Banking Law

I get no respect. The way my luck is running, if I was a politician I would be honest.
--Rodney Dangerfield

Whether you're a banker or a bank regulator, college students across the country have made it clear: we don't want your stinkin' speeches.

J.P. Morgan Chase CEO James Dimon and others may think he did the right thing for the nation by acquiring Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns, as those financial institutions teetered on the brink of collapse in 2008.

But Dimon is no hero in certain corners of Syracuse University campus, where he is scheduled as the commencement speaker. (Hat Tip to Dealbreaker)

?He is a figurehead of an industry that has failed the American people in a lot of ways.?? said Ashley Owen, a Syracuse senior in a phone call from campus. ?I personally know students who have had to drop out of school because their parents have lost their jobs in the financial crisis. To have Dimon as our commencement speaker is really insensitive?

A journalism and geography major from central Massachusetts, Owen and about 800 other Syracuse students, alumni, parents and ?friends of the university? have signed a petition protesting the school?s choice of Dimon as the keynote speaker. They are asking the school to rescind the invitation, and are planning a protest on the campus green for this week. Dimon was picked from a short list of possible of speakers recommended by a student committee.

Owen is likely to have a lot more faith in "an industry that has not failed the American people in a lot of ways": the federal government.

After several minutes into the interview, Owen apologized for having to get off the phone. She had 20 more pages to finish of Karl Marx?s ?Das Capital? for a class assignment.

?I realize it is not so easy to toss capitalism out the window,?? she said. ?But I don?t know how these huge banks can operate for the benefit of the people. I think when things are too big, you can?t see how they are operating to benefit you, the individual.?

Unlike big government which, when it's "huge," clearly and transparently operates "to the benefit of you, the individual."

No, it's not easy to "toss capitalism out the window," but we're working hard at it these days. Don't give up hope, Ms. Owen.

You'd think young people who loath the Leviathan of Big Business (while embracing the ever-expanding change we were always waiting for) would love one of the champions of big government solutions (including the notion that the FDIC is the most logical bloated federal bureaucracy to "resolve" Too-Big-To-Fail financial Mastodons like the one run by Mr. Dimon). Yet, even at Sheila Bair's home-away-from-home, the University of Massachusetts (where she's "on leave" from her academic position while trying out her populist academic theories on real, live Americans who own and work for banks, and where she's likely to cocoon when she's through inflicting herself on FDIC-insured institutions), some youngsters would just as soon pass on her commencement day words of wisdom. According to one university newspaper columnist, Sheila Bair "will bore us all."

As a quick aside, it should be interesting seeing if the ceremony draws more people than the all-but-inevitable protest over the University once again choosing to honor a Bush administration appointee who played a controversial role in an ongoing disaster.

Honestly, I don?t care. Unless the 2011 speaker is Stephen Colbert I know I will neither attend nor miss my graduation.

This leader-of-tomorrow then veers off into a strange rant about gold and the FDIC. Apparently, the young man has spent a lot of time listening to Ron Paul instead of the more beneficial endeavor of listening to Les Paul. I doubt he's read William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech or, for that matter, could distinguish "William Jennings Bryan" frm "Anita Bryant" (although that's just my opinion; I could be wrong). Betcha he's current on Megan Fox, though.

No doubt about it: this country's future is in good hands.