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Both Democrats and Republicans went easy on Jamie Dimon at the Senate Banking Committee hearing on June 13, but GOP fawning over the JPMorgan chief executive drew the ire of "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart on Thursday night.
June 15 -
Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase easily won a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Wednesday probing the more than $2 billion loss at his firm, signaling that his star status on Capitol Hill remains relatively unchanged despite ongoing questions about the unusual trades.
June 13
During the hearing, frequent reference was made to "risk," a word, which was, and should be still anathema in banking, for bankers do not take risks; they only underwrite risks.
Conversely, those who take risks are not bankers, but gamblers. They gamble either with stockholders' money, or, worse yet, depositors' money.
To make matters worse, the government, lacking professional banking experience, seeks to cure the ills of banking with such a monstrosity as the 2,000-plus page Dodd-Frank Act when the 37-page Glass-Steagall Act had done a creditable job for so many years.
Now retired, I have 50 years of old-school banking experience starting at the humble level of teller trainee going all the way up to bank president. An aggressive lender, I never lost money on a loan, nonetheless.
Ugo Nardi, a former commercial banker, retired in 2000.
