Do We Want More JP Morgans?

   As the rhetoric between President Barack Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney finally starts gathering steam from both sides, a look at the basic differences between each candidate and how national issues might be affected by whoever winds up in power next year is in order. The ongoing JP Morgan Chase scandal, with $3 billion (soon to be $5-6 billion) of investor’s money lost through CEO Jamie Dimon’s ruinous trades over the past quarter is a good if unlucky place to start. The former TIME Magazine darling who was toasted during the recession as his institution weathered the financial crisis better than most of his competitors, is instead now being roasted by angry shareholders left holding the very expensive bag, a bag that in actual total losses eclipses $30 billion when JP Morgan’s current stock downturn is taken into account. Even Dimon admitted that "we know we were stupid, we know there was bad judgement. Of course, regulators should look at something like this". Admirable honesty, but unfortunately diluted by all the groaning he’s done over the past week re: financial sector regulation.

   But the fact is that if Mitt Romney is elected president in November, there will BE no oversight of our American banking corporations that brought about the fiscal calamity that the Obama administration inherited, and only through the vilified taxpayer bailouts successfully headed off a second Great Depression. Romney has categorically declared that one of his first objectives if elected will be to repeal the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the sweeping initiative signed by Obama two years ago that would have in past years been a justly-heralded, common-sense preventative that both Republicans and Democrats would’ve been behind, especially after the financial morass of 2007-2010.  

   Unfortunately, today’s Tea Party-cowed GOP remains dead set against Dodd-Frank, ostensibly because it is certainly and necessarily not "business friendly", but actually due to the fact that it is a Democrat initiative. And ironically one of the bill’s tenets, the (Paul) Volcker Rule which is scheduled to take effect on July 21, will serve to prevent banking institutions from making exactly the types of speculative trades with federally-insured money that caused the current JP Morgan imbroglio. And despite Dimon’s self-inflicted troubles that raised havoc with investment money he remains adamantly against the regulation, a clear case of dollar-based reality displacement, an ailment that seems to affect a number of head corporate financial administrators and will undoubtedly continue to do so.

   So anyone in favor of allowing Americans’ investment dollars to be subject to the risky and sometimes even illegal caprices of their chosen firms, leaving themselves open again to all the joys of future bailouts can hold their wallets and vote for Romney. A Romney who has thus far had little to say about the JP Morgan fiasco roiling the financial news, save for his wonderful, benevolent quote that "the $2 billion JP Morgan lost, someone else gained". And voters who want the oversight that their investments deserve, oversight that was proven to be all too necessary last decade when we didn’t have it, can vote for Obama.  

   It’s a simple decision between supporting a candidate who maintains a "businesses first, while we slash social programs" philosophy ("Corporations are people, too!") and has little discernibly in common with the rest of us, versus a president who has proven over 3.5 years to be on the side of the average working American when we’re talking about healthcare, Medicare/Social Security, and individual rights and equality for ALL citizens, not just our own demographies. And the fact that banking industry political contribution dollars now favor Romney over Obama by a 5-1 margin should be a clear sign to the middle class what direction Wall Street is pushing for with a Romney presidency.