An Inconvenient Truth

That bankers disdain their new Washington overlords is no surprise. A senior economist at JPMorgan slammed the "unnerving ignorance" of lawmakers at the Goldman hearings. The view reflects what many on Wall Street say privately, but the bank disavowed it. That probably makes as much political sense as the grandstanding by the senators.

It's one thing to discuss such grumbles in the executive suite. It's another to explicitly lay them out in a widely disseminated research report, accompanied by data and a full-color chart for emphasis — in the midst of the delicate financial reform debate in the Senate, to boot. But that's what JPMorgan's James Glassman did in a May 3 economic note.

In last week's Senate committee interrogation of Goldman Sachs executives, senators displayed "confusion about our market economy," according to Glassman, along with plenty of unearned self-righteousness. He snarkily noted that the economic implosion of rust-belt Michigan, home of Carl Levin, the committee chairman, had nothing to do with esoteric derivatives.

It's not news that many senators appear to have only a tenuous grasp of the financial industry. But Glassman's larger point is more relevant. It's not just that Congress doesn't understand what Goldman, as a market-maker, does — it's also that elected officials may not recognize that the financial crisis was rooted in Washington as well as Wall Street.

A similar point is made in new study by Ross Levine of Brown University. Bankers may have rushed to create fancy new securities, but it was legislators who enabled risky behavior by housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — and failed to instill watchdogs like the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission with the backbone needed to rein in risky activities.

Of course, even senators who do understand finance may choose to indulge in ignorant-seeming grandstanding for political and electoral reasons. JPMorgan, in turn, has distanced itself from Glassman's views, presumably to smooth any ruffled political feathers. Even if the bank's management secretly agrees with its economist, it's about as likely to say so as members of Congress are to admit their shortcomings.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
MORE FROM AMERICAN BANKER