Bankers constantly lying, defrauding; most still not in jail
Barclays, JPMorgan and the rest of the megabanks reach new heights in malfeasance, suffer few consequences
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/02/bankers_constantly_lying_defrauding_most_still_not_in_jail/
Has there ever been a better time to be a disastrously inept banker? Well, probably — over the course of human civilization it’s almost always been a pretty good time to be a banker — but today’s finance titans seem uniquely immune to punishment of any sort. Remember how JPMorgan Chase accidentally lost $2 billion in a “hedge”-slash-huge stupid bet placed by a guy in the Chief Investment Office? Funny story, it will actually end up closer to $6 billion http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/29/us-jpmorgan-loss-idUSBRE85R1HZ20120629 , or maybe like $9 billion http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/jpmorgan-trading-loss-may-reach-9-billion/ — who can be sure, math is pretty complicated, it’s all imaginary money anyway — as the bank attempts to extricate itself from the insanely complex losing trade made by the office that is supposed to manage the bank’s risk.
Funnier story: Remember when Mr. Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase and the World’s Sagest Banker, was asked to sit before the Senate Banking Committee and be repeatedly complimented and praised? And remember how he kept mentioning “claw-backs,” the weird bank term for taking bonuses away from people who screw up? Turns out Ina Drew, the former head of the Chief Investment Office — the one who lost somewhere between more money than you’ll ever see in your entire life and more money than God has ever seen in His entire life — will not have any of her money clawed back. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/06/29/what-happened-to-ina-drews-clawback/
Here’s Felix Salmon explaining how the job creators of high finance successfully created one really good job in this particular instance:
Drew wasn’t fired; she was allowed to resign. As a result, she gets to keep, for herself, a whopping great slew of unvested stock and options. Understand: the whole point of vesting is as a retention device. You hand out stock which doesn’t vest for four or five years, as a way of ensuring that the employee in question hangs around for that long: they know that if they leave prior to the vesting date, that element of their compensation is worthless.
Unless, it seems, you work for JPMorgan: Drew had $17.1 million in unvested restricted shares and about $4.4 million in options, and all of them seem to have vested as of May 14, when she resigned. They were meant to incentivize her to work hard; instead, they have turned into a lovely farewell gift from the bank
snip
= new reply since forum marked as read
