Dear Jamie Dimon. By Joshua M. Brown. The Reformed Broker, December 20, 2011.
Brown:
Dear
Jamie Dimon,
I hope
this note finds you well.
I
am writing to profess my utter disbelief at how little you seem to understand
the current mood of the nation. In a story at Bloomberg today, you and a handful of fellow banker and billionaire “job
creators” were quoted as believing that the horrific sentiment directed toward
you from virtually all corners of America had something to do with how much
money you had. I’d like to take a moment
to disabuse you of this foolishness.
America
is different than almost every other place on earth in that its citizenry
reveres the wealthy and we are raised to believe that we can all one day join
the ranks of the rich. The lack of a
caste system or visible rungs of society’s ladder is what separates our empire
from so many fallen empires throughout history.
In a nation bereft of royalty by virtue of its republican birth, the
American people have done what any other resourceful people would do – we’ve
created our own royalty and our royalty is the 1%. Not only do we not “hate the rich” as you and
other embubbled plutocrats have postulated, in point of fact, we love
them. We worship our rich to the point
of obsession. The highest-rated
television shows uniformly feature the unimaginably fabulous families of
celebrities not to mention the housewives (real or otherwise) of the rich. We don’t care what color they are or what
religion they practice or where in the country they live or what channel their
show is on – if they’re rich, we are watching.
When
Derek Jeter was toyed with by the New York Yankees when it came time for him to
renew his next hundred million dollar contract, the people empathized with
Derek Jeter. Sure, this disagreement
essentially took place between one of the wealthiest organizations in the
country and one of the wealthiest private citizens – but we rooted for Jeter to
get his money. Nobody begrudged him a
penny of it or wanted a piece of it or decried the fact that he was luckier
than the rest of us. In the American
psyche, Jeter was one of the good guys who was deservedly successful. He was one of us and an example of hard work
paying off.
Likewise,
when Steve Jobs died, he did so with more money than you or any of your “job
alliance” buddies – ten times more than most of you, in fact. And upon his death the entire nation went
into mourning. We set up makeshift
shrines to his brilliance in front of Apple stores from coast to coast. His biography flew off the shelves and people
bought Apple products and stock shares in his honor and in his memory. Does that strike you as the action of a
populace that hates success?
No,
Jamie, it is not that Americans hate successful people or the wealthy. In fact, it is just the opposite. We love the success stories in our midst and
it is a distinctly American trait to believe that we can all follow in the
footsteps of the elite, even though so few of us ever actually do.
So,
no, we don’t hate the rich. What we hate
are the predators.
What
we hate are the people who we view as having found their success as a
consequence of the damage their activities have done to our country. What we hate are those who take and give
nothing back in the form of innovation, convenience, entertainment or scientific
progress. We hate those who’ve exploited
political relationships and stupidity to rake in even more of the nation’s
wealth while simultaneously driving the potential for success further away from
the grasp of everyone else.
Here
in New York, we hated watching real estate and financial services elitists
drive up the prices of everything from affordable apartments to martinis in
midtown with the reckless speculation that would eventually lead to mass
layoffs, rampant joblessness and the wreckage of so many retirement dreams. No one ever asked the rest of us if we
minded, it just happened. I’m sure people across the country can tell similar
stories.
So
please, do us all a favor and come to the realization that the loathing you
feel from your fellow Americans has nothing to do with your “success” or your “wealth”
and it has everything to do with the fact that your wealth and success have
come at a cost to the rest of us. No one
wants your money or opportunities, what they want is the same chance that their
parents had to attain these things for themselves. You are viewed, and rightfully so, as part of
the machine that has removed this chance for many – and that is what they hate.
America
hates unjustified privilege, it hates an unfair playing field and crony
capitalism without the threat of bankruptcy, it hates privatized gains and
socialized losses, it hates rule changes that benefit the few at the expense of
the many and it hates people who have been bailed out and don’t display even
the slightest bit of remorse or humbleness in the presence of so much suffering
in the aftermath.
Nobody
hates your right to make money, Jamie.
They hate how you and certain others have made it.
Don’t
be confused on this score for a moment longer.
