6/30/2023 0 Comments Greed corp. tv tropes![]() Greedy CEOs still have credibility in the media. Even now, after all the revelations of crimes which include investor fraud, shareholder fraud, perjury, forgery, violation of international sanctions laws and laws designed to protect members of the US Armed Forces-even now it’s possible to treat bank CEOs as victims in the pages of our country’s newspaper of record.Ĭondemning that record isn’t bloodlust. Legal and political implications aside, what’s astonishing is the lack of shame associated with being a bank executive whose organization has committed so many crimes-or an investment analyst to openly celebrate those crimes as an opportunity to make money at society’s expense.Įven as the world was still learning of Wall Street’s extensive criminality, Dimon was the subject of a fawning profile in the New York Times Sunday magazine, which detailed at length Dimon’s hurt feelings and irritation toward those audacious enough to criticize him.ĭimon, who at the time was being lionized by presidents and politicians alike, complained that he felt “bullied” because President Obama-whose administration had studiously avoided any criminal investigation of Dimon’s bank–had described bankers as “fat cats.”Īndrew Ross Sorkin did the same thing for the same newspaper three years later, dismissing as “bloodlust” calls for Dimon’s resignation in the wake of yet more billion-dollar fraud revelations about his bank. That’s why “being a financial entity called a utility is very positive.” But to date there have been no indictments of senior Wall Street executives, because senior government officials have made it clear they don’t want to endanger the banks by enforcing the law. But unlike traditional public utilities, they’re entrusted to profit-driven executives with a long history of documented criminality. What he’s saying is that banks are essential to the functioning of society, like a public utility. but being a financial (entity) called a utility is very positive." being called a utility would kill the stock price. An investment analyst is quoted as follows: "If you were a high-tech stock. “More investigations, please.” That’s how the short report begins, before going on to describe how the stock has risen despite the record fraud settlements against the bank and multiple ongoing civil and criminal investigations. The bank’s epidemic of internal fraud has led to tens of billions in fines during the tenure of CEO Jamie Dimon. This week a self-styled financial advisor on the investment website Seeking Alpha celebrated the investment opportunities created by the wave of criminality and fraud which has overtaken JP Morgan Chase. There’s still no public shame in profiting off Wall Street fraud. ![]() Here are six signs that our culture is sick with greed.ġ. Yet we're more infatuated with the fruits of unproductive greed today, it seems, then we were back then. Or an affordable education, so our children can live a better life economically than we did. Today we’re a nation being preached to by “bipartisan” corporate politicians who lecture us on the impossibility of even the selfishness of expecting a livable Social Security income in our old age. The fantasy of wealth seemed somehow different in that context. ![]() We were expanding in every way, so rapidly that only the depths of space seemed able to contain the people we were about to become. Education was affordable, families could live comfortably on a single adult income, and the country seem to be on an endless upward trajectory of prosperity. For many (though definitely not all) Americans it was a time of opportunity. The United States of the 1960s was a nation filled with optimism. And what did we know about the angst of the rich in Utica, NY, in a family of five living on a community college professor’s income? The ascot was borrowed from my TV hero, a millionaire playboy turned a police detective, on a show called Burke’s Law. Like any good consumer in the making, I had internalized these images of wealth and had come to equate them with happiness. In defense of my childhood self, the Beatles were famous for their Rolls-Royces at the time and the Beatles seemed happy. I was asked to draw a picture of myself as a happy adult, and the resulting portrait showed a rich man standing beside a Rolls-Royce with an ascot around his neck. When I was in elementary school I was sent to a school counselor for being moody, introspective – in other words, for being either a proto-goth or a writer in the making. This adoration of wealth isn’t a new thing, of course. We see it all around us: in the celebration of ill-gotten stock gains, public admiration for the heads of criminal banks, the words of Kanye West, in the commercialization of charity and even spirituality. The love of money for money’s sake is the social disease of our time. This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |