JPMorgan Chase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on June 19, 2012.
March 3, 2013 |
The sh*t CEOs say! When the chiefs of giant corporations are not
blaming others for their mismanagement and unscrupulous behavior,
they’re explaining why their distorted worldviews are best for the 99
percent. They do this, of course, at a time of declining national median
income and huge paydays for executives.
Recently, there has been
an uptick of particularly stupid remarks coming from the mouths of
America’s CEOs. Here are a few of the most out-of-touch and out-of-line
oracles, a mix of recent gaffes and classic blunders.
1. “That's why I'm richer than you.”
JPMorgan
honcho Jamie Dimon has taken time out of his regularly scheduled
program of mismanaging a systemically dangerous bank to divulge why he's
richer than the rest of us. Last week, Mike Mayo, who is both an
analyst at CLSA and a critic of too-big-to-fail banks, was on an
investor conference call -- a forum in which executives typically offer
BS about their company’s performance. Mayo wasn’t having it. He asked
pointedly if customers might take their money to better-capitalized
banks than JPMorgan. (
Check out the video.)
Mayo:
I think what I hear UBS saying in the presentation is that if I'm an
affluent customer I'll feel a lot better going to UBS if they have 13.5
(percent) capital ratio than another big bank with a 10 percent ratio.
Do you agree with that?
Dimon: You would go to UBS and not JPMorgan?
Mayo: I didn't say that. That's their argument.
Dimon: That's why I'm richer than you.
The
mystery of Dimon’s riches solved! Dimon became 1 percenter
extraordinairre because he operates in a lax regulatory climate that
lets him get away with low capital ratios. That, of course, is one of
the reasons the big banks blew up the economy during the recent
financial crisis – they were over-leveraged. Which is awful for just
about everybody -- investors, taxpayers and ordinary people dealing with
economic ruin. But it sure is great for Dimon.
James Saft over at Reuters was less than impressed by Dimon’s musings:
“The
real issue isn't who is rich, but rather whose interests are being
fairly served and whose aren't. Dimon's approach gives short shrift to
both shareholders and taxpayers. Taxpayers still carry substantial risks
for which they are not being compensated, a state that will only change
when regulations are tightened, and hopefully vastly
simplified…Shareholders do badly because the kind of bank Dimon runs is
prone to loss and volatility, leading markets to set a low value on the
bank's earnings.”
Dimon may be wealthy, but his
crappy performance as a CEO, demonstrated in the “London Whale” fiasco
in which $6 billion went missing, has cost him. His pay was recently
cut by more than half, to $11.5 million from $23 million. Alas, he still feels more than rich enough to continue his obnoxious bragging.
The
Mayo exchange certainly isn’t the first time Dimon has shared his
perspective on being filthy rich: In 2011, as bankers were under fire
from the Occupy movement, he whined, "Acting like everyone who's been
successful is bad and that everyone who is rich is bad -- I just don't
get it.”
No, Jamie, and you probably never will.
2. “I don’t think that I would consider myself a feminist.”
Marissa
Mayer, who recently became the CEO of Yahoo, catapulted to
meme-of-the-moment when she decided, in a burst of anachronistic
bone-headedness, that employees may no longer telecommute, but must stay
chained to their desks five days a week.
That was bad enough, but Mayer’s offenses don’t stop there. She has also taken it upon herself to
expound upon how “easy” it is to have a baby: “way easier than everybody made it out to be.” Which, of course, it must be when you have a
nursery built right by your office!
Mayer has also treated us to her dim
view of feminists,
whom she characterizes as negative Nellies whose bitching and moaning
is unwelcome: “I don’t, I think, have sort of the militant drive and
sort of the chip on the shoulder that sometimes comes with that. And I
think it’s too bad, but I do think feminism has become, in many ways, a
more negative word.”
Essentially, Mayer has waltzed through doors
kicked open by the courageous women who have fought and organized to win
her the opportunity to become a CEO, and then kicks dirt in their
faces. Classy.
3. “We have a right to make a profit.”
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan is
no stranger to controversy,
having amplified his bank’s bad vibes in 2011 with an infamous $5 debit
card fee that fizzled in the face of widespread criticism. The BofA
chief whined that this was all grossly unfair, insisting that his
company had a "right to make a profit" and that nobody understood "how
much good" his employees do.
Moynihan neglected to mention that
the debit card move was a classic example of what economists call “price
leadership” –the signal given by the lead dog in an oligopoly that
tells everyone in the group that it’s fine to raise prices. That the
price increase has no connection whatever to the quality of the product
or service is ample evidence that big banks like BofA do not operate in
anything remotely resembling a free or fair market. They are dangerous
parasites that suck the lifeblood out of the real economy and get away
with it because of their political influence and their status as
too-big-to-fail.
Somehow, even without the nasty debit card fee,
Moynihan managed to suck up gargantuan amounts of money. Despite his
dismal performance as CEO, in 2012 he received a 73-percent pay
increase, largely because the bank was able to resolve various lawsuits
launched in the wake of the financial crisis. BofA was able to do this
of course, because financial crimes go largely unpunished in America.
The $12.1 million pay package meant that Moynihan was one of the
best-paid CEOs on Wall Street last year.
4.“
We've got to get companies to regulate themselves…”
Of
all the idiotic ideas we’ve heard since the financial crisis, this
notion ranks high for sheer brazenness. And who uttered these words?
None other than AIG CEO Robert Benmosche, whose company became the
poster child for the culture of corporate dysfunction that helped tank
the economy. AIG got a $180 billion bailout during the 2008 financial
crisis, which it needed in part because financial institutions had been
allowed to regulate themselves.
After the bailout, which came in the wake of several fraud investigations, huge bonuses were
distributed to AIG executives. Unabashed, Benmosche
explained to CNN that "the most important thing is that we've got to get companies to regulate themselves and to do the right thing.”
Mm-kay. Elizabeth Warren, among others, has been
vocal about the pressing reasons why just the opposite approach is needed,
explaining that such financial institutions “run the risk of taking
down everyone’s job…everyone’s pensions…[and] the entire economy.”
Perhaps Benmosche should try regulating his mouth.
5. “I have no regrets about…how Countrywide was run. It was a world-class company.”
Spoken
like a world-class asshole! Angelo Mozilo, the former head of
Countrywide, brought “subprime mortgage” into common parlance by chasing
high-risk borrowers to boost market share. Countrywide's shady
practices led to a frenzy of subprime lending in the industry that
eventually torpedoed the economy. To keep the frauds and hustles going,
the company aggressively silenced whistleblowers.
But according to
the perma-tanned Mozilo, foreclosure problems in America had nothing to
do with his company. It was all the fault of irresponsible homeowners
who decided to abandon their homes because the value dropped below the
mortgage amount. “These people didn't lose their jobs,” he fumed. “They
didn't lose their health. They didn't lose their marriage…They left
their home because the values went below the mortgage. That's what
caused the problem.”
Oh, really? As CNBC’s John Carney has
pointed out,
there’s no evidence that anything but a tiny fraction of homeowners
walked away from underwater mortgages, even at the very height of the
crisis.
Nobody bought Mozilo’s ludicrous defense, including the SEC, which sued him for fraud. He paid
$67.5 million to settle a civil fraud case and is banned from ever serving as an officer or a director at any public company.
Portfolio magazine ranked Mozilo as #2 on its list of "Worst American CEOs of All Time."
6. “I’m doing God’s work.”
Obviously,
this list would not be complete without acknowledging the spectacular
verbal gifts of Lloyd Blankfein, chief of Goldman Sachs. Blankfein sees
himself as the champion of the free market, a hero who mocks the public
and revels in his power.
In the gaffe-of-all-gaffes, Blankfein
proclaimed the heavenly mission of investment bankers, insisting that they are doing “God’s work.” He
added, perhaps with some foreboding, "I know I could slit my wrists and people would cheer."
Goldman Sachs has made a specialty of defrauding investors by
hiding conflicts of interest between itself and its customers. In 2010, the company was forced to pay a
$550 million fine to settle securities fraud charges.
Recently, Blankfein expressed his commitment to seeing that Social Security and Medicare
will not be there for the elderly.
God certainly works in mysterious ways.
Lynn Parramore is an
AlterNet senior editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding
editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of 'Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt
in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture.' She received her Ph.d in
English and Cultural Theory from NYU, where she has taught essay writing
and semiotics. She is the Director of AlterNet's New Economic Dialogue
Project. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.
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