year” award. The head of JPMorgan Chase expressed support for the Simpson-Bowles bipartisan budget plan, echoing earlier remarks at the event on the latter point made by General Electric chief Jeff Immelt. Dimon also called the persecution of oil price speculators “ridiculous,” asking the Obama Administration, Republicans, and everybody to unite and “get [things] done.”

After acknowledging the severity of the European sovereign debt crisis, and the only temporary effect of the ECB’s LTRO liquidity programs, Dimon said “the U.S. is the opposite of Europe, we know the way, it’s called Bowles-Simpson.”

“Our problem is that we don’t have the will,” explained Dimon. The problem in the U.S. is political, he explained, as Democrats and Republicans have pushed each other so far apart that they’ve created unnecessary problems, such as the debt ceiling crisis, that aren’t structural but political in nature.

“Why the hell are we so depressed,” he said, adding “we have the best military in the planet, the best universities and the best businesses incredible innovation, from Steve Jobs to the factory floor.”

Sure, as long as you're a gazillionaire who can afford all those things! God, what a piece of work.

There was a moment to talk about Occupy Wall Street as well, only a few days after massive protests in the contexts of May Day. OWS has targeted Dimon in the past, but the banker still said he agreed with some of their points. “The average American [can] look at the institutions of America and [say] they’ve let me down: these are Washington and Wall Street,” said Dimon. “A lot of people made a lot of money [going into the crisis], [then] their company blew up, and they [still] walked out with a lot of money,” he explained, acknowledging he didn’t like that either.

The banker, though, said the Occupy movement has put every banker, every CEO and one-percenter in the same bag. “That’s ridiculous, it’s another form of discrimination,” he said. At one point, Dimon did what many in the crowd equated to criticizing President Obama, saying “when things go wrong, finance gets blamed, just like this ridiculous stuff of blaming speculators for oil prices.” Dimon noted that markets are a very powerful force, allocating capital whether regulators want it or not. The secret, he explained, is getting “good” regulation.

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