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A year or so ago, much to the surprise
of the rest of the world, Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein
remarked that he and a few other Wall Street bankers have been doing
“God’s work” as they push money from one place to another,
their bottom line invariably swelling, with the lone exception of 2008 when a
number of them were rescued by the government.
Yesterday, in this Bloomberg report, JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon said what he
and his banking buddies are doing is laying golden eggs (presumably for the
rest of America to ogle, since no one outside of Wall Street seems to be
doing much better than they were a couple years ago) in this rather
remarkable series of comments about financial market regulation.
“We’re starting to add up a
whole bunch of things which are negative for America,” he said. New rules on derivatives may hurt U.S.
competitiveness, and “if we have higher capital limits
than the rest of the world, now you’re just starting to put nails in
the coffin.”
He called derivatives laws in Dodd-Frank
some of the most “irrational” legislation he’s ever seen.
The Durbin amendment, which limits debit-card fees, is “basic
price-fixing at its worst,” he said.
“It’s very important that
the regulators and our government, the secretary of the U.S. Treasury, the
chairman of the Federal Reserve, that they make sure that when we’re
done with all of this stuff, American banks can compete with the rest of the
world,” Dimon said. “You don’t want to kill one
of the golden gooses of healthy capital markets.”
Well, the era of modesty and restraint
on Wall Street (however fleeting it was) is
now clearly over and, as the Dodd-Frank legislation continues to be
watered down as it is implemented, the stage is likely being set for Wall
Street’s golden gooses to lay something other than eggs in the
not-too-distant future (after which they are sure to be bailed out again).
Tim Iacono
Iacono Research.com
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