Sunday, October 20, 2013

Who's going to jail?


Rumor is that JPMorgan Chase is going to pay a $13 billion fine to settle mortgage-fraud charges, a record penalty!

But it's really the same old story.

Not one of those rascally banker criminals—the ones who caused the 2008 financial meltdown—is going to jail.

JPMorgan is going to pay up because its employees, and employees of some companies JPM acquired, cheated investors a few years back. You know that story: the bankers lied about bad loans included in the mortgage-backed securities they were peddling.

But why aren't the bad guys going to jail?

I'm talking about the highly paid top execs and directors of JPMorgan, who collectively hold less than 1 per cent of JPM stock, so this penalty isn't going to hurt THEM much.

Sure, $13 billion is a lot of money to fork over, right?

Well, last year JPMorgan's profit—that's profit, not revenue—was $94 billion.

JPM's operating profit margin was 38.4%.

That's a really nice profit margin.

Just for reference, your typical funeral home has an operating margin of 9.8%....

Your typical food store has a margin of about 2.3%....

Folks like the ones in top spots at JPMorgan are eating our lunch….metaphorically, they're killing us….and they're making a pile of cash doing it.







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