From JPMorgan's website:
JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple.
Yves Smith, correctly sees this as JPMorgan buying extra protection.
But, I also see it as a scared JPMorganChase. JPMC is a tight run corporation, $4.6million, though not a large sum relative to total JPMC operations, is still not a sum that is going to walk out of JPM without notice and approval.
Bottom line: The banksters are running scared and don't know when they will need NYPD backup from a very angry public.
Things are getting interesting in Amerika.
Proof the Banksters are Running Scared, 10/3/11
JPMorgan Chase is a defendant in more than 10,000 legal proceedings and may be $4.5 billion short of reserves needed to cover those costs in a worst-case scenario, the firm said in a regulatory filing on Monday. The New York-based bank's legal woes range from individual actions against JPMorgan Chase to class actions with "potentially millions" of litigants to "regulatory/government investigations." The suits include common law tort and contract claims, statutory antitrust claims, securities claims and consumer protection claims, the bank said in its 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
JPMorgan Fighting 10,000 Lawsuits, 2/28/11
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. announced on February 7, 2011 that it will accept physical gold as collateral for investors that want to make short-term borrowings of cash or securities. Presenting gold to satisfy demands for performance bond collateral has been allowed on the London CME in a limited way since October 2009. As of November 22, 2010, the Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE) has accepted gold bullion as collateral on all credit default swaps and energy transactions. I don't recall the G-20 declaring gold a new currency. Yet JPMorgan Chase and a couple of financial market exchanges have effectively declared that gold is an alternative currency. In other words, gold is money.
"Gold Is Now Official Currency" Says J.P. Morgan, 2/10/11
JP Morgan is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States. JP Morgan has contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. JP Morgan is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans that go on food stamps, the more profits JP Morgan makes. Yes, you read that correctly. When the number of Americans on food stamps goes up, JP Morgan makes more money. In the video posted below, JP Morgan executive Christopher Paton admits that this is "a very important business to JP Morgan" and that it is doing very well. Considering the fact that the number of Americans on food stamps has exploded from 26 million in 2007 to 43 million today, one can only imagine how much JP Morgan's profits in this area have soared. But doesn't this give JP Morgan an incentive to keep the number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program as high as possible?
There are just some things that are a little too "creepy" to be "outsourced" to private corporations. The JP Morgan executive in the interview below does his best to put a positive spin on all this, but it just seems really unsavory for a big Wall Street bank to be making so much money off of the suffering of tens of millions of Americans...
The More Americans That Go On Food Stamps the More Money JP Morgan Makes, 1/22/11
Going through recent bullion bank shorting information, Adrian Douglas has stumbled across a nugget that may explain the sudden willingness of JPM to admit to the FT, via proxies as obviously the bank would never expose itself to even remote market manipulation claims, that it has collapsed its silver short. The reason: even as US bank silver (and gold) shorts by US banks have been gradually declining, those positions established by non-US bank, and thus entities not under the CFTC's control, have seen their silver shorts surge, increasing by orders of magnitude over the past several months. Is there a stealthy transfer of precious metals market manipulation taking place, one that exonerates the domestic, and therefore regulatable, suspects, while making foreign banks carry the burden of suppressing silver and gold prices? The reason: hand over the silver shorts to entities that would not be subject to the CFTC's upcoming size limit rules. Per Douglas: "The sudden and massive increase in their short positions in both metals is conspicuous when compared with historical trading patterns. The fact that it occurs at a time when the US banks that are mega-short appear to be covering makes it doubly intriguing. It looks like a strategy to shift suppression and manipulation of the market to banks that are not under the direct supervision of the CFTC. Will these non-US banks be expecting to receive an exemption to position limits where US banks might not be successful?" We hope to get an answer to all these questions soon - Douglas has sent out the following letter to the only honest man at the CFTC, Bart Chilton, which explains Douglas' findings, and demands an inquiry into just who these foreign banks are that are suddenly shorting silver and gold on the margin at alarming rates.
Is JP Morgan Shifting Its Silver And Gold Shorts To Non-US Domiciled, And Thus Unregulatable, Banks?, 12/20/10
There were reports out today that JP Morgan has now admitted to having their massive naked short position in silver and is taking steps to reduce it. According to the Financial Times in London, "JPMorgan has quietly reduced a large position in the US silver futures market which had been at the centre of a controversy about its impact on global prices for the precious metal." According to a person familiar with the matter, "The decision by JPMorgan was an attempt to deflect public criticism of the bank’s dealings in silver." JP Morgan said in a statement, "It is absolutely incorrect to say or imply that the Nymex, CFTC or any other exchange or regulator has instructed or asked us to reduce our position."
NIA, along with the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA), has been at the forefront of helping expose JP Morgan's silver price suppression scheme. Over a year ago on December 11th, 2009, NIA declared silver the best investment for the next decade at $17.40 per ounce. NIA said in its December 11th article, "It's not a coincidence that the day silver reached its multi-decade high of over $21 per ounce in March of 2008, was the same day Bear Stearns failed. Bear Stearns was a holder of a massive short position in silver."
JP Morgan Covering Silver Short Position, 12/14/10
In the latest example that virtually every conspiracy theory is almost always inevitably proven to be fact, the Financial Times reports that JP Morgan, the firm targeted by thousands of "tin foil hat" wearing, conspiratorially-oriented "gold bugs", has cut back on its US silver futures. "JPMorgan has quietly reduced a large position in the US silver futures market which had been at the centre of a controversy about its impact on global prices for the precious metal." And in what can only be considered an unprecedented victory for all those who have over the past year agitated to putting JP Morgan out of business, most recently spearheded by the likes of Mike Krieger and Max Keiser, by forcing a massive short squeeze on its commodities trading desk, we learn that "the decision by JPMorgan was an attempt to deflect public criticism of the bank’s dealings in silver, a person familiar with the matter said. The person added that the bank’s position in silver would from now on be “materially smaller” than in the past." Of course, the latter is pure and total bullshit: as Bart Chilton indicated over the weekend, it is JP Morgan who at one point or another (and possibly very recently) controlled as much as 40% of the silver market, via a massive short. Attempting to make others believe that this short could be covered without pushing the price of the silver metal to over $100/ounce is an indication of either how stupid JPM believes the general population to be, or just how desperate the firm is to end the ongoing short squeeze onslaught. Either way, we are confident that this first unprecedented confirmation that a) JPM is indeed massively short silver and b) that it is hurting bad, will merely redouble efforts to put the world's biggest financial company out of business. Lastly, this means that silver is about to really blast off as the push to really hurt JPM takes off in earnest.
JP Morgan Admits To, Reduces Massive Silver Short Position, Proves Millions Of Conspiracy Theorists Correct, 12/13/10
There’s a lot of rumor, buzz, innuendo, chitchat and scuttlebutt about the precious metals markets these days. Most of the chitchat is about J.P. Morgan and silver. Rumor has it that J.P. Morgan has amassed a whopping short position in silver.
The scuttlebutt, according to Scott Rubin of Benzinga.com, is that “J.P. Morgan holds a giant short position in silver. Furthermore, some observers are accusing the bank of acting as an agent for the Federal Reserve in the market…I.e., a lower silver price helps maintain the relative appeal of the US dollar…
“By selling massive amounts of paper silver in the futures market,” Rubin continues, “J.P. Morgan has been able to suppress the price of the precious metal. It is believed that these short positions are naked (i.e. they are not backed by any physical silver).”
J.P. Morgan & the Great Silver Caper, 12/11/10
There's definitely something to Simon Johnson's new theory that it's no longer about "Too Big To Fail" but rather "Too Global To Fail." In a big piece at The New Republic, the former IMF economist and professor argues that the key to escaping the Dodd-Frank resolution authority is to become so big internationally that governments around the world see the need to ensure your survival.
Massive Loophole In Financial Reform, 11/8/10
Yesterday we discussed the statistically impossible trading desk results of Goldman Sachs, which reported in its 10Q that it lost money on exactly 0 days last quarter, and was profitable on 63 out of 63 days. Today we find that the rape and pillage of the middle class was not isolated to Goldman, and that JP Morgan also had a flawless quarter. And if the odds of Goldman making 63 out of 63 are virtually impossible in any universe in which risk goes hand in hand with return (but in those in which monopolies are encouraged and bailed out), the coincidence of the two main firms that control the world having a perfect track record is impossible2. And since things in reality tend to be zero sum, when everyone makes money, someone may be tempted to ask the question, just who is losing money? And the answer, dear taxpayers, and [Goldman|JPMorgan] clients, is you.
JPMorgan Joins "Perfect 10" Club With Flawless Trading Quarter, 5/11/10
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