GLOBAL POWER PROJECT, PART 4: BANKING ON INFLUENCE WITH JPMORGAN CHASE

By: Andrew Gavin Marshall

The following was originally posted at Occupy.com

In May, JPMorgan Chase was listed as the largest bank in the world with assets at roughly $4 trillion — some $1.53 trillion of it in derivatives. This was reported a month after the announcement that the bank had posted a record first-quarter profit of $6.5 billion.

Jamie Dimon, the bank’s CEO and Chairman, has faced a host of scandals in relation to his management of the megabank, including the loss of roughly $6 billion through the London branch of the bank — losses that Dimon was accused of hiding. A 300-page report by the U.S. Senate, investigating the “creative accounting” of JPMorgan, noted that the bank “hid losses, did not share information with its regulators, and misled the public” in what one banking regulator referred to as “make believe voodoo magic.” Stated bluntly in The New York Times, JPMorgan Chase, the largest derivatives dealer in the world, “is too big to regulate.”

In the midst of the scandal, the bank faced a potential “revolt” of its shareholders in a bid to strip Dimon of his dual role as CEO and Chairman. In confidential government reports which were leaked to The New York Times, the bank was accused of “manipulative schemes” which transformed “money-losing power plants into powerful profit centers” while executives made “false and misleading statements” under oath.

Yet even in the midst of scandal, Jamie Dimon was praised in a storm of support by billionaires, corporate kingpins and media barons. Calling JPMorgan Chase “as good a bank as there is,” New York City mayor and billionaire media baron Michael Bloomberg went on to call Dimon “a very smart, honest, great executive.” News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch praised Dimon as “one of the smartest, toughest guys around,” while Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, referred to him as a “great leader” and said he had earned the “right to hold both Chairman and CEO titles.” To top it off, billionaire investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet, dubbed Dimon “a fabulous banker.”

McDonald's Sued by Employee Over Debit Card Wage Fees

Amanda Warren

When I first heard about the woman suing McDonald's over receiving wages through a debit card, I wondered, oh is this another let's see what else we can sue bloated ol' McD's forstory? I mean, what's the big deal over receiving wages though a card if you can withdraw and you use cards anyway, right?? Wrong!

By suing via a class-action law suit filed last Thursday, 27-year-old single mother, Natalie Gunshannon, has brought to light an absurdly corrupt practice that had better crawl back under the rock it came out from under.

The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families

(Part one of a four-part series)

Dees Illustration

Dean Henderson
Global Research

The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP Amoco and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with Deutsche Bank, BNP, Barclays and other European old money behemoths. But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch. 

According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.[1]

So who then are the stockholders in these money center banks? 

This information is guarded much more closely. My queries to bank regulatory agencies regarding stock ownership in the top 25 US bank holding companies were given Freedom of Information Act status, before being denied on “national security” grounds. This is rather ironic, since many of the bank’s stockholders reside in Europe.

Silver Skyrocketing, JP Morgan Getting Crushed: Max Keiser Interview

YouTube -- goldtothemoon

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Max Keiser and the Silver Liberation Army (Video)

Avalon and Shepard Ambellas
The Intel Hub

In a follow-up to a number of articles The Intel Hub has posted on Silver, we are pleased to announce that Max Keiser has initiated a new campaign to Crash JP Morgan.

Max has just announced the formation of the Silver Liberation Army to combat what Max defines as the “Financial Terrorism” that JP Morgan has inflicted on us.

Want JP Morgan to crash? Buy silver

The campaign to buy silver and force JP Morgan into bankruptcy could work, because of the liabilities accrued by its short-selling

Image: Woodpile Report

Max Keiser
Guardian

For decades, the world's banking system has been on a fiat currency standard that has led to banks that are "too big to fail". They have overreached their remit of providing loans and have leeched into the political system, using our money to change the political agenda in ways that boost bank management's compensation over the interests of their depositors.

Over the past 11 years, the Gata (Gold Anti-Trust Action) committee has worked to reveal the silver/gold price suppression scheme; thanks to whistleblower Andrew Maguire in London, an investigation has been opened. As part of the ongoing exposé, it has now become clear that JP Morgan is sitting on what is estimated to be 3.3bn ounce "short" position in silver (which they have sold short, meaning they don't own it to begin with) in an attempt to keep the price artificially low in order to keep the relative appeal of the dollar and other fiat currencies high. The potential liability for JP Morgan has been an open secret for a few years.


On my show, Keiser Report, I recently invitedMichael Krieger, a regular contributor of Zero Hedge (the WikiLeaks of finance). We posited that if 5% of the world's population each bought a one-ounce coin of silver, JP Morgan would be forced to cover their shorts – an estimated $1.5tn liability – against their market capital of $150bn, and the company would therefore go bankrupt. A few days later, I suggested on the Alex Jones show that he launch a "Google bomb" with the key phrase "crash jp morgan buy silver".

Within a couple of hours, it went viral and hundreds of videos have been made to support the campaign.

Right now, silver eagle sales for the month of November hit an all-time record high and theavailability of silver on a wholesale level is drying up. The most important indicator is the price itself – holding just under a 30-year high. With each uptick JP Morgan gets closer to going bust or requiring a bailout.

Here's how the campaign works: wealth tied to a fiat currency is easily overwhelmed by wealth tied to silver and gold. And the world is waking up to the fact that they have the ability, without government assistance or other interference, to create a new precious metals-based backed currency system by simply converting their fiat paper into real money.

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Georgetown Professor Tells Congress: “Citigroup, Bank Of America, JPMorgan & Wells Fargo Are All INSOLVENT”

YouTube -- kdenninger



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Dollar to Become World’s ‘Weakest Currency,’ JPMorgan Predicts

Shigeki Nozawa
Bloomberg

The dollar may fall below 75 yen next year as it becomes the world’s “weakest currency” due to the Federal Reserve’s monetary-easing program, according to JPMorgan & Chase Co.

The U.S. central bank, along with those in Japan and Europe, will keep interest rates at record lows in 2011 as they seek to boost economic growth, said Tohru Sasaki, head of Japanese rates and foreign-exchange research at the second-largest U.S. bank by assets. U.S. policy makers may take additional easing steps following the $600 billion bond-purchase program announced this month depending on inflation and the labor market, he said.

“The U.S. has the world’s largest current-account deficit but keeps interest rates at virtually zero,” Sasaki said at a forum in Tokyo yesterday. “The dollar can’t avoid the status as the weakest currency.”

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RELATED ARTICLE:
Eurozone Debt Crisis 2.0: Dollar Sucks Less than Euro, Again

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Max Keiser: Kill JP Morgan With a Silver Bullet

YouTube --PlanetEarthAwakens01


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Oil could hit $100 a barrel soon, JP Morgan predicts

China's economy was quick to recover from the global downturn and has been growing at a spectactular pace, resulting in rampant demand for oil

Julia Kollewe
Guardian

Chinese demand could push crude to $100 a barrel soon, according to JP Morgan, with the weaker dollar and restocking of French oil inventories once strikes end also helping to drive up oil prices.

China's economy was quick to recover from the global downturn and has beengrowing at a spectactular pace, resulting in rampant demand for oil. Growth has slowed slightly to an annual rate of 9.6% in the third quarter from 10.3% in the second.

JP Morgan raised its forecast for US crude futures to an average of $81 a barrel in the fourth quarter, from $75 a barrel.

"The key risk is that we are being too cautious and that the threat of $100 per barrel oil that is implicit in our fourth quarter 2011 oil forecast arrives much sooner than we expect – driven by not only a weak dollar, but also by rampant Chinese and emerging market demand and the rebuilding of French strategic stocks," said Lawrence Eagles of JP Morgan.

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7 Mega-Cartels That Kill the Free Market and Our Sovereignty
Banksters Inflate Speculative Food Bubble, UN Offers Global Governance Solution

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Shock Therapy for Wall Street: Banking Giants Suspend Foreclosures

Ellen H. Brown
Web of Debt

“Maybe this is like shock therapy.  Maybe this will actually get the lenders to the table and encourage them to work out deals that are to the benefit of everybody.” –Economist Karl E. Case, quoted in the New York Times  

The hits are coming fast and furiously.  Major Wall Street mortgage lenders could soon be falling like dominos – and looking again for handouts.

On September 20th, Ally Financial Inc., which owns GMAC Mortgage, the nation’s 4th largest lender, halted evictions and resale of repossessed homes in 23 states.  This was after a document processor for the company admitted that he had signed off on 10,000 pieces of foreclosure paperwork a month without reading them.  The 23 states were all those where foreclosures must be approved by a court, including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida and Illinois.


On September 24, Representatives Alan Grayson (D-FL), Barney Frank (D- MA) and Corrine Brown (D-FL) directed a letter to Fannie Mae questioning its use of “foreclosure mills,” which were described as “law firms representing lenders that specialize in speeding up the foreclose process, often without regard to process, substance or legal propriety.”  The letter followed a report by the Florida attorney general’s office in August that it was investigating three law firms that had allegedly fabricated documents in thousands of cases to obtain final judgments of foreclosure.

On September 24, California attorney general Jerry Brown asked GMAC to halt foreclosures in his state until the lender could prove it was complying with a law that prohibits lenders from taking steps to foreclose a home before making an effort to work with the borrower.  California is a non-judicial foreclosure state, meaning foreclosures do not require the prior approval of a court.

On September 28, JPMorgan Chase said it was halting 56,000 foreclosures because some of its employees might have improperly prepared the necessary documents. All of the suspensions were in the 23 states where foreclosures require court approval.

On September 29, the Washington Post reported that a top federal bank regulator had directed seven of the nation’s largest lenders to review their foreclosure processes, after learning about widespread mishandling of homeowner evictions.   Besides JPMorgan Chase, they included Bank of America, Citibank, HSBC, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo.  The Washington Post reported:


The paperwork problems range from potentially forged documents to bank employees who never read borrowers’ files before signing off on an eviction. . . .

“While we don’t expect our review to find that consumers were harmed, we will take appropriate action if we find any impact,” JP Morgan spokesman Tom Kelly said.

No harm perhaps except the illegal taking of thousands of homes without due process . . . .
On September 30, Rep. Alan Grayson posted a devastating seven-minute video, in which he gave four real-world examples of such travesties of justice, including a man who was foreclosed on when he didn’t have a mortgage and paid cash for the home; a home that had two foreclosure suits against it because both servicers claimed ownership of the title; and a couple foreclosed on over a contested $75 late fee.  Grayson blamed the massive foreclosure problems largely on the electronic shortcut called MERS.  “The banks simply digitized mortgage titles into a privatized system, called the Mortgage Electronic Registry System (or MERS),” he said. “And it did the transfers by trading Excel spreadsheets among the banks and trusts, rather than endorsing the notes as required by their own contracts, by state real estate law and by IRS rules.”  He stated that 60 million properties are recorded in the name of MERS — 60% of the mortgages in the USA, and 97% of the loans made between 2005 and 2008.

On October 1, Bank of America announced that it was delaying foreclosures in 23 states.

The same day, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal took the radical step of putting a  halt to all foreclosures from all banks in his state.

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