How JPMorgan Chase Is Cashing in on Private Prisons

JPMorgan Chase, like so many corporations, is trying to have its cake and eat it under the Trump administration. In the last few weeks, it has invested time, public relations' efforts and money in presenting itself as a defender of human rights. But the $2 million Chase pledged to fight racism is a drop in the ocean compared to the potential yield from its massive investment in the private prison system: one of the starkest manifestations of racial injustice in the U.S. today, profiting primarily from the detention of immigrants seeking a new life in the U.S. The DACA cancellation last week will only further boost the huge profit to be made from keeping yet more people under lock and key.

How a US president and JP Morgan made Panama: and turned it into a tax haven

This goes back a long way. The Panamanian state was originally created to function on behalf of the rich and self-seeking of this world – or rather their antecedents in America – when the 20th century was barely born.

Panama was created by the United States for purely selfish commercial reasons, right on that historical hinge between the imminent demise of Britain as the great global empire, and the rise of the new American imperium.

JPMorgan Raises Jamie Dimon's Pay 35 Percent, But With Strings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co <JPM.N> directors raised Chief Executive Jamie Dimon's total compensation by 35 percent to $27 million for 2015, a regulatory filing on Thursday showed.

But the board cut the cash portion and tied three-fourths of the total to more performance-sensitive stock awards, the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said.

Is JPMorgan Chase Profiting Off of Forced Evictions in China?

In recent years, forced evictions have become a flashpoint for demonstrations across China. International watchdogs have called the practice a human rights emergency on a massive scale. Often carried out in coordination with cash-strapped local governments, these evictions have "resulted in deaths, beatings, harassment and imprisonment of residents who have been forced from their homes across the country in both rural and urban areas," according to a 2012 Amnesty International report. "With no access to justice some have turned to violence or even self-immolation as a last resort."

President Obama and Congress Just Gave Your Savings Account to JPMorgan

With the passage of the 2015 federal budget bill, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon got lawmakers to repeal a key part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law and allow banks to use the savings accounts of ordinary Americans to gamble in the stock market on behalf of hedge funds, corporations and the rich.

A former senior Treasury official in the Obama administration told The Washington Post that the law restores the ability of banks to use the same practices that helped bring down the global economy in 2008. “This was the epicenter of the crisis,” the official said. “This is what brought AIG down, what brought Lehman Brothers down.”

Secret Tapes Suggest Regulators At JPMorgan Were Blocked From Doing Their Jobs

As the Federal Reserve Bank of New York moved to beef up its oversight of Wall Street two years ago, the team charged with supervising the nation's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, was in turmoil.

New York Fed examiners embedded at JPMorgan complained about being blocked from doing their jobs. In frustration, some requested transfers. Top New York Fed managers knew about the problems, according to interviews and secret recordings of internal meetings obtained by ProPublica. Similar frustrations had surfaced among examiners at other banks as well.

The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare

She tried to stay quiet, she really did. But after eight years of keeping a heavy secret, the day came when Alayne Fleischmann couldn't take it anymore.

"It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'"

Fleischmann is a tall, thin, quick-witted securities lawyer in her late thirties, with long blond hair, pale-blue eyes and an infectious sense of humor that has survived some very tough times. She's had to struggle to find work despite some striking skills and qualifications, a common symptom of a not-so-common condition called being a whistle-blower.

JPMorgan Under Criminal Investigation Over Foreign Exchange Business

NEW YORK (AP) — The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into JPMorgan Chase's foreign exchange business.

The announcement by the nation's largest bank follows a similar disclosure Thursday by Citigroup. Banks in the U.S. and abroad are facing allegations that they manipulated foreign-exchange rates. Besides the Justice Department, JPMorgan says civil enforcement authorities and foreign regulators are also investigating its foreign exchange business.

The New York bank said late Monday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it had boosted the amount of money set aside for legal expenses. It now has $5.9 billion in reserve, up from the $4.6 billion it reported in August.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has paid billions in penalties since the financial crises related to mortgages and huge investor losses.

Shares edged lower before the opening bell Tuesday.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com/
Author: AP

The Rumored Chase-Madoff Settlement Is Another Bad Joke

Just under two months ago, when the $13 billion settlement for JP Morgan Chase was coming down the chute, word leaked out that that the deal was no sure thing. Among other things, it was said that prosecutors investigating Chase's role in the Bernie Madoff caper – Chase was Madoff's banker – were insisting on a guilty plea to actual criminal charges, but that this was a deal-breaker for Chase.

Something had to give, and now, apparently, it has. Last week, it was reported that the state and Chase were preparing a separate $2 billion deal over the Madoff issues, a series of settlements that would also involve a deferred prosecution agreement.

JPMorgan Emails Show China Hires Were Made To Win Deals: NYTimes

Dec 7 (Reuters) - Internal JPMorgan Chase & Co emails and computer files being examined by U.S. authorities show that the bank favored hiring people from prominent Chinese families in order to win investment banking business, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The documents show that a JPMorgan program designed to prevent questionable hiring practices was ultimately viewed inside the company as "a gateway to doing business with state-owned companies in China," the Times said, adding that it had reviewed copies of the emails and computer spreadsheets.

JPMorgan's Soaring Stock Price To Completely Erase $13 Billion Fine

A record bank penalty is being erased in record time.

JPMorgan Chase shareholders are well on their way to recouping all of the $13 billion fine the bank agreed to pay just a week ago to settle charges of selling bad mortgage bonds ahead of the financial crisis, Wall Street Journal Money & Investing Editor Francesco Guerrera noted on Tuesday (subscription only).

'Historic' JPMorgan Settlement Won't Help Most Of The Neediest Cases

The biggest legal settlement in history between the United States government and a single entity will directly benefit, at best, a tiny fraction of the millions who say they were harmed by the company's actions.

On Tuesday, federal and state authorities announced that JPMorgan Chase had agreed to a $13 billion deal to resolve charges it misled investors about increasingly rotten mortgage loans in the run-up to the financial crisis. Employees at JPMorgan, along with two banks it acquired -- Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns -- were accused of committing fraud in the packaging, marketing and sale of bonds stuffed with those failing mortgages.

Nobody Should Shed a Tear for JP Morgan Chase

A lot of people all over the world are having opinions now about the ostensibly gigantic $13 billion settlement Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan Chase have entered into with the government.

The general consensus from most observers in the finance sector is that this superficially high-dollar settlement – worth about half a year's profits for Chase – is an unconscionable Marxist appropriation. It's been called a "robbery" and a "shakedown," in which red Obama and his evil henchman Eric Holder confiscated cash from a successful bank, as The Wall Street Journal wrote, "for no other reason than because they can and because they want to appease their left-wing populist allies."

While Defenders Cry Foul, JPMorgan Chase’s $13 Billion Banking Settlement a "Screaming Bargain"

In the largest banking settlement in U.S. history, the banking giant JPMorgan Chase is set to pay a record $13 billion fine to settle investigations into its mortgage-backed securities. Five years ago, the bank’s risky behavior helped trigger the financial meltdown, including manipulating mortgages and sending millions of Americans into bankruptcy or foreclosure. JPMorgan’s preliminary settlement with the U.S. government may end up costing much less after taxes — closer to $9 billion because the majority of the deal is expected to be tax deductible. The deal is expected to be followed by a larger agreement with the Justice Department still in the works. Many in the media have portrayed the deal as unfair to the bank. The Wall Street Journal describes it as the government "confiscating" half of JPMorgan’s annual earnings to "appease … left-wing populist allies" of the Obama administration. Meanwhile, the New York Post portrayed it as a kind of bank robbery, running a headline that read: "UNCLE SCAM: U.S. robs bank of $13 billion." We are joined by Yves Smith, financial analyst and founder of the popular finance blog "Naked Capitalism." Smith is the author of the book, "ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism."

Video
Source: democracynow.org
Author: --

Expert: JPMorgan's $13 Billion Fine Should Have Been 22 Times Bigger

JPMorgan Chase is probably going to have to pay a record $13 billion fine because it created and sold dicey financial products that helped cause the financial crisis that sparked an economic crash in 2008. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has groused that this an unfairly large sum. But some experts beg to differ, noting that if the world were fair, Dimon's bank would have to pay a lot more.

On Saturday, JPMorgan reached a tentative deal with the Department of Justice, which has investigated the megabank for having packaged poor quality mortgages into securities that it sold to investors. (Some of the securities were peddled by Washington Mutual and the investment bank Bear Stearns, two failing firms that JPMorgan absorbed in 2008.) The $13 billion penalty, which is not yet final, would cover about $9 billion in fines paid to the federal government and $4 billion in relief for struggling homeowners. It would be the largest penalty that a single company has ever paid in settling a case with the Justice Department.

JPMorgan Settlement Complicated By Washington Mutual: Sources

NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co's possible $11 billion settlement of government mortgage probes has been complicated by a dispute with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp over responsibility for losses at the former Washington Mutual Inc, said people familiar with the matter.

The dispute, between the largest U.S. bank and the FDIC, could leave the federal agency on the hook for billions the bank is expected to pay as part of the settlement and substantially reduce the amount of the penalty JPMorgan actually pays to the government, some analysts said.

Will Anyone Hold Jamie Dimon Responsible for the London Whale Scandal?

In a post earlier this year, I asked whether the “London Whale,” Bruno Iksil, a London-based derivatives trader for JPMorgan Chase, who racked up billions of dollars in losses early last year, would end up swallowing Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of the bank, which is America’s largest. Now we have our answer: no. Far from being devoured by the trading scandal, which has spawned a congressional investigation and seen two of Iksil’s former colleagues in London indicted on criminal charges of trying to disguise his losses, Dimon has emerged largely unscathed. Unlike Captain Ahab, he’s swimming away from the deadly cetacean with barely a bite mark.

JPMorgan Exposed Social Security Numbers On Mailing About Bank's Privacy Efforts, Lawsuit Claims

NEW YORK, Sept 20 (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit accusing it of printing Social Security numbers on the outsides of form letters mailed to customers to tell them about the bank's efforts to protect their private information.

Filed on Thursday in federal court in Chicago, the lawsuit accused the largest bank in the United States of violating federal and state laws and subjecting its customers to increased risk of identity theft.

A JPMorgan spokeswoman declined comment.

Why the JPMorgan Settlement Falls Short

We can now start putting a dollar value on JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s responsibility in the “London Whale” trades of 2012, which lost more than six billion dollars: the bank will pay an eight-hundred-million-dollar fine, according to a settlement expected this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission and other government regulators, to settle charges in connection with the improper trades.

Because JPMorgan is expected to admit that its own lax controls made it possible for traders to build up risky positions and cover up their losses without detection, the S.E.C. is likely to tout the settlement as part of a new get-tough approach to Wall Street. An admission of wrongdoing would certainly be a step in the right direction, departing from the longstanding practice of banks settling with the S.E.C. without admitting or denying liability, and staining JPMorgan’s reputation as a bank that excels at managing risk. The bank would surely suffer from such an outcome—not only monetarily but in the form of strained relations with regulators and clients.

Feds Launch Criminal Investigation Into JPMorgan Employees

NEW YORK, Sept 4 (Reuters) - U.S. authorities are conducting a criminal investigation into whether several employees of JPMorgan Chase & Co tried to impede a regulatory investigation into alleged manipulation of power markets, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The probe, which is in its early stages, is being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecutors in Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's office. It comes after a JPMorgan subsidiary agreed on July 30 to pay a $410 million penalty to settle a manipulation case brought by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.