CEO of JP Morgan “tired” of Villification

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan says –

“We do not have change-of-control agreements, special executive retirement plans, golden parachutes, special severance packages or merger bonuses,” he told a JP Morgan healthcare conference, adding that many of company’s employees are in client-facing jobs and work hard with small and mid-size businesses. “I am a little tired of the constant vilification of these people,” he said.

I am going to do my best to make this gentleman even more tired.

When I was a young man a very long time ago, there was all this talk of people refusing responsiblity. Usually there would be a seedy hippie sitting on the witness stand in a court room full of dignified justified middle class citizens. He would have done some readily apparent crime and would claim that it was society’s fault that he had committed this act to the derision of all concerned. I never really saw much of this actually taking place, old as I am.

But here I am in 2010 looking at the “villification” of these financial workers. These huge financial institutions through a form of complex transactions that essentially mimic gambling at a casino did damage to this country that will take decades to repair. My favorite part of his defense is that his obvious claim that most of his workers are innocent and shouldn’t be villified. We of the general public have a difficult time perceiving on a case by case basis who destroyed much of the American economy and therefore wind up distrustful of the entire industry. He is surprised by this.

The villification has just begun. You see I do not believe this economic crisis is over and I definitely do not believe the damage done by these institutions is going to stop or abate.

James Pilant