Dana Blankenhorn

JP Morgan A Chance To Rise Above And Support Business Game's Integrity

Jim Cramer, founder of TheStreet.Com, has perfected the concept of treating stocks like sports teams. It remains a brilliant innovation. But if we're going to do that, shouldn't our focus be on the integrity of the game?

Take what's going on with JP Morgan Chase. It shouldn't take The Daily Show to remind us of our proper role.

To torture an analogy, we reporters feel like we're “in the locker room” with business stars. We identify with the owners, and the CEOs playing the game we're covering, when we should be identifying with the fans.

In the Morgan case, CEO Jamie Dimon said in 2008, when he bought Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, that he was taking the liabilities as well as the assets.

Since 2010 the company has set aside $23 billion to deal with those problems, and while the settlements coming through now look big at $13 billion and counting, they're less than what was set aside. 

Dimon made some great deals with these purchases, and in his dealings with the government he's coming out ahead. Whining on his behalf is silly.

And the threat from all this special pleading seems plain. Let me explain it with another sports analogy.

The Obama Consensus

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 42 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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In the days after the government shutdown everyone on the TV was asking, “Was it worth it?”

My answer? Hell, yes. It was worth it.

Despite the estimated $40 billion in economic activity that didn't occur?

Despite 74% of people saying they want the whole Congress gone, and the President's popularity falling to an all-time low? Despite the fact that this was “only” a three-month respite in the Congressional war?

Yes. And it was damned cheap at that.

Teenage Nervous Breakdown

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 41 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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Most American political crises have a set pattern.

First comes excess. An obsolete political thesis (a set of myths and values underlying power) causes the crisis. In this case, it was George W. Bush following the Nixon Thesis into the ditch of Iraq, Katrina, and the Great Economic Meltdown of 2008.

When anyone questioned him, he just repeated the old mantras, louder. He knew no other way, any more than Lyndon Johnson, or Herbert Hoover, or James Buchanan before him. After all, he learned his politics at his daddy's knee, and his father adapted his to those of Ronald Reagan. Who validated Nixon. 

It's when Thesis hardens into ideology and ideology runs into history that America runs into a brick wall.

The Nature of the Crisis

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 40 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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Every crisis in America's history has been a unique mixture of causes requiring a unique cure.

The Civil War was existential, the war itself inevitable. The progressive crisis was governmental. The New Deal problem was economic. The Vietnam crisis was social.

Our present crisis is political. What looked at first like an economic problem turned out to be a political one. This crisis tests whether our political institutions can survive an all-out attack from a determined minority, or whether a system originally designed to protect slavery would also, by its nature, halt the march of progress.

We have the perfect President for this crisis. Barack Obama studied constitutional law. He understands the nature of our political system inside and out. He understands our past and where we need to go.

The Crisis is Upon Us

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 39 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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A hundred and fifty years ago the fate of the nation hung in the balance.

History tells us that the results at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, which came in July, sealed the South's fate. But that wasn't the way people looked at it at the time.

That's because the South believed so strongly in their general, Robert E. “Bobby” Lee. They believed he could keep the North bleeding until it cried uncle, until a new leader like George McClellan took over and sued for peace. They saw the draft riots in New York as a sign of things to come.

History shows they were wrong about the North and it should show they were wrong about Lee. The same Lee who won at Chancellorsville by dividing his army multiple times in the face of superior force threw George Pickett's division into the fire at Gettysburg. That should have ended the war, except Union general George Meade refused to follow-up, which is why Lincoln eventually called for U.S. Grant. Grant and his chief lieutenant, William Tecumseh Sherman, gave Lee the war of attrition he could not answer.