I foolishly hoped the Facebook IPO might actually bring some confidence back to Wall Street.
What was I thinking?
Turns out it’s just another example of how the soulless Wall Street culture is destroying American style capitalism.
We have barely gotten past JP Morgan Chase’s $3 billion catastrophe, and the outrage over their foolish decisions, but here we are again. The attention span on Wall Street seems equivalent to that of a small child.
Scott Udine, a broker friend of mine, said it best, “The brokerage firm community is made up of salesmen and people that mainly care about THEIR bottom-line….not yours!!! They will sell anything, say anything and do anything.”
Morgan Stanley over sold and over hyped too many shares of Facebook to an unsuspecting public, while quietly telling large institutional investors another story. And to add insult to injury NASDAQ had such huge headaches processing all the buy, sell and cancellation orders that they now admit the whole IPO was an unmitigated disaster.
So once again its heads, the banks win, and tails, you lose.
I can only add this to the mounting list of evidence against the too-big-to-fail and too-big-to-jail banksters and sigh in disgust.
If you’re wondering why a foreclosure defense attorney is up-in-arms about a stock offering, it is because the same shady tactics that have led homeowners to my office are the same ones on display here. (more…)
Jamie Dimon’s heart-to-heart with his shareholders lasted a whopping 50 minutes on Tuesday. Apparently that was all the time he felt he needed to trot out the same apology speech he gave on Meet the Press, and then duck for cover.
And surprise surprise, nothing changed. Dimon held onto his dual roles as chairman and CEO, as I fully expected he would.
To the shareholders credit, they didn’t take this lying down. They challenged his role as a member of the New York Federal Reserve. They kept the heat on Dimon for Chase’s role in the mortgage servicing fiasco.
But Dimon’s responses were cursory at best, a brush off no different than the ones homeowners have gotten from Chase. They were hardly worth the price of admission.
Now I’m no conspiracy theorist, but clearly Chase held back this information about their $2 billion oops until after all the votes were in. That is clear.
Dimon may be saying the right things in public, but his actions clearly show that he is doing everything possible to downplay this loss. But if it goes unchecked, it could be a harbinger of even BIGGER losses.
Every consumer needs to a long hard look at the the way these banks do business and the interwoven relationship between these banks and our government. Not only are these banks too big to fail, but Dimon himself has become too big to fail in his own right. (more…)
He called it an “egregious mistake”. He claims he want to get rid of “Too Big To Fail”, and that he supported “portions” of the Dodd-Frank rule.
It might be one of the best acting performances I’ve seen all year. I think his chances of taking home an Oscar are all but guaranteed.
Maybe he had David Gregory fooled, (The NBC host’s lack of tough follow-up questions would seem to indicate it) but I am not buying it.
The reality is had JP Morgan not lobbied so hard against Dodd-Frank, and paid the lobbyists as much as they did, Dodd-Frank would have been much, much tougher, and Dimon would have $2 billion more in his coiffures.
It’s irony in its purest form.
This loss, which came on some very risky trades, is a perfect symbol of Wall Street’s hubris and greed. And it just goes to show you that the big banks have learned nothing from the crisis of years past.
And neither has Dimon. His apology on Meet The Press was the vocal equivalent of crocodile tears. He is another Chameleon, another Two-Face, putting on a public show for the masses, while privately lambasting anyone who is really looking to end “Too Big To Fail” when he thinks we are not paying attention. (more…)
How else can you explain your half-hearted apology over JP Morgan’spart in the robosigning scandal?
The CEO of JP Morgan Chase made some efforts towards reconciliation in his annual letter to shareholders, which is now out for all to see.
But it’s clear that Jamie Dimon is still delusional and suffers a full blown case of pass-the-buck disease, for which, apparently, there is no cure.
In the section titled “The Mortgage Business — The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”(He should have just left out the first two) Dimon admits to JP Morgan Chase’s shareholders that his companies ‘servicing operations left a lot to be desired’
He adds his company ‘made too many mistakes’ and that the it was ‘not our finest hour’.
What’s sarcasm!
Let’s be honest, it was your worst hour and your lasting legacy.
Here’s the problem Mr. Dimon. You didn’t just make a mistake. If I forget to buy milk on the way home, that’s a mistake. Your company, your officers and your top executives all suborned fraud forgery and perjury, all federal crimes.
Robosigning was more that just, as you put it, ‘paperwork errors’.
Everyone from the tippy-top of your company on down, encouraged this kind of illegal activity to happen, in fact it became part of the operating procedures of your company! You just farmed it out.
Why not just own up to the homeowners, the taxpayers and your shareholders. You’ve been caught with your hand in the cookie jar, I can still see the bruise. (more…)
For 5 years now we’ve been a huge champion of the short sale. We’ve been banging and banging away at the banks because they didn’t share our opinion.
There has long been an institutional reluctance among our nation’s lenders to embrace the short sale, but it appears they are finally coming around.
According to Corelogic’s most recent numbers, short sales accounted for 9 percent of all residential transactions last November.
In January of 2008, they represented only 2 percent. That’s a 350% increase in the amount of homes sold at short sale.
Hallelujah.
It may have taken them a while, but the banks are finally letting go of the arcane notion that foreclosing on a delinquent borrower is always the best option for them.
The short sale has and will always be a much better alternative for the banks. In many cases, when modification isn’t an option, a short sale is better for the existing homeowners as well.
It’s good for the banks because it’s the fastest way to bring down their massive backlog of foreclosures.
Now that more and more foreclosures are lingering in the courts, banks now realize its the simplest way to get these homes back on the market, sometimes in just a few months.
They may not get back the full value of the home but their losses are about 15 percent less than if the home was foreclosed on, according to Bloomberg News.
It’s good for the borrower because they can walk away, legally, with little or no debt at all. Some banks are even offering cash incentives, as much as $35,000 in some cases, to entice homeowners to sell back their homes. (more…)
Maybe its is just me, but what I am seeing over and over again during these turbulent economic times is a general sense ofa lack of personal responsibility. It is truly becoming a sign of the times and until we figure out how to properly correct it, our very foundation will be continuously questioned if not threatened.
The examples are now running amuck.
AIDS at the VA
First we hear this pastweek about the VA literally spreading AIDS in a VA hospital in Miami and elsewhere by not properly cleaning certain “sensitive” equipment used in colonoscopies. Hello!! Are they STUPID? Would we ever hear of such an idiotic situation at a private facility where the Dr. and his partners would lose their license and be sued to the moon if this happened? No! Of course not, but at the VA no one will ever be held personally accountable.
In fact if the person who received AIDS is still on active duty he may not even be allowed to sue the VA. But even if the innocent victims do sue, who will actually be paying the damages: you and me the taxpayer. Not the manager of the facility, or the person responsible for cleaning the tubes. Certainly the President won’t ask the Secretary of the VA to step down because it wasn’t “his fault.” Well whose fault was it is the real question and how do we create a system that prevents these kinds of unbelievable mistakes? I am not sure but the list continues.
I foolishly hoped the Facebook IPO might actually bring some confidence back to Wall Street.
