After posting a $17.4 billion profit for 2010, JPMorgan Chase & Co. awarded Chief Executive Jamie Dimon restricted stock and options that could be worth $17 million.
The award is a large part of overall compensation for Dimon, who runs the second-largest U.S. bank by assets. It includes a grant of about $12 million worth of restricted stock, plus options worth about $5 million based on a commonly used valuation method.
I could comment on this but I found a far more eloquent body of thought on this subject than anything I could say by myself.
When I started writing this, there were 272 comments. By the time I had finished there were 292.
There are some vigorous thoughts expressed in that section. I don’t recommend you stay too long. We probably should avoid that level of strong emotion for more than limited periods of time. Many of us have high blood pressure or are simply in need of exercise.
I also recommend that you read some of the comments, save the link and go back tomorrow. I bet there will be more than a thousand by then.
The Chamber of Commerce and I do not agree on many issues ranging from outsourcing to taxes to mortgage foreclosures to financial regulations. That would probably make me in the Chamber’s judgment an “activist.” At this time, I am a very small player but that might change. But I am hardly worth a cyber attack at this time. However, I am concerned about this because against this kind of firepower, I’m a duck in a shooting gallery.
What’s more, I have complete and total confidence that federal, state and local law enforcement will have no interest in protecting my rights, my web site or my right to free speech. Those things are so “passe.”
HBGary, the parent company of HBGary Federal, specializes in analyzing “malware,” computer viruses that are used to maliciously steal data from computers or networks. In other presentations, Barr makes clear that his expertise in “Information Operations” covers forms of hacking like a “computer network attack,” “custom malware development,” and “persistent software implants.” The presentation shows Barr boasting that he had knowledge of using “zero day” attacks to exploit vulnerabilities in Flash, Java, Windows 2000 and other programs to steal data from a target’s computer.
Indeed, malware hacking appears to be a key service sold by HBGary Federal. Describing a “spear phishing” strategy (an illegal form of hacking), Barr advised his colleague Greg Hoglund that “We should have a capability to do this to our adversaries.” In another e-mail chain, HBGary Federal executives discuss using a fake “patriotic video of our soldiers overseas” to induce military officials to open malicious data extraction viruses. In September, HBGary Federal executives again contemplate their success of a dummy “evite” e-mail used to maliciously hack target computers.
Some of the initial e-mails discussing the Chamber deal with Team Themis stress the fact that HBGary Federal would provide “expertise on ‘digital intellgence collection’ and social media exploitation.’”
Barr also sent another document to the Chamber’s attorney describing in greater detail Team Themis’ hacking abilities (download a copy here). In one section, Team Themis claims that “if/when Hunton & Williams LLP needs or desire,” they can use “direct engagement” to “provide valuable information that cannot be acquired through other means.” This cryptic pledge appears to be in reference to same malware data intrusion techniques proposed in the other Team Themis documents.
(Generally, I pull links out of any quoted material but these are so useful, I decided to leave them in.)
I suppose I must be naive but I had never heard the term, “value engineered.”
I want you to read this blog entry by professionals who know the importance of safety. This is business ethics on the front line of service and selling. I am very much impressed.
James Pilant
Over the past 10 years we have heard a lot of comments made in the shop or on the telephone with clients (or want-t0-be customers) about rigging products and projects. Sometimes the customer talks to us about getting the job done s … Read More
A 51-year-old Los Angeles County worker died at her desk last Friday, and was not found there until the next afternoon, when a Saturday security guard was making the weekend rounds.
Rebecca Wells, who was employed by the L.A. County Department of Internal Services in the risk management division, was last seen alive by co-workers on Friday at about 9AM. “She was always working,” commented one co-worker. The exact time of her death has not been determined.
I am a little disturbed by this, although the facts seem routine enough.
The idea of leaving this life while surrounded by people who didn’t know sounds more like an episode in a novel.
I would prefer these kinds of things to remain fictional.
For most, my title might suggest that I accuse corporations of killing with vaccines. I mean nothing of the sort.
I am angry. I am angry that this tragedy ever happened. No child needed to die because of vaccine fear.
What I mean by corporate killing is corporate lies. Lies so pervasive, so expected, so routine, that when educated parents were given a choice between people who were little more than cranks and corporate information, they went with the cranks.
Did the parents have a choice of not believing the pharmaceutical companies but then going with the government’s analysis? No. Why not? Because the governmental agencies that are supposed to be protecting us are just as PR soaked and lacking in credibility as the corporations that have usually captured them.
That is pitiful.
As individuals and as a society, the facts we need to make good decisions are tainted. They are tainted by a corporate and governmental philosophy of damage control and psychological manipulation over any concern with the truth.
How do you make good decisions in a world of deception? A world in which these lies are so pervasive that you begin to wonder if the government and corporations sometimes lie out of force of habit.
Lies kill. The truth makes for good decision. Lies make for bad decisions and bad decisions can kill directly or as they accumulate over time.
It’s the corporate culture of deception that kills. And in this case it was effective.
James Pilant
From the Slate article – How Sane Parents Got Paranoid About Vaccines by Anna B. Reisman –
In his engaging, provocative, and angry new book, The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science and Fear, Seth Mnookin traces the history of the myth that vaccines cause developmental disorders like autism. In the process, he profiles a number of mothers with autistic children who followed their gut instinct away from conventional medicine and ended up on the front lines of vaccine paranoia.
From later in the article –
Here is what baffles Mnookin most: How so many caring, well-educated, affluent parents came to buy leaky theories that vaccines cause autism. How 48 states allow parents to exempt their kids from vaccines for religious reasons, and how in 18 states all you need is a philosophical reason. How, in 2010, the journal Pediatrics reported that a staggering 25 percent of parents believed that vaccines can cause developmental disorders in healthy children. How, even after a 2002 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found no link between MMR and autism, the anti-vaccine camp grew stronger.
Here is a video of the author, Seth Mnookin, reading from his book.
Bernie Madoff deserves zero sympathy and less attention. On the other hand, those seriously impacted by his crimes deserve not only sympathy but also recompense. Irving Picard, the trustee pursuing that recompense on behalf of Madoff investors, is making some high profile claims and has generated substantial results. That said, selected Madoff investors have informed me that they give Picard very mixed reviews.
Doyle goes on to discuss Madoff’s recent comments that others had to know about what he was doing. Doyle believes like me that it is not possible to move that kind of money around without someone realizing that something was wrong.
The article continues –
I have no doubt that the Wall Street banks and a variety of hedge funds knew, should have known, or did not want to know what was truly transpiring within Madoff’s operation.
But, let’s go deeper than that. Who is charged with keeping these banks honest? What about the regulators? Not that Bernie has any real credibility, but why isn’t he compelled to provide further testimony about those who regulated his enterprise, specifically the NASD, its offspring FINRA, and the SEC?
Right. How come the various federal agencies are not investigating this?
Because they don’t want to.
Because it would be embarrassing.
Because there would be political fallout.
It wouldn’t stop the feds from putting any of us in jail but assisting Madoff is no big deal because it wasn’t done by people like “us.”
Frank Serpico was an American (New York) police officer who refused to go along with departmental corruption. He later received the Medal of Honor, the New York Police Department’s highest award. Serpico was less than popular with his superiors and his fellow officers. There are strong suspicions that his shooting while making a drug bust was a set up by other policemen to get him out of the way.
Manoje Nath
In India there is a policeman called Manoje Nath. He seems to upset his superiors as well.
As Bokaro SP in 1980, he arrested the then Bokaro Steel MD in a corruption case and was handed transfer order within 24 hours __ only after four months in office. While in vigilance, he again ended up fraying his superiors’ ego as he raided three engineers in a case of corruption. For the next ten months, the cop had to make do without a vehicle and a telephone as he was made to wait for a posting. A departmental proceeding for disobedience was also initiated which the Patna high court later quashed.
This guy investigates where the career minded officer will not go.
My understanding is that he is currently teaching.
I’m deeply impressed by his career choices and wish him well.
James Pilant
(By the way, Nath has a blog called Musings. He is witty and eloquent. I recommend it.)
Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.
The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted. Their names by now are familiar to even the most casual Middle American news consumer: companies like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Most of these firms were directly involved in elaborate fraud and theft. Lehman Brothers hid billions in loans from its investors. Bank of America lied about billions in bonuses. Goldman Sachs failed to tell clients how it put together the born-to-lose toxic mortgage deals it was selling. What’s more, many of these companies had corporate chieftains whose actions cost investors billions — from AIG derivatives chief Joe Cassano, who assured investors they would not lose even “one dollar” just months before his unit imploded, to the $263 million in compensation that former Lehman chief Dick “The Gorilla” Fuld conveniently failed to disclose. Yet not one of them has faced time behind bars.
Two kinds of justice? Is there one for you and I, and another for the great financial elites? Let’s say that I steal $100,000 dollars from my employer, if they press charges would I go to jail? Quite likely. What if I work for a giant investment bank and I commit fraud and other security violations to the tune of several hundred million dollars? Will I go to jail then? No.
What is going on here? This isn’t fair.
Why do we put people in jail or prison? To punish them and discourage others from committing the same offenses.
What message does this “two-tiered” system of “justice” send? It says that wrongdoing is okay if you are properly placed in the economy. If you are not placed in the right industry with the right friends and the right “law enforcement,” you can expect to be penalized when you commit crimes. The impact is clear, if you work in the financial industry you will not be punished for your financial crimes.
Do I have to tell you that giving sectors of the economy the right to commit crimes at will is bad policy? They will continue to do it.
In 2007, these crimes almost brought down the world economy. The damage done did through us into the Great Recession.
Fear of being a “bag lady” is the secret worry of every older woman. I’ve written and talked about this before, and the subject always gets a nod or a grimace of recognition.
No woman wants to be a burden on her children – or grow old alone, worry about money.
With our President and the Congress and the beltway commentators all determined to cut Social Security, we can expect the situation to get worse, probably much worse as what’s left of the safety net is dismantled.
Read a little more –
*Women are likely to have a longer period of chronic disability and are more likely to need care in a long-term facility or from a paid caregiver. This is compounded by the fact that women are more likely to be alone in old age and less likely to have a family caregiver.
*Fifty-five percent of female retirees and 71 percent of female pre-retirees are concerned that they might not have enough money to pay for health care costs in retirement, compared to 42 percent of male retirees and 63 percent of male pre-retirees.
People, real people, not financial funds, not mortgage foreclosures companies, are supposed be looked after by our government. We are not supposed to be tossing grannies on to the fire of maximized profits. But we are.
Making every American regardless of circumstances rely totally on their own resources for virtually every contingency seems to be the philosophy of government. But a bank can navigate a depression better than a human being and a bank is unlikely to get a degenerative disease that bankrupts a family and destroys every vestige of financial security.
We should be looking out for each other not making sure of the highest possible return on investments.
A little Aristotle in the morning can’t hurt too much. This author has a good take on the subject. I enjoyed reading it and I’m sure you will too.
As my frequent readers will note I am a major fan of Aristotle, and I always appreciate another author’s take on the subject.
James Pilant
“Though we love the truth and our friends, reverence is due to the truth first.” -Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I have been reading Aristotle’s classic work Nicomachean Ethics for my Ancient and Medieval Ethics class. This is my second time through the work, though I am getting much more out of it on this read through. Aristotle makes many important distinctions even just in the first book of this work, but one sentence stood out and I decided to … Read More
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