Jamie Dimon and Wall Street Pathology

By Guest Column Damon Vrabel —— Bio and Archives May 24, 2010

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As many people now understand, Wall Street is a monopolistic cartel that thrives on putting the rest of the nation and much of the world in debt (article on Wall Street and the Bankruptcy of America) and controlling all money in the system (video: The Rise of Financial Empire). It has structurally lived as a parasite on the United States for a century. It seemed like a symbiotic relationship for a long time, but it is now clear that it took over the host and now has nearly reached the point of killing it. Such a parasitic structure is fundamentally pathological, one could say immoral (article on Usury), and pathological structures naturally attract pathological personalities (article on Wall Street Narcissism). Here's a recent case study:

One of the primary personalities currently on Wall Street is Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase. I ran across a short video clip of his commencement address at Syracuse University earlier this week in which he said, “It should not be acceptable to denigrate entire groups, not all companies, not all CEOs…to categorically and indiscriminately judge them as all equal is simply another form of prejudice and ignorance, and it’s not fair, it’s not just, it’s just plain wrong.” The crowd applauded. Who wouldn’t applaud such a line? It’s a good one. He uses one of Martin Luther King’s most powerful phrases “it is not just.” The problem is that MLK meant it, whereas Jamie used it here for selfish purposes to skirt the individual judgment he called for. The applause was Jamie’s real goal. He used his power position over the group in that moment to rally the masses behind him and engage group psychology to shutup his critics. It’s a demonstration of how ruthless he can be (a couple of his classmates verified for me the ruthlessness hidden under his frat boy looks and harvard shmarm). More... Damon has had two fairly different lives—one as an overachiever serving the financial empire, and another as a hopeful advocate for the victims of the empire: local community, indigenous population, the American republic, and the individual heart. He graduated from the United States Military Academy, served as an officer in the US Army, then graduated from Harvard Business School, took a short detour on Wall Street, and had a career in Silicon Valley in several leadership positions in technology corporations. Since leaving empire service, he became a mountaineer, attended Mars Hill Graduate School, and now works toward redemption as a writer and post-neoclassical economic philosopher. See the beginnings of his course on Renaissance 2.0 here. Damon can be reached at: strabes23@gmail.com