Jamie Dimon: Becoming Too Big To Save -- Creating Fiscal Disaster

[marmar]

from HuffPost:



Simon Johnson
MIT Professor and co-author of 13 Bankers

Posted: December 3, 2010 09:14 AM
Jamie Dimon: Becoming Too Big To Save -- Creating Fiscal Disaster


In Sunday's New York Times magazine, Roger Lowenstein profiles Jamie Dimon, head of JP Morgan Chase. The piece, titled "Jamie Dimon: America's Least-Hated Banker," is generally sympathetic, but in every significant detail it confirms that Mr. Dimon is now -- without question -- our most dangerous banker.

Mr. Dimon is not dangerous because he is in any narrow sense incompetent. On the contrary, Mr. Dimon is very good at getting what he wants. And now he wants to run a bigger, more interconnected, and more global bank that -- if it were to fail -- would cause great chaos around the world. Lowenstein writes: "Dimon has always been unusually blunt, and he told me that not only are big banks like JP Morgan (it has $2 trillion in assets) not too big, but that they should be allowed to grow bigger."

The problem with very big banks is not that they are "too big to fail," in the sense that it is physically impossible for them to fail. It is that they are so large and therefore so connected with each other -- and with all aspects of how the modern economy operates -- that the failure of even one such bank would cause great damage throughout the world.

Lehman Brothers had a balance sheet of around $600 billion when it failed. Its collapse helped trigger the worst financial crisis and deepest recession since the 1930s. Imagine what would happen if JP Morgan Chase -- even at today's scale -- were allowed to go bankrupt. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simon-johnson/jamie-dimon-becoming-too-_b_791518.html

[Poboy]

1. Crash JP Morgan! Buy Silver...

Want JP Morgan to crash? Buy silver
The campaign to buy silver and force JP Morgan into bankruptcy could work, because of the liabilities accrued by its short-selling

Max Keiser guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 December 2010



For decades, the world's banking system has been on a fiat currency standard that has led to banks that are "too big to fail". They have overreached their remit of providing loans and have leeched into the political system, using our money to change the political agenda in ways that boost bank management's compensation over the interests of their depositors.


Over the past 11 years, the Gata (Gold Anti-Trust Action) committee has worked to reveal the silver/gold price suppression scheme; thanks to whistleblower Andrew Maguire in London, an investigation has been opened. As part of the ongoing exposé, it has now become clear that JP Morgan is sitting on what is estimated to be 3.3bn ounce "short" position in silver (which they have sold short, meaning they don't own it to begin with) in an attempt to keep the price artificially low in order to keep the relative appeal of the dollar and other fiat currencies high. The potential liability for JP Morgan has been an open secret for a few years.

On my show, Keiser Report, I recently invited Michael Krieger, a regular contributor of Zero Hedge (the WikiLeaks of finance). We posited that if 5% of the world's population each bought a one-ounce coin of silver, JP Morgan would be forced to cover their shorts – an estimated $1.5tn liability – against their market capital of $150bn, and the company would therefore go bankrupt. A few days later, I suggested on the Alex Jones show that he launch a "Google bomb" with the key phrase "crash jp morgan buy silver".

Within a couple of hours, it went viral and hundreds of videos have been made to support the campaign.

Right now, silver eagle sales for the month of November hit an all-time record high and the availability of silver on a wholesale level is drying up. The most important indicator is the price itself – holding just under a 30-year high. With each uptick JP Morgan gets closer to going bust or requiring a bailout.

Here's how the campaign works: wealth tied to a fiat currency is easily overwhelmed by wealth tied to silver and gold. And the world is waking up to the fact that they have the ability, without government assistance or other interference, to create a new precious metals-based backed currency system by simply converting their fiat paper into real money.

This campaign has 100% chance of working; it falls into the category of a self-fulfilling prophecy. As more individuals buy silver and gold, all attempts to replenish the system with more paper money will only cause the purchasing power of the silver and gold to increase – thus prompting more people to buy more. Any attempts to bail out JP Morgan would have the same effect.


FULL-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/02/jp-morgan-silver-short-selling-crash