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Jamie Dimon: Hear My Little Violin?

March 11, 2009 – Comments (2)

Someone dope-slap some sense into this knucklehead. Ugh.

March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., said the U.S. can rescue its banking system by the end of the year if officials start cooperating and stop the “vilification” of corporate America.

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“When I hear the constant vilification of corporate America, I personally don’t understand it,” Dimon said in his speech. “I would ask a lot of our folks in government to stop doing it because I think it’s hurting our country.”

There's no "constant vilification" of corporate America, except among the people who always do that. What there is is widespread disgust with the slimy lampreys of corporate America, guys like Dimon and his fellow bank CEOs, guys who took enormous risks, rewarded themselves as if the profits built on those risk were the results of genius, and then started crying for taxpayer bailouts as soon as things went bad.

On the way up, these blowhards wanted credit for everything. When things fell apart, they claimed they had nothing to do with it. It was all a "perfect storm." And now they want to whine about having to take a little bit of criticism?

Dimon ought to quit complaining about how he's treated and be thankful. In a lot of other places, in a lot of other times, his head would be on a pike, or looking up from a little straw basket at the next terrified face stuffed in the old French head-chopper. Only in America are failures of his stature rewarded with taxpayer largesse and sweetheart deals, simply because they were slightly less awful (or slightly more lucky) than the other failures in the carpool.

Americans respect corporations that produce real value, play by shared rules, and behave like good citizens, just as Americans respect their neighbors who behave that way. But if someone on your block throws lighter fluid on a few houses and only manages to burn down half of them, he doesn't get to complain when he's "vilified," just because the firemen saved the rest of the block.