Look at them shed crocodile tears for the culprit who
received a slap on the wrist, and look at them blame his doings on everyone
else but him. And so now you want to know: Who the culprit is? And the answer
is that he is a financial institution; one of those that is supposed to
function as a utility channeling money from the central bank to the real
economy but ended up doing something else. What it did is pocket most of the
money – as do most of the financial institutions nowadays – instead of
channeling it to the real economy where real goods and real services are
produced.
We're talking about J.P. Morgan Chase, the leviathan bank
that tentatively settled a case with the Justice Department whereby Chase will
dish out 13 billion dollars to compensate the various victims that suffered as
a result of its activities. And this is the reason why the editors of the Wall
Street Journal are shedding tears in an editorial they published on October 21,
2013 under the title: “The Morgan Shakedown” and the subtitle: “A landmark that
shows how much politicians now control U.S. Finance.”
But don't let the title fool you – it is that the editors of
the Journal did not mean to convey the truth about Morgan Chase shaking down
its customers as well as the public; they mean to convey the impression that
the Justice Department (and the politicians too) shook down what they want you
to believe is poor and innocent J.P. Morgan whose annual earnings amount to
only twice the amount leveled against it.
And why are the law enforcers doing this? The editors say
that it is “for no other reason than because they can and because they want to
appease their allies.” And this says to you, me and all their readers that the
editors have allied themselves with the culprit, but the reason here and their
motives remain obscure.
Having done this, they appoint themselves pro bono lawyers
for the poor defendant, and take a couple of paragraphs to re-litigate before
public opinion the case that took five years of give-and-take between the
parties to come to the conclusion that they did. And this is where the editors
attribute the blame to everyone else except their client.
Now guess who is on the list of those they blame? Here is
who they blame: “Even if you believe those charges, the victims would be the
institutional buyers of those securities … who aren't mom and pop.” Did you get
this, my friend? The editors of the Wall Street Journal are telling would-be
bank robbers that next time a cop comes around to arrest them, they should tell
it: Hey, this bank is an institution; it's no mom and pop, so take a hike
buddy.”
And now, in a role reversal of the most comical kind, the
editors of the Journal use the argument that their political opponents used to
employ in the past. In their closing argument, they spin and rehash the old
notion that the culprit was not responsible for his actions, but that someone
else was. Someone like perhaps all of society, or if not, then Barney Frank,
those in the Congress and the governors of the Federal Reserve. Neat huh!
Gone is the notion that the culprit is responsible for his
own actions, and that he should be punished severely because justice must be
seen to have been done so that a strooong signal is sent out there to all those
who might be tempted to emulate his actions.