JP Morgan Chase: The True Story Of America's Most Corrupt Bank
Laurence Kotlikoff
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Between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, we’ve heard a lot about the corruption on Wall Street. But, if you want to understand exactly what happened and why, read JPMadoff: The Unholy Alliance Between America’s Biggest Bank and America’s Biggest Crook.
Written by trial lawyers, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer, this heavily-researched, meticulously documented book lays out for the world to see the absolute corruption of JPMorgan Chase – America’s biggest bank. And the authors explain how Obama has furthered Wall Street crime by refusing to enforce America’s criminal laws against America’s biggest criminals – not Madoff, but JPMorgan Chase. The book is available on the authors’ website, jpmadoff.com.
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JPMadoff explains how Madoff could never have perpetrated his massive fraud without the knowing assistance of a major financial institution – which profited heavily from its complicity because Madoff, who never bought securities for his investment advisory customers, left billions of dollars on deposit at JPMorgan Chase which, of course, Jamie Dimon used to fund his speculative trading operation in London where the London Whale trolled.
This is a book not just about individuals, but about the corrupt, symbiotic relationship between big financial institutions and politicians—the Washington/ Wall Street axis that breeds a system where a seventeen-year-old kid who robs a 7-Eleven of three hundred dollars goes to jail in a police van, but a thirty-four-year-old Wall Street banker who steals $1 billion from customers goes home to Greenwich in his limousine. And gets an eight figure bonus to boot.
As Senator Warren has recently noted, it is a national shame that, eight years after the financial meltdown, not a single banker has gone to prison. But this is not an accident. As Chaitman and Gotthoffer explain in JPMadoff, the Wall Street firms have purchased control of law enforcement and Congress. As a result, neither the Department of Justice, nor the SEC, was willing to shut Madoff down and neither the Department of Justice nor the SEC has brought one prosecution or enforcement action against a single Wall Street banker for the massive frauds that devastated the American middle and lower classes in 2008.
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For readers who want to see the back-up for an author’s statements, this book is for you. Chaitman and Gotthoffer are two of the nation’s premier lawyers and their work is heavily researched and documented – with 1,126 footnotes of source material. But it is also a delightful read: full of humor and irony. For example, in one chapter, they compare JPMorgan Chase to the Gambino crime family and point out both the similarities and the differences – concluding that both organizations were structured to profit from violations of law. The biggest distinction is the dress code.
In another chapter, they spoof Jamie Dimon’s interview by Maria Bartiromo – and point out the blatantly false impression Jamie Dimon gives of JPMorgan Chase. Yet another chapter lays out the evidence which convinced the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations that Jamie Dimon made knowingly false statements to the public about the London Whale losses. With absolute impunity, of course.
The book describes the role Stephen Cutler, JPMorgan Chase’s general counsel, has played as consigliere to Jamie Dimon. It describes some of JPMorgan Chase’s Directors, in order to explain the Board’s tolerance for criminal conduct.
The book describes many of the crimes for which JPMorgan Chase has paid over $36 billion in fines and settlements over the last five years. And the authors propose regulatory and statutory solutions to rectify the criminality of Wall Street firms, which Washington has tolerated at the cost of billions of dollars to the American public.
And it urges readers to act on Robert Kennedy’s warning: Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.
As Chaitman urges in her introduction, if you want to live in a society which protects honest citizens against Wall Street criminals, stand up and raise your voice.
Laurence Kotlikoff is the co-author of NY Times Best Seller, Get What's Yours - the Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security.
