Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Bankers - Foxes guarding the chicken house

I have seen the first name of James Dimon, CEO and Chairman of the Board of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. sometimes spelled Jaime or Jaimes. While reading a Wall Street Journal article on how banks' profits falling, I saw James Dimon mentioned. I decided to check how is name was spelled on the J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. web site. This eventually led me to the names of the board of directors.

How do all these people paid highly by other companies have the time to run another company (or even more)? The list at http://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/About-JPMC/board-of-directors.htm includes the CEOs, presidents, or chairmen of the board of Springs Industries, NBCUniversal, Honeywell, American Museum of Natural History, GrayLoeffler, Clear Creek Properties, Yum! Brands, and Johnson & Johnson. The only retired executive in the bunch is a former CEO of ExxonMobil. Many of these people also serve on the boards of yet more companies at $100,000 per year plus for showing up at five or so meetings a year - nice work if you can get it.

The real kicker about foxes is that James Dimon is on the Board of Directors of The Federal Reserve Bank of New York. I thought the Fed was supposed to regulate the banks.