US Politics Mega-thread - Page 552

On October 20 2013 10:02 ticklishmusic wrote:


To put that in perspective, $13 billion will cover about half of what was wasted by the government shutdown.

On October 20 2013 17:12 Adreme wrote:


Wait if its legal to possess it but not buy it that basically leaves growing it yourself or conjuring it from the ether.

On October 21 2013 00:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
People involved with JPMorgan must absolutely despise the government at this point.

On October 21 2013 00:54 sam!zdat wrote:
the fine is just priced into the business model. it's not like they are going to be responsible all of a sudden

edit: banksters need to start going to jail. can't just fine them money

On October 21 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

afaik JPM is a pretty responsible bank.

On October 21 2013 01:28 corumjhaelen wrote:
I guess the fine was for complimenting them for their responsability then.
Edit : but it's not a fine sorry, it's just that they willingly give a bit of money to the government, how nice of them.

On October 21 2013 01:54 corumjhaelen wrote:
The Economist's spin on the event, how cute.

JPMorgan disclosed in August that it was responding to “a number of subpoenas and informal requests” from federal and state authorities concerning the packaging and sale of mortgage securities.

At the time, the company said government attorneys had concluded that JPMorgan broke federal laws in its handling of subprime and other risky residential mortgages.

Many of the probes stem from JPMorgan’s Bear Stearns unit. Dimon has decried the government’s probes of Bear Stearns in the past, insisting that his bank was being punished even though its acquisition of the firm helped government efforts to save the economy. Dimon has said that JPMorgan has already paid nearly $10 billion to unwind Bear Stearns’s troubled businesses and settle litigation related to the firm.

Fed bailout and sale to JPMorgan Chase

On March 14, 2008, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York agreed to provide a $25 billion loan to Bear Stearns collateralized by free and clear assets from Bear Stearns in order to provide Bear Stearns the liquidity for up to 28 days that the market was refusing to provide. Apparently the Federal Reserve Bank of New York had a change of heart and told Bear Stearns that the 28 day loan was unavailable to them. The deal was then changed to where the NY FED would make a $30 billion loan to J.P. Morgan (collaterallised not by any J.P. Morgan assets but collaterallised by Bear Stearns Assets), who would buy Bear Stearns for 2 dollars per share.

The budget fight that led to the first government shutdown in 17 years did not just set off a round of recriminations among Republicans over who was to blame for the politically disastrous standoff. It also heralded a very public escalation of a far more consequential battle for control of the Republican Party, a confrontation between Tea Party conservatives and establishment Republicans that will play out in the coming Congressional and presidential primaries in 2014 and 2016 but has been simmering since President George W. Bush’s administration, if not before.

In dozens of interviews, elected officials, strategists and donors from both wings of the party were unusually blunt in drawing the intraparty battle lines, suggesting that the time for an open feud over the Republican future had arrived.

“It’s civil war in the G.O.P.,” said Richard Viguerie, a veteran conservative warrior who helped invent the political direct mail business.

The moment draws comparisons to some of the biggest fights of recent Republican Party history — the 1976 clash between the insurgent faction of activists who supported Ronald Reagan for president that year and the moderate party leaders who stuck by President Gerald R. Ford, and the split between the conservative Goldwater and moderate Rockefeller factions in 1964.

Some optimistic Republicans note that both of those campaigns planted the seeds for the conservative movement’s greatest success: Reagan’s 1980 election and two terms as president.

“The business community thought the supply-siders were nuts, and the country club Republicans thought the social conservatives scary,” William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, said of those squabbles. “That all worked out O.K.”

Far from being chastened by the failure to achieve any of the concessions they had sought from President Obama — primarily to roll back his signature health care law — the conservative activists who helped drive the confrontation in Congress and helped fuel support for the 144 House Republicans who voted against ending it are now intensifying their effort to rid the party of the sort of timorous Republicans who they said doomed their effort from the start.

“This was an inflection point because the gap between what people believe in their hearts and what they see in Washington is getting wider and wider,” said Jim DeMint, a former South Carolina senator and current Heritage Foundation president, who as a founder of the Senate Conservatives Fund is helping lead the insurgency.

On October 21 2013 01:49 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

According to an article from The Economist most of their legal problems stem from other banks they acquired during the crisis at the government's request (link).

JPM was also one of the banks that went into the crisis with a good balance sheet and was hurt by the TARP capital injections (source).

On October 21 2013 03:03 corumjhaelen wrote:
I just fail to see why they would settle for paying and staying in secrecy like they are instead of going to a trial if this narrative were true.
But hey, listening to sam all day might have made me a conspirationnist you know.