JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon — and his gold, presidential cufflinks —appeared before the Senate Banking Committee yesterday to testify on his bank’s recent loss of $2 billion (and counting). George Zornick, Washington reporter for The Nation, tells “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer why the hearing seemed to involve more winks and nods than grilling on the part of the senators.
Zornick contends that people have reason to be angry: “Most of these senators went very easy on Dimon, and that speaks to how powerful the money is because it’s actually terrible politics to do that. The public on both sides, Republicans and Democrats, don’t have very high opinions of Wall Street. They would enjoy, most likely, seeing a high-ranking CEO get batted around — and yet these senators still didn’t do it. The money spoke powerfully enough to them that they chose to forgo the good politics and kind of kiss his feet.”
