JPMorgan C.E.O. Jamie Dimon is a genial Wall Street executive who is also known for occasionally launching into rants that we imagine are reminiscent of lectures he gave his children in high school about the dangers of drinking and drugs. Bitcoin is "a fraud" that will eventually blow up, Dimon fumed last month at the Delivering Alpha conference. "It's not a real thing, eventually it will be closed. It's worse than tulip bulbs," he said, referencing the tulip bubble that struck Holland during the Dutch Golden Age. "It won't end well. Someone is going to get killed." Any JPMorgan trader he caught trading bitcoin could expect to be "fire[d] in a second," he warned. He added that the only people he would expect to be using the digital currency are drug dealers and murderers.
Dimon doesn't seem to have a problem with the blockchain technology that makes bitcoin work: JPMorgan was a "founding member" of another cryptocurrency initiative, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, and created its own cryptocurrency product, Quorum. But unlike other well-known figures on Wall Street who have begun to embrace bitcoin itself—like Bill Miller, whose top holdings are said to include the digital currency, and Fundstrat's Tom Lee, who spent 15 years at JPMorgan and said he sees bitcoin hitting $6,000 by next year and $25,000 by 2022—Dimon thinks bitcoin is a scam. While JPMorgan trades bitcoin for clients, the bank notes that "they are not JPMorgan orders. These are clients purchasing third-party products directly."
And when you're a boomer dad like Dimon—who has joked about his "formerly smart daughter" who apparently owns two bitcoins—you don't just change your convictions because something is suddenly popular or because millennials tell you to. Which is apparently why, despite declaring just yesterday that he was "not going to talk about bitcoin anymore," Dimon couldn't help but comment on Friday, in response to a question at the Institute of International Finance's conference, that anyone who buys bitcoin is an idiot in for a fall.
"I could care less about bitcoin," Dimon told the audience. "The blockchain is a technology which is a good technology. We actually use it. . . . Gold bless the blockchain. Cryptocurrencies, digital currencies, I think are also fine. JPMorgan moves $16 trillion around the world every day, we don't do it in cash, it's done digitally. If it can be done digitally with the blockchain, so be it. But it will still be a dollar cryptocurrency."
"What I have an issue with is a non-fiat cryptocurrency," he continued. "I don't personally understand the value of something that has no actual value. You all can do whatever you want and I don't care. I could care less what bitcoin trades for, how it trades, why it trades, who trades it. If you're stupid enough to buy it, you'll pay the price for it one day. . . . The only value of bitcoin is what the other guy will pay for it."
In an interview with Bloomberg, financier Mike Novogratz, who has raised $500 million to start a hedge fund that will invest in cryptocurrencies, said "Jamie Dimon gets paid to worry about bitcoin because he's a rent-taker. The decentralized revolution is about going after the rent-takers. His bank is in the crosshairs of the cryptorevolution. So he's playing defense. He's going to lose."
If you would like to receive the Levin Report in your inbox daily, click here to subscribe.
Gary Cohn is basically being held at the White House against his will
Why has the former Goldman Sachs president chosen to stick around in the train wreck that is the Trump administration, despite his evident displeasure about his boss basically going to bat for neo-Nazis and white supremacists? According to my colleague William Cohan, it's because Trump refuses to let him quit.
He eventually got an audience with the president. They talked about Trump's upsetting response to Charlottesville. Trump told him, "Is it really so bad?" according to the same person familiar with what transpired. Cohn conveyed to Trump how upset he was and that he wanted to resign. He unburdened himself to Trump. Trump told him to "think about it" and not to act rashly. Cohn emerged from the encounter with second thoughts. "I've been asked to think about it," he said, according to the source. That night, Cohn headed to his house in the Hamptons and to a 30-person dinner party, where he arrived two hours late, at the home of Lloyd Blankfein, the C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs and his former boss. Over the weekend, he spoke to his wife and family, and others, about his concerns. His angst continued unabated. Cohn returned to Washington determined still to resign.
He asked Kelly for an appointment with Trump on August 21. But that was a tough day for Trump. The president was hunkered down, focused on the speech he was to give that night, in Arlington, Virginia, about the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan. Kelly told Cohn that his meeting with Trump would have to wait. Kelly offered Cohn the chance to see Trump, in the Oval Office, a day later, before Trump flew to Yuma, Arizona. Cohn accepted. This was Cohn's showdown meeting with Trump. It was a "long conversation," the source said, where Trump did everything from yelling at Cohn that his staying with him in the White House was a matter of his "national duty" to trying to cajole him into sticking it out, using more of a light touch. Interestingly, Trump was clear to make a distinction with Cohn. His "duty" was to "the country" not to Trump personally. He refused to read or to take Cohn's letter of resignation. A White House official disputed that Trump specifically asked Cohn to stay on as national economic adviser. "The president encouraged Gary to make his own decision," the official said. (For his part, Cohn declined to be interviewed about what happened.)
Jared Kushner can't stop screwing up his disclosure forms
Jared Kushner, White House senior adviser and First Son-in-Law, whose agenda currently includes solving the opioid crisis, overhauling the government's I.T. infrastructure, bringing peace to the Middle East, and "reinventing the entire government," messed up another one of his forms again. Per *Newsweek:*
Jared Kushner "enriched himself" by not revealing his ownership of a real estate tech business that raised millions of dollars while he served in the government, said a member of the House Judiciary Committee, calling it part of a pattern of unethical behavior that he believes should cause the White House Senior Adviser to be stripped of his security clearance. Congressman Ted Lieu told Newsweek that Kushner's failure to list a company called Cadre on his initial financial disclosure forms—an oversight that could mean millions for the president's son-in-law—is an ethical lapse that should have severe ramifications. "It appears [Kushner] ended up being the beneficiary of that omission," said Lieu, a California Democrat. "He enriched himself by failing to disclose the asset."
According to Kushner's lawyer, the failure to list Cadre was simply an "administrative error." Previous "administrative errors" on Kushner's part have included leaving out roughly 100 contacts with foreign nationals on his initial SF-86, including the time he and his brother-in-law met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer in Trump Tower, and registering to vote as a female.
Surprise: fintech start-up run by guys who allegedly propositioned female employees, offered women money to lose weight is dropping its expansion plans
Back in September, Mike Cagney, the C.E.O. of financial technology start-up Social Finance (a.k.a. SoFi), announced that he would be stepping down from the company, which may or may not have had something to do with allegations that, among other things:
-
The company's chief financial officer until May, Nino Fanlo, "would commonly make comments about the physical appearance of female employees and touch their shoulders in ways that made them uneasy," like the time he allegedly commented on a female job applicant's breasts in full view of several staff members.
-
Fanlo said that "women would be happier as homemakers; and once told two female employees he would give them $5,000 if they lost 30 pounds by the end of the year, according to more than a dozen people who heard the comments and witnessed the weight-loss offer."
-
The corporate culture seemed to be modeled after a frat house; one former employee, Yulia Zamora, told the Times that she was propositioned by a male supervisor on numerous occasions and that "you would find people having sex in their cars and in the parking lot. It was a free-for-all."
-
One manager forced the company to twice replace a toilet after breaking it while having sex with an employee in the company bathroom.
-
A senior executive allegedly started sexting a female employee while they were both at the same holiday party, threatened her professionally after receiving no response, left the party drunk and crashed his car, and was later promoted.
Online lender Social Finance Inc. said Friday that it is pulling its application to open a bank, retreating from one of its most ambitious goals just weeks after its chief executive resigned as lawsuits claimed sexual harassment and a toxic workplace culture at the company. In June, SoFi had asked Utah state regulators and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to bless its plan to launch a wholly-owned banking subsidiary that would offer customers deposit accounts and credit cards. Michael Cagney, then chief executive of SoFi, had written in a letter to shareholders over the summer that the company was "optimistic that the FDIC will move expeditiously to approve our application."
"With SoFi's leadership in transition, we're withdrawing our application with the FDIC for now," a SoFi spokesman told The Wall Street Journal, adding that a bank charter "remains an attractive option when the time is right" and that the company still plans to offer customers its own deposit accounts "through a partner bank in the near future."
Even Wall Street is disgusted with Harvey Weinstein
It's low on his incredibly long list of problems, but while he's riding out the news cycle at a $2,000-a-night rehab facility, disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein might want to reflect on the fact that even Wall Street, whose track record when it comes to sexual harassment might rival Hollywood's, is repulsed by him. According to the New York Post, Goldman Sachs is said to be "exploring options" for its stake in the Weinstein Company in the wake of allegations Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted nearly three dozen women. "There is no place for the inexcusable behavior that had been reported, and we strongly condemn it," a spokesman for Goldman told the Post. In related news, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Weinstein's eponymous film and television studio is "exploring a sale or shutdown and is unlikely to continue as an independent entity." (Bob Weinstein, Harvey's brother and company co-founder, denied that T.W.C.—whose contract with Harvey seemingly allowed for sexual harassment—was contemplating either option.)
BlackRock's Fink warns global surprise could drive major market correction (Reuters)
Fink calls bitcoin an 'index of money laundering' (CNBC)
Saudi Arabia Weighs Giving Up on International Listing for Aramco (W.S.J.)
Trump's Interior Secretary Is Running His Agency Like He's the Queen of England (The Hive)
Wells Fargo profits tank as it sets aside $1B for legal costs (Reuters)
Wells Fargo CEO says it 'feels like forever' since he took helm (N.Y.P.)
Jack Dorsey's Week from Hell Gets Worse (The Hive)
Tim Hortons releases 'Buffalo spice' latte (U.P.I.)
No comments:
Post a Comment