JPMorganChase & Face2Face
Deep and Dirty
It's clear any sort of American small “d” democratic revival requires Americans coming together face to face to discuss and decide. This essential democratic tradition is largely lost across the political landscape, yet it still thrives at the top. JPMorganChase just announced the formation of an “external advisory council” for their new Strategic Investment Group of Security and Resiliency Initiative (SRI). At the pinnacle of finance, face to face remains valued, most especially when the focus is to turn $10 billion invested into $1.5 trillion largely via government spending.
JPM states the goal is "to help companies enhance their growth, spur innovation and accelerate manufacturing, primarily in the United States" and “to address pressing needs in key sectors from critical minerals to frontier technologies.” Ok, all pretty boilerplate stuff in this age of electrification, AI, militarism, and Trump, though at best problematic for the world at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century.
Let's face the glaring obscenities, for example most amusingly, the goal of accelerating manufacturing, primarily in the United States. The great farce would be to consider how much was made by American mega-banks over the last half-century dismantling manufacturing in the US and moving it offshore.
Let's remember the 1970s Chase Manhattan bank, before merging together with a half-dozen or so, who’s counting, other financial entities to be the JPM behemoth of today. Democrats will proudly remember such mergers of commercial and investment banking were made possible by Mr. Bill’s 1999 overturning of FDR’s Glass-Steagall. Also remember when Mrs. Bill ran the first time in 2008, people asked how could the Clintons make over a hundred million dollars in such a short time upon leaving the White House?
Back to David Rockefeller’s 1970s Chase Manhattan. In 1973, a year after Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon went to China, on July 4th no less, Chase announced they were the official representative of the People’s Bank of China in the United States. The rest as they say is history. It certainly be interesting to count from that press release how much money all the entities now JPMorganChase made from deindustrializing the United States, a lot, in today's mathematical vernacular. So, if you have the stomach, that JPM is now interested in accelerating manufacturing, “primarily in the US,” is funny, funny stuff.
The punchline comes with who makes up JPM's new SRI council. Of the twelve members, half are former government officials, including a former Speaker of the House, a former Defense Secretary, a former Secretary of State, and three retired generals, one ran a primary arm of army procurement. The other six are Jeff Bezos, the CEO of General Dynamics, the CEO of Ford, a former CEO of Johnson and Johnson, and Michael Dell. Amusingly enough, the least significant person, the one getting the most press is Todd Combs, a Warren Buffet minion, but then JPM is finance.
When people talk of the US run by a militaristic-tech-oligarchy, Jamie Dimon proudly provides a list.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, when I was in the nitty-gritty of American politics, I'd try getting working people and the poors interested in politically meeting together. Mostly, they’d respond with various excuses. My reply was always, “I can tell you one thing, the people with money are all there.”
