Hands Across the Water, Heads Inclined to Lie ~ The Risk Averse Alert

Monday, January 09, 2012

Hands Across the Water, Heads Inclined to Lie


Someone tell me the practical difference between what JP Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon is doing in the following interview and what Alan Schwartz did three days before his firm, Bear Stearns, was taken down...




"The EU and common currency are a great accomplishment of mankind," says Dimon.

Imperial mankind? Yes, of course. The PIIGS are proving a great success in the art of extracting wealth using illegitimate claims as rationalization for theft. Yet to Americans who treasure stability conducive to a robust and inclusive growth, the euro is a devious fraud whose intended, chaotic end only a swindler could call a "great accomplishment."

Add this to the "Ferdinand Pecora file" for a JPM whose leader also claims "no one saw the credit crisis of 2008 coming."

How anyone in the media can keep a straight face bemoaning the regulatory boogie man risking loss of Wall Street's "talent" is beyond me. It just goes to show you, if you're going to play make believe, it stands to reason the game requires fakes.

And just to reaffirm that, when your back is against the wall and your very survival is at stake you will say just about anything to make the trouble go away, the London Economist's rally call to "Save the City" is like discovering the Hope diamond in fact is zircon. Should the blowup of AIG and MF Global (both orchestrated out of London) have you scratching your head, then the Economist's claim that, "Britain is very good at [finance]" no doubt risks your going bald trying to bridge the disparity between word and deed. Still, scarcely a soul will think to connect the dots and consider how the same foolish sophistry justifying the City also could be used to rationalize "benefits" accrued from the global trade in illegal narcotics. Of course, London doesn't know about such things in a world inclined to play make believe.

Future generations querying the state of affairs just prior to an historic financial bust, wondering whether what history in their time has judged an accident waiting to happen (and plain as day at that) rather was unanimously discounted right up to the fateful hour: rest assured, not everyone is fooled by ill-formed deceptions coming from the gamut of vested interests. Jamie Dimon and the London Economist certainly are not proving Abraham Lincoln wrong in his assessment of fools, nor will these likely strengthen today's backing for toilet paper whose inflated value, indeed, requires vocal defense no matter how fanciful the logic. Such are but voices one with animal spirits these days, raised only to reveal confidence is shot.


Fast Money
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