How does an oligarch spend his time prior to the holidays? Buying out entire floors of FAO Schwartz? Flying in a plane full of hookers and coke?
Well, if the oligarch in question is JP Morgan chairman Jamie Dimon, you complain to anyone who listens that the mean folks whose economy you helped crash and homes you foreclosed while pocketing $23M in 2010 are being mean to you.
“Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and because you’re rich you’re bad, I don’t understand it,” Dimon whined to attendees at an investors conference earlier this month.
No, of course you wouldn’t understand it Mr. Dimon, given that statements like that make Willard Romney look grounded and folksy by comparison.
Blogger Joshua Brown over at The Reformed Broker had a rather visceral reaction, penning a piece a couple of days ago that takes this heartfelt, earnest statement to task:
I am writing to profess my utter disbelief at how little you seem to understand the current mood of the nation. In a story at Bloomberg today, you and a handful of fellow banker and billionaire “job creators” were quoted as believing that the horrific sentiment directed toward you from virtually all corners of America had something to do with how much money you had. I’d like to take a moment to disabuse you of this foolishness.
And that’s just the first paragraph. Brown goes on to point out that Americans actually do celebrate individuals who do well as a product of hard work, contribution to society, and a little ingenuity-marking the late Steve Jobs as a prime, high-profile example.
He goes on to point out the significant difference between how the Apple founder earned his vast wealth and the general course by which many on Wall Street have come by their dollars, pointing out the damage done to our economy by decades of conscious-less financial transactions:
So please, do us all a favor and come to the realization that the loathing you feel from your fellow Americans has nothing to do with your “success” or your “wealth” and it has everything to do with the fact that your wealth and success have come at a cost to the rest of us. No one wants your money or opportunities, what they want is the same chance that their parents had to attain these things for themselves. You are viewed, and rightfully so, as part of the machine that has removed this chance for many – and that is what they hate.
America hates unjustified privilege, it hates an unfair playing field and crony capitalism without the threat of bankruptcy, it hates privatized gains and socialized losses, it hates rule changes that benefit the few at the expense of the many and it hates people who have been bailed out and don’t display even the slightest bit of remorse or humbleness in the presence of so much suffering in the aftermath.
Therein lies exactly what so many who are angry in this country identify with. It’s the sentiment that drives a great deal of what’s behind the Occupy movement-the lack of opportunity and lack of remorse. Certainly there are still some opportunities that exist in this country, but they exist at a different level of risk to those who are born into connections and money. The 23-year old with $40K in (non-dischargable) student loan debt and no family connections does not face the same standard of risk in the face of failureas the child of a Wall Street executive.
As for the immense suffering and lack of remorse, therein lies the other obstacle for the average person, one with which I am well acquainted. I spent five years of my young career working at a bank, making unsecured loans that I often knew would go bad. It was during the time of free and easy credit in the early 2000s. As an organization, we made the loans for two reasons-one, we made a great deal in fee income up front from booking these deals. Most months, I pulled enough fee income for the bank to cover my salary, benefits, and overhead costs for the year. Secondly, we were fattening up the balance sheet in advance of making the company available for takeover, which happened in the middle of the decade. Frequently, these loans were bad for both the customer and the bank in the long-run-the loan freed the customer up to incur more debt, which eventually they would be unable to overcome, and default on all their loans, which meant a loss for the bank.
Yet, on a daily basis, we were encouraged to book more loans by men at the top who had no remorse for the damage they were doing to customers or the firm. They would cash out with the sale, and watch the ship burn from the lifeboat built of others’ cash. That absence of conscience, that lack of remorse-that’s something that the average person can’t find within themselves. I hated myself progressively more every day until I quit that job, because I couldn’t believe the negative long term impact I knew I was having on people.
Read Brown’s letter to Dimon, it captures the whole of these sentiments very well, and certainly deserves the attention.
