jp morgan
Newswire: Local Banks and Local Jobs 092011
Forty percent of the country's assets lie in the hands of four major banks -- Chase, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. Yet it's these same banks that offer the least amount of help to small businesses in communities. Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, wrote an article in YES! Magazine's fall jobs issue that looks at how locally-owned community banks can help beat America's unemployment crisis.
Email this pageGRITtv: Blackmailing the Unemployed: Talking to '99ers'
Members of Congress talking about shutting the government down until they can extend tax cuts for the wealthy are "in denial, blinded by their greed," says Constance Kaplan, "They're not concerned with us." Connie is a law librarian who's worked for JP Morgan Chase, among other companies, and is a '99er'--she's been unemployed for over 99 weeks and has thus lost all government unemployment benefits. Connie joins us in studio to discuss the government's inattention to job creation, and Edrie Irvine joins us via Skype--a legal secretary, she is also unemployed and is nearing the expiration on her own benefits. They fill us in on what it's like on the job hunt after over a year, and what unemployed workers are doing to get organized.
GRITtv: The Big Business Wall Street Won't Discuss
"Do you mind being a vulture?" That's the question Emory law professor Frank Alexander asks in this segment from the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. He's asking it of huge Wall Street banks like JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America, which buy up tax liens from local governments when homeowners fall behind on their property taxes, and then foreclose on the homes.
GRITtv: The F Word: Goldman Finds Big Banks "Attractive," Shares Rise
It's a neat trick. Analysts at Goldman Sachs this week announced that, in their professional opinion, large commercial banks were under-valued. They announced an upgrade of their assessment of several large banks and guess what? Share prices of those banks shot up. And so did Goldman's. From the brink to big profits and beyond. So much for all we've supposedly learned. Too big to fail is only likely to get bigger, faster.
GRITtv: Bank of America's Guerrilla Collection Tactics
Former Bank of America employee Chris Feener says that little has changed at BoA since the company received billions of dollars in tax-payer money. The company continues to use what Feener calls guerrilla collection tactics and compensates its employees based on the amount of debt they collect. Feener, who hadn't received a raise in several years, says that bonuses of five to $6,000 dollars were often awarded on a monthly basis. Despite promises that in exchange for taxpayer money, banks and financial institutions would be regulated little progress has been made. Feener, Stephen Lerner, and Max Fraad Wolff, a professor of economics at the New School University's Graduate Program in International Affairs, on BoA's unsavory practices and why so little has changed.
GRITtv: The F Word: Treasury's Private Ocean
How many times have I said, "It's hard not to feel bilked?" Just a few months ago, the Treasury Department stress tested the banks. The result was a call for massive new capital infusion -- for them, from us. Even then, academic studies were clear that the very same banks were making more than a buck. TARP recipients JP Morgan and Wells Fargo cut dividends to investors only once, and, well we all know what was happening at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- they were actually on track -- boy, were they on track -- to super-profits. $3.44 billion in the second quarter for Goldman. Hank Paulson, a former Goldman CEO, who once owned $700 million worth of STOCK told us last fall that if we gave to the banks, they'd give back to us --in jobs, and loans, and new businesses on Main Street. So the public paid out. And we waited, and waited, while unemployment rose and wages sank. Come summer, bankrupt states across the country were shutting summer schools and parks. And still the public waited and wondered. What happened to those hundreds of billions we gave to the banks?
GRITtv: The F Word: Strangling the Vampire Squid
It is all going according to plan. Goldman Sachs is the first to achieve solid profits. On its heels, JP Morgan/Chase. And if the Summers/Geithner plan continues apace other banks will return to profitability as will other sectors of American business. We're told virtually every day that we Americans believe in Free Markets and we need, first and foremost, strong financial institutions. So bravo. We are on our way. The problem, as we have learned through Republican and Democratic administrations alike, is that in the new America one person's profit is another's demise. So, the making of those big bucks by Goldman, and others, is tied to some pretty dire and plain economic realities: No wage gains despite ongoing higher productivity; little if any mortgage help for those in need; 29% credit card interest for those most in debt; enormous, growing unemployment, especially for minorities and for young people; huge numbers of Americans, many working Americans, on food assistance. Strip it all away and there's very little of substance in the pipeline for vulnerable Americans. Look around, is there any meaningful plan in place to help a working family you know? Do people really believe that shoring up banks will improve their lives? Barack Obama is playing a treacherous game: what are all those political wizards in the West Wing thinking? That people will listen to pleas for patience, forever? The time to strangle what Matt Taibbi calls the Vampire Squid is now. Before it strangles all the life and breath out of us.
