Wall Street Worries Out Loud About Building Popular Hatred

Wall Street appears to be bracing for another financial shock to the system very soon, and the fear of the growing hatred for the too-big-to-fail banks is showing. The New York Times and Bloomberg yesterday reported that Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, held a conference call with analysts and financial reporters when the fourth quarter earnings report was issued—and showed signs of real paranoia. Dimon charged that“banks are under assault” by over-bearing Federal regulators, and there is growing pressure for JPMC to be busted up into smaller entities. Dimon went to great lengths to tell the participants that super-banks are good for the world economy, and that the problem is over-regulation.

JPMC posted smaller earnings in the fourth quarter, due to its exposure in the oil futures market and the fact that it set aside another $1 billion in anticipated legal fees and fines around the continuing probe into the bank’s foreign exchange trading desk. For 2014 as a whole, however, the bank posted a $21.8 billion profit—an increase of 21 percent over 2013.

The growing rage at Wall Street is palpable, and a number of news outlets have let out some evidence of the shifting mood. Jesse Eisinger wrote in yesterday’s New York Times that the failure of Dodd-Frank to rein in Wall Street demonstrates that the only way to take on the bankers’ lobby and its grip on Congress is to “go big.” He referred to Dodd-Frank as the “Clement Atlee of legislation,” and blasted the Rubin-Summers wing of the Democratic Party that has systematically taken over the party on behalf of Wall Street over the past several decades. He notably included the Wall Street effort, led by Democrats, to beat back momentum to reinstate Glass-Steagall in recent years. Eisinger noted that there is an emerging battle inside the Democratic Party by progressives, to take the party back, adding that President Obama has been fully on Wall Street’s side from the day he entered the White House. He noted that some Republicans, including McCain, Vitter, and Corker, could side with progressive Democrats and fight for genuine curbing of Wall Street’s out-sized power.

TIME magazine published a similar story yesterday, under the title, “How Elizabeth Warren is Yanking Hillary Clinton to the Left.” The authors cited Hillary’s recent meeting with Joe Stiglitz as a sign of the leftward tilt, since he became a harsh Summers-Geithner critic.

A website, PRWatch.org, touted the battle against Wall Street inside the new Congress, citing the call by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) for a transaction tax on Wall Street gambling, to fund a middle class tax break. Of course this is twenty years after Lyndon LaRouche called for a transaction tax to shut down Wall Street’s derivatives gambling, but the mood shift is clear.

The article also cited the recent killing of the Antonio Weiss nomination by Obama for a top Treasury post as further evidence of the restive mood. He quoted former Lazard Freres chairman Steve Rattner, who ominously warned, “It’s not about Weiss. It is part of a much broader narrative of the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party and whether so-called progressives are going to capture that or whether more mainstream Democrats… are going to retain it.”