A recent MarketWatch article featured quotes from JP Morgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon. He is one of the oligarchs and puppet masters who pull the strings of the politicians to get the economy rigged for themselves at the expense of the masses. In part of his comments he laments wealth inequality to virtue signal his concerns about the issue. His comments are taken from his annual letter to shareholders. I will share some of his quotes below and comment on them.
Jamie Dimon: “Our nation is clearly under a lot of stress and strain from various events: the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, which has taken more American lives than the total lost in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined, resulting in acute economic distress for millions more…”
Comment: It is not the pandemic itself but the government reaction to the pandemic(lockdowns) that has wrecked the economy. The government then passed the CARES act and subsequent “stimulus” bills which sent much more money to corporations such as the airlines than it did to individuals.
Jamie Dimon: “…the brutal murder of George Floyd and the racial unrest that followed; the divisive 2020 presidential election, culminating in the storming of the Capitol and the attempt to disrupt our democracy; and the seemingly inevitable, but nonetheless alarming and unnerving, rise of China, threatening America’s global preeminence…”
Comment: The trial of police officer charged in the case of George Floyd is ongoing as he wrote this. Opportunists like Dimon would have him executed without a trial. The BLM narrative that the Floyd death was racially motivated has no basis in fact, yet it is assumed that the death of ANY minority at the hands of ANY white police officer is racist.
The disruption to democracy that he refers to occured during the 2020 election when boat loads of mail-in ballots all of a sudden appeared deep in the night and Joe Biden, who could not get more than a dozen people to attend one of his campaign rallies, was declared President. Afterward, tens of thousands of Americans who felt disenfranchised showed up at the Capitol on January sixth to protest. A few of them entered the building without violence and the episode was termed an insurrection by the Democrats and their presstitutes. No dummies. An insurrection involves lots of guns and bloodshed and destruction. There was an unarmed white ex-military female protester that was murdered by a black Capitol police officer during the event. No charges were filed and no tears were shed by the presstitutes or people like Jamie Dimon. We can imagine the reaction if the protesters had been Democrats, the officer white and the dead woman black.
Dimon then speaks of the unnerving rise of China. The crony capitalists in the defense industry need an enemy to justify U.S. military spending. Of the top eleven nations vis-a-vis military spending the U.S. is number one and spends more then the next ten combined including Russia and China. That is why China must be an enemy. It is why the establishment hacks in D.C. accused Trump of being a Russian agent. He could not be allowed to normalize relations with Russia. Continuing to treat China and Russia as enemies does NOT make American safer but does the opposite. Creating and extending tensions with nuclear armed countries is hubristic, careless, and dangerous. But it is worth the risk if you sell arms.
In the above quote Dimon also worries that America is losing its global preeminence to China. It is interesting to note that in recent decades China has abondoned pure communism in the economic sphere and allowed capitalism to take root. Could it be that China’s rising economic fortunes can largely be attributed to the rise of capitalism in that country? Meanwhile, western nations such as the U.S. have lurched in the socialist direction. The rise of socialistic impulses seen with the New Deal and the Great Society are now firmly entrenched with programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and low-income housing. The D.C. political class no longer believes in laissez-faire capitalism. It no longer has faith in private charity. It has embraced crony-capitalism, a.k.a. corporatism or economic fascism. Corporatism is in the process of eviscerating the middle class; the remaining structure will be one of either rich or poor. The resulting wealth inequality is real but is not being created, as the political class and media would have us believe, by systemic racism but rather by the D.C. crowd, who have rejected free market capitalism and the wealth it produces for EVERYBODY. One example of rejection of the free market comes in the form of the minimum wage. The economic and historic illiterates that champion the concept don’t realize that the minimum wage was originally conceived in the 1930s in order to prevent blacks from competing with whites for blue collar jobs; this according to black economist Walter Williams(R.I.P. Walter). The minimum wage hurts most those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder by denying them work opportunities. If the minimum wage is $15/hr and your labor is only worth $10/hr you are unemployed. And it will cause many minimum wage jobs to be replaced by machines. Have you noticed the order taking kiosks at McDonalds or the self checkout counters at Walmart? In addition, it causes price inflation that disproportionately hurts the poor. In short, economic destruction comes primarily not from the enemy without such as China but the enemy within such as Jamie Dimon and his buddies in D.C.
Funny aside: Dr. Walter Williams taught economics at George Mason University for many years. He once told a class of students that he was not in favor of anti-discrimination laws because he felt them no longer necessary because businesses are in the business of making money and that discriminating against a group would be bad for business. This applies not just to customers but to hires as well. Businesses will naturally hire the most qualified for a job regardless of race or gender in an attempt to gain a market advantage. Anti-discrimination laws are also an attack on private property- if you own the business only you should be allowed to determine its policies. Can you imagine the bad press if a company said “no blacks allowed?” Williams then goes on to tell the class how he discriminated against white girls and fat girls when searching for a wife. And when he finally chose a wife he discriminated against all the other women on earth.
Jamie Dimon: America has “faced tough times before,” he said, adding that the cited problems are fixable. But first the institutions that have lost the trust of the people — government, schools, media and businesses — must regain that trust and understand that the underlying problem is inequality. “The enormous wealth of our country is accruing to the very few,” he said.
Comment: No kidding Jamie. And you are one of enormously wealthy few. I have no problem with people acquiring wealth honestly through the free market. But the quickest way to wealth is to bribe government to give your company or industry special favors. Jamie Dimon and his JP Morgan company made some risky bets on financial derivatives prior to the 2008 financial meltdown. Then the bets turned sour. Rather than have to face the economic consequences of his own bad decisions he ran to government for help; his company and others like his received hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts from you and I Joe and Jill Taxpayer. Wealth inequality anyone? The hypocrisy is so thick you would need a steak knife to cut through it. Nay, you would need a chainsaw. Social scientist and economic historian Franz Oppenheimer said in his marvelous book The State that wealth can be acquired in two ways. He referred to the acquisition of wealth through the free market and honest work as the economic means. The acquisition of wealth by using the coercive power of the state he termed the political means. As I have stated before, the quickest way to eliminate the political means of wealth acquisition is strip the state of its ability to “regulate commerce.” We need separation of commerce and state. And because of the socialist indoctrination factories known as the public schools and universities, we need separation of education and state as well. The state and its regulatory apparatus is the enemy, not China or Russia or Iran. The real source of wealth inequality? The state and its crony allies such as Jamie Dimon.