JPMORGAN MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE

This morning on Morning Joe (MSNBC), +Donny Deutsch made a telling observations, a reminder really, business executives who commit crimes are not subjected to criminal charges. The reference was to JPMorgan jacking up energy prices to gouge the public. The Federal Government found out what they were doing, charged the company, and the company had to pay a fine—end of story. The point of this post is that the fine is treated as the end of the story when it shouldn’t be.

The remark made by Deutsch point out the fact that someone in that company engaged in criminal activity to boost company profits. If we examine who that executive(s) was, something the public will never be able to do, I am sure we would find a person with an MBA, high paid, received accolades and even a bonus for doing what he did. He or she would have been look at as a hero within the company; “the kind of person you would want on your team”. Look at the Mitt Romney example; the business community looks at him and his vulture capital company as “champions of good business” based on one thing, the bottom line. They wanted to reward him with the presidency. There is a serious disconnect between the common people and the “royalty” of business world. Is dismissing criminal activity part of the deference they expect society to give to them?

Obviously, by stereotyping I have just committed a crime of reason. I often think about the French Revolution with the turning society upside down. All those who were “eating cake” guillotined all royalty; they were killed because they were royalty as if everyone associated with the crown were guilty; that of course is not true. What I am saying is that by bringing criminal charges against those who are actually guilty, we as a society can defuse building social unrest. We cannot throw up our hands and say business corruption is so pervasive we can do nothing about it, which is precisely what Donny Deutsch said in condensed form is happening.

The problem for society is even if a few people are charged; the corrupt mental attitude reaches into lower levels of business society and into the halls of academia in the form of MBA’s—bottom line sans morality. The guilt reached into the recesses of lesser offices and into the minds of aspiring executives as well as into the halls of congress, and many guilty and “near guilty” go unpunished. Case in point was Enron in 2001. The few criminal types in the executive suites of several associated corporations caused many people to suffer. As an example of the far reach of the Enron problem, all of the people of California faced huge artificially increases in energy charges, the “people of that state, recalled a setting Democratic governor, Gray Davis, and a Republican was elected governor. Need I remind you that California is a huge state and Enron was just one company. The people of a legislative district in California elected an advantage taker and instigator of the political unrest, +Darrell Issa, to congress—an extremely bad legislator.

The fact that some at Enron were charged and punished had a positive effect; however, as +JPMorgan case, and many, many more, shows that we are having trouble charging even the most guilty.  We need a Democratic congress and an aggressive +Elliot Spitzer, +Elizabeth Warren, and +Eric Holder, and above all else we need +Barack Obama. We need Glass-Steagall, Dodd-Frank, an honest Supreme Court, and much, much more. Above all else, we need a working class that knows they are in trouble. The one good thing about predicting the future is that it has not happened yet.

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