Jamie Dimon gets personal call from POTUS, while Seniors get garnished

[99th_Monkey]

Jamie Dimon Gets a Personal Call from the Prez; Seniors Get Garnished
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 12, 2014

Senior Citizen HandSometimes we have to pinch ourselves to make sure we are not sleepwalking in a Dickensian dream. Earlier this week we heard Senator Elizabeth Warren tell a Senate Banking session how JPMorgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, got a $8.5 million raise after craftily negotiating away all of the bank’s crimes with the payment of billions in shareholders’ money. (Two of those crimes, by the way, were felony counts for aiding and abetting Bernie Madoff in his Ponzi scheme – also craftily settled under a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department, which effectively puts the bank on probation for two years.)

Last night, the Wall Street Journal informed the public that, apparently, none of this criminal activity at JPMorgan has dulled President Obama’s fondness for its CEO Jamie Dimon, who has recently been undergoing treatments for throat cancer. The Journal reported: “During one of his earliest treatments, the Mr. Dimon received a call on his cellphone from President Barack Obama, who wished him a healthy recovery, the bank confirmed.” A President with a kind heart toward those experiencing health issues is, of course, a virtue. But it is more than likely that the President hasn’t similarly dialed up the victims of JPMorgan’s various and sundry wealth transfer assaults when y fall ill.

One day before the news of the President’s phone call to Dimon emerged, we learned from the U.S. Senate’s Special Committee on Aging and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that some senior citizens are having their Social Security payments garnished over unpaid student loan debt, forcing them below the poverty threshold. The GAO’s study, derived from the Survey of Consumer Finances, found that 706,000 households headed by those 65 or older still carry student loan debt. Stunningly, the outstanding federal student debt for this age group grew from approximately $2.8 billion in 2005 to an estimated $18.2 billion in 2013. For persons of all ages, Federal student loan debt has risen from $400 billion to more than $1 trillion during the same period.
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/09/jamie-dimon-gets-a-personal-call-from-the-prez-seniors-get-garnished/

[vi5]

1. Clearly the Republican Congress made him do that.

Damn you Boehner and your ilk!! DAMN YOUUUUU!!!!!

[Doctor_J]

9. give him a democratic congress and he won't have to do these things

It's all the fault of the liberals for not voting in 2010

[progressoid]

11. +1

[Octafish]

2. 'My administration...is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.'' - President Barack Obama

On 3 April 2009, Politico bannered innocuously (and deceptively, given the shocking core that was buried here - Obama's statement), "Inside Obama's Bank CEOs Meeting." Eamon Javers reported Obama telling Wall Street's CEOs, inside the White House, "My administration ... is the only thing between you and the pitchforks." (This essentially secret meeting, and the comment itself, had occurred on 27 March 2009, but Javers failed to cite the date, which was indicated only under the accompanying AP wire photo of the CEOs coming out of this publicly unannounced event.) Obama's remark was implicitly analogizing here: he implied that he was protecting these people not from prosecutions for crimes (which he actually was), but instead from angry irrational mobs outside, who were driven by blind hatred (like the lynch mobs were in the Old South). Obama was metaphorically siding here with the plantation owners, not with the slaves; with the KKK, not with their victims. This elite Black was telling them that he would protect them from prosecution. He wasn't going to protect the public - which he here analogized to simply a hate-obsessed mob of bigots.

SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/obama-finally-lays-his-ca_b_3025743.html

Politico article referenced above: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/20871.html

"We're all in this together." -- Robert Gibbs, White House Press Secretary

The thirteen bankers, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, were:

Ken Chenault, American Express
Ken Lewis, Bank of America
Robert Kelly, Bank of New York Mellon
Vikram Pandit, Citigroup
John Koskinen, Freddie Mac
Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs
Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase
John Mack, Morgan Stanley
Rick Waddell, Northern Trust
James Rohr, PNC
Ronald Logue, State Street
Richard Davis, US Bank
John Stumpf, Wells Fargo

SOURCE: http://13bankers.com/title/

This bothers me: For some reason, since Jimmy Carter left office in 1981, the rich get bailouts and We the People get called to pick up their tab.

[99th_Monkey]

5. Thanks for this Octafish

Was Obama unwittingly predicting the OWS phenomenon? <-- metaphorical pitchforks?

[99Forever]

3. K&R

[grasswire]

4. where is the outrage?? nt

[99th_Monkey]

7. Increasingly, all peeps too busy just scrambling to make ends meet

coincidentally, I was just about to post this as an OP:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26120-workers-are-constantly-on-the-edge-of-the-knife

[grasswire]

6. I looked up the poverty guidelines for one person household.

It's about 11,400 for 2014.

Under the garnishment order now in effect, a Social Security recipient's benefit can be reduced to $9000/year to pay off old student loan.

That's 750/month.

So while Obama's BFFs roll in luxury even after committing criminal attacks on Americans, those who desperately tried to claw out of poverty in that created poor economy are bearing the burden. One skimpy meal at a time. One worn-out shoe at a time. One empty dream after another.

[99th_Monkey]

8. Well said

Filed under "sad but true"

[Boom Sound 416]

10. He would have been treasury sec

Had he not lost a few billion