Even for Jamie Dimon! Not that he’ll go to jail, of course. That’s not for Very Serious People.
Government investigators have found that JPMorgan Chase devised “manipulative schemes” that transformed “money-losing power plants into powerful profit centers,” and that one of its most senior executives gave “false and misleading statements” under oath.
The findings appear in a confidential government document, reviewed by The New York Times, that was sent to the bank in March, warning of a potential crackdown by the regulator of the nation’s energy markets.
The possible action comes amid showdowns with other agencies. One of the bank’s chief regulators, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, is weighing new enforcement actions against JPMorgan over the way the bank collected credit card debt and its possible failure to alert authorities to suspicions about Bernard L. Madoff, according to people who were not authorized to discuss the cases publicly.
In a meeting last month at the bank’s Park Avenue headquarters, the comptroller’s office delivered an unusually stark message to Jamie Dimon, the chief executive and chairman: the nation’s biggest bank was quickly losing credibility in Washington. The bank’s top lawyers, including Stephen M. Cutler, the general counsel, have also cautioned executives about the bank’s regulatory problems, employees say.
Imagine. The man who helped crash the world economy still had credibility left in Washington. Scary!
Mr. Dimon acknowledged in a recent letter to shareholders that “unfortunately, we expect we will have more” enforcement actions in “the coming months.” He apologized for letting “our regulators down” and vowed to “do all the work necessary to complete the needed improvements.”
Still, the broad regulatory scrutiny — at least eight federal agencies are investigating the bank — presents a threat to JPMorgan at a time when it is raking in record profits.
For executives, the bank’s transition from model citizen to problem child in the eyes of the government has been jarring. It has helped drive top managers out of the bank, and it could make a coming shareholder vote on whether to split the roles of chairman and chief executive an anxious test for Mr. Dimon, long the country’s most influential banker.
“False and misleading statements under oath”???
Let’s see, what happens to lesser beings who do things like that? Martha Stewart was charged with I don’t know how many bad things from possibly misleading the authorities. And she wasn’t under oath. And went to actual prison.
One of the young men who were just arrested is charged with making a false statement to the FBI, and that was not even under oath. He’s facing –what is it?– up to 10 years in prison?
But Jamie Dimon is a “savvy businessman,” big donor to Obama, huge whiner about government regulation, and got hurt fee-fees when Obama said something a wee bit critical of the Bad Bankster types. He will not go to court or to prison.
“Letting the regulators down” means reduced hiring quotas.