From Franklin Sanders’ newsletter 12/8/11 www.the-moneychanger.com
Yesterday Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, at a conference sponsored by public-spirited Goldman Sachs, said, “Acting like everyone who’s successful is bad and that everyone who is rich is bad — I just don’t get it.”
Well, Jamie, mayhap I can ‘splain it to you. You complained as if you EARNED your wealth by your extraordinary genius & hard work, and thus stacked penny by penny your estimated $231 mn to $3 bn fortune, along with that $17 mn stock & option bonus you were paid in 2009.
But Jamie, Jamie, some of us slackers remember where you came from. No, you weren’t born in Hell’s Kitchen, but you did graduate from Harvard Business School. And boy! Did your hard studying pay off. You were so valuable at that point, just getting out of school with no experience, that your father, executive VP at American Express, put in a good word for you with Sandy Weill, then CEO of Amex. And he hired you upon graduation to start at the bottom? Scouring toilets in the Amex headquarters? Sorting packages in the mail room? Licking envelopes with the little people? Well, not exactly, Jamie. Maybe, just maybe, it’s been possible for you to jump higher than all those envious slackers because you started higher than them, by 40 or 50 floors. And maybe, just maybe, you have waxed so rich not from genius & hard work, but because your cronies have boosted you along the way.
And while I would be the very last person in the entire universe, known or unknown, ever to say that “rich is bad”, I wonder who in God’s creation really NEEDS $231 mn to $3 bn, or who really is WORTH $17 mn in bonuses to any company anywhere anytime.
Jamie, I have to say that the slackers look at you & they don’t say, “Rich is bad,” they say, “Look at the arrogant crony capitalist, who has gotten fat on his connections, family, business & government. How, exactly, does he differ from a tape or pinworm?”
But don’t pay ’em no mind, Jamie. We all know how envious those slackers are. Let them eat cake.
On 8 December 1776 George Washington’s retreating Army crossed the Delaware River, fleeing from New Jersey into Pennsylvania. They were fighting a war to make the world safe for the Jamie Dimons of the future.
Bill Thank you! Makes me wonder what we’d be up to IF we started a little higher as well. My roots are poverty in Homer Alaska, a “drinking town with a fishing problem”. Blessings,
TJP