Interest in the Fed plummeted on Twitter after May 12--to just 17 mentions May 13.
By Jack B. Winn
J.P Morgan's $2 billion gamble may be raising eyebrows on Wall Street and D.C., but the loss has also brought new scrutiny into big banks' relationships with agencies like the Federal Reserve--and Twitter is leading the charge.
According to OhMyGov Analytics, mentions of the Fed spiked to 132 May 12--two days after J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon--who famously called critics of big bank trades 'infantile'--issued a public mea culpa of his company's risky hedge that went notoriously wrong. Dimon reiterated his apology again on Meet the Press this Sunday, but the bulk of the online community's rage is falling not on JP Morgan, but the Federal Reserve--the same Federal Reserve that Dimon served as a regional director from 2008 to 2010.
"The Federal Reserve System: Putting the 'Con' in Economy since 1913" One Tweeter wrote.
"The Federal Reserve System is the epitome of crony capitalism" Another wrote.
The overwhelmingly negative tweets come on the heels of asubcommittee hearing by Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) looking into the possibility of auditing or replacing the nearly 100 year monetary agency.
"It has been recognized by many that monetary policy in the Federal Reserve has a lot to do with the creation of some of our problems and shortcomings when it comes to solving these problems," Paul said in his remarks May 8. "I don't think many people reject the idea that Congress does have responsibility of oversight, and exactly how to handle that. Most people realize how big the economy is...but they don't talk about the monetary issue."
The hours-long hearing--focusing on the Sound Dollar Act, the interventionist policy of the Federal Reserve (personified by the tech and housing bubbles), and the impact those policies have on the price of goods and services--received very little media coverage, but clips of the hearing have gotten renewed attention as a small but devoted following of Paul fans circulate them throughout the Web. The clips have been viewed over 6,000 times since.
Interest in the Fed plummeted on Twitter after May 12--to just seventeen mentions May 13.
The press has been similarly sanguine. Over 72 stories were slugged overall between May 8 and May 14--with only 15 being slugged the day JP Morgan went public about its multi-billion dollar mistake.
Support for Paul's proposals have never gotten widespread bipartisan support, but in the wake of Dimon's gambit gone wrong, there is a question of whether Dimon's position on the Federal Reserve board is a potential conflict of interest.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, on May 2nd--two weeks before the crisis--JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein, and Bank of America's Bryan Moynihan met in a closed door meeting with Fed regulators to see if the agency could loosen restrictions on counterparty risk and proprietary trading, aka the Volcker Rule. Although details of the discussions aren't known, the Fed's representative, governor Daniel Tarullo, sat quietly as the bankers made their case.
A year earlier, Dimon was voted back into his position as Fed Class A NY director. In the same period, according to the Associated Press, Dimon was one of three bankers who met exclusively with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to talk about issues like TARP, Too Big To Fail, and other topics of discussion over a seven month period between Obama's election and May of 2009.
The AP got their information from Geithner's appointment calendar and phone records.
JP Morgan is doing its best to clean up the mess. But the man they hired to replace their outgoing CIO is no saint. Matt Zames, the man JP Morgan picked to manage its chief investment office, has ties to Long Term Capital Management, the 90s hedge fund that famously collapsed in the late 1990s.According to TheStreet.com, Zames is also one of the few on Wall Street who spotted Bernie Madoff's fraud, 18 months before his Ponzi scheme became common knowledge.
In the meantime, the Federal Reserve has launched a Twitter account in an effort to appear more transparent to the public. Since launching, the account has garnered 22,000 followers and 131 Tweets, but the Fed is remaining zip-lipped about JP Morgan's failures, focusing instead on another topic of interest to the financial press...stress tests.
www.ohmygov.com
By Jack B. Winn
J.P Morgan's $2 billion gamble may be raising eyebrows on Wall Street and D.C., but the loss has also brought new scrutiny into big banks' relationships with agencies like the Federal Reserve--and Twitter is leading the charge.
According to OhMyGov Analytics, mentions of the Fed spiked to 132 May 12--two days after J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon--who famously called critics of big bank trades 'infantile'--issued a public mea culpa of his company's risky hedge that went notoriously wrong. Dimon reiterated his apology again on Meet the Press this Sunday, but the bulk of the online community's rage is falling not on JP Morgan, but the Federal Reserve--the same Federal Reserve that Dimon served as a regional director from 2008 to 2010.
"The Federal Reserve System: Putting the 'Con' in Economy since 1913" One Tweeter wrote.
"The Federal Reserve System is the epitome of crony capitalism" Another wrote.
The overwhelmingly negative tweets come on the heels of asubcommittee hearing by Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) looking into the possibility of auditing or replacing the nearly 100 year monetary agency.
"It has been recognized by many that monetary policy in the Federal Reserve has a lot to do with the creation of some of our problems and shortcomings when it comes to solving these problems," Paul said in his remarks May 8. "I don't think many people reject the idea that Congress does have responsibility of oversight, and exactly how to handle that. Most people realize how big the economy is...but they don't talk about the monetary issue."
The hours-long hearing--focusing on the Sound Dollar Act, the interventionist policy of the Federal Reserve (personified by the tech and housing bubbles), and the impact those policies have on the price of goods and services--received very little media coverage, but clips of the hearing have gotten renewed attention as a small but devoted following of Paul fans circulate them throughout the Web. The clips have been viewed over 6,000 times since.
Interest in the Fed plummeted on Twitter after May 12--to just seventeen mentions May 13.
The press has been similarly sanguine. Over 72 stories were slugged overall between May 8 and May 14--with only 15 being slugged the day JP Morgan went public about its multi-billion dollar mistake.
Support for Paul's proposals have never gotten widespread bipartisan support, but in the wake of Dimon's gambit gone wrong, there is a question of whether Dimon's position on the Federal Reserve board is a potential conflict of interest.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, on May 2nd--two weeks before the crisis--JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein, and Bank of America's Bryan Moynihan met in a closed door meeting with Fed regulators to see if the agency could loosen restrictions on counterparty risk and proprietary trading, aka the Volcker Rule. Although details of the discussions aren't known, the Fed's representative, governor Daniel Tarullo, sat quietly as the bankers made their case.
A year earlier, Dimon was voted back into his position as Fed Class A NY director. In the same period, according to the Associated Press, Dimon was one of three bankers who met exclusively with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to talk about issues like TARP, Too Big To Fail, and other topics of discussion over a seven month period between Obama's election and May of 2009.
The AP got their information from Geithner's appointment calendar and phone records.
JP Morgan is doing its best to clean up the mess. But the man they hired to replace their outgoing CIO is no saint. Matt Zames, the man JP Morgan picked to manage its chief investment office, has ties to Long Term Capital Management, the 90s hedge fund that famously collapsed in the late 1990s.According to TheStreet.com, Zames is also one of the few on Wall Street who spotted Bernie Madoff's fraud, 18 months before his Ponzi scheme became common knowledge.
In the meantime, the Federal Reserve has launched a Twitter account in an effort to appear more transparent to the public. Since launching, the account has garnered 22,000 followers and 131 Tweets, but the Fed is remaining zip-lipped about JP Morgan's failures, focusing instead on another topic of interest to the financial press...stress tests.
www.ohmygov.com
