Alex Pareene discusses his bizarre appearance with bankster apologists/worshippers on CNBC

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http://www.salon.com/2013/09/30/how_i_botched_it_on_cnbc/?source=newsletter

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It seemed like a pretty simple case: Why should you keep your job if you’ve consistently failed to stop your company from repeatedly violating the law? Even if Dimon wasn’t personally complicit in any of JPMorgan’s myriad violations (and even that is a hard case to make), it’s obvious that he’s unable to competently oversee and manage his sprawling international megabank.

But for CNBC, and for Wall Street, billion dollar fines for violations of the law are just part of the price of doing business, along with litigation costs and “compliance.” (And, indeed, Dimon has been praised for belatedly hiring hundreds of new “compliance” officers, to, you know, make sure the bank stops repeatedly violating the law, over and over.) So my point, that Dimon should be fired because he has failed to prevent his firm from violating the law, was a non sequitur.

Their question was, who would do a better job than Jamie Dimon of running JPMorgan in a way that delivers maximum value to shareholders? Who else could keep JPMorgan’s stock price so high amid all these tawdry scandals and this “witch hunt” from the regulators? I don’t have any good answer to that. Because I don’t think Jamie Dimon’s job, or his bank, should exist at all in their present states. I think the exclusive focus by corporations on shareholder value has been pretty awful for the world economy and its poor and working classes, and I think the idea that profitability is its own justification is not a viewpoint shared by anyone outside the bubble of the 0.1 percent, but I have absolutely no fucking clue who should run JPMorgan Chase and Co. Let Maria Bartiromo run it, how is it going to get any worse?

So I actually did not do a great job, in my 10-minute professional argument, of making my case. I wasn’t completely prepared and I’m not actually an expert, I’m just a guy who reads what smart people write about Wall Street and finance. One of those smart people is Felix Salmon, of Reuters, who used my chaotic and ridiculous CNBC appearance to make a stronger case, supported by data. Salmon answers their question on their terms. Go read him.

The silliest part of the entire experience, especially for someone as uncomfortable with conflict as I am, was sitting there, a foot away from Other Guy, after the segment, as he and Bartiromo spent another two minutes “bantering” before finally cutting to commercial. Bartiromo then almost scolded me as I finally got un-mic’d and prepared to leave. (Other Guy did not say one single word to me, or acknowledge my presence in any way, when the cameras weren’t on.) She said something to the effect of how she knew my arguments would play with an unsophisticated audience, but not the wise men and women of CNBC. “We’re going to get a lot of hate mail,” she said. “That’s why you invited me on, isn’t it?” I said. And then I got the hell out of there.

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