SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Banks and Borrowers
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
-- Laurence John Peter, The Peter Principle
Oct 17, 2009
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
-- Laurence John Peter, The Peter Principle
The consumer doesn't understand how hard it is to be a Big Bank and, therefore, expects the Big Bank to be just as concerned about its customers as was the little bank Big Bank swallowed. I was reminded of that by Bill Moyers' Journal. It was a discussion of JPMorgan Chase (JPMC) that clients of mine had recently been taught was so big it could not possibly take care of its customers. In teaching them that lesson, it also taught them that it could charge tuition for the lesson. It was a very valuable lesson for me as well as for JPMC's customers but I'll share my lesson at the end of this column. First, Bill Moyers.
One of the participants in the Moyers interview was Marcy Kaptur (and the quotations herein are all taken from that interview). She is a member of Congress from Ohio. Serving her 14th term in Congress, she is the longest-serving Democratic Congresswoman in the history of the House. She discussed foreclosures.
Foreclosures in Toledo have gone up 94 percent. When Ms. Kaptur was home in Toledo she met with realtors and asked them what she should know about what was happening and they said: "Well, first of all, you should know the worst companies that are doing this to us." Ms. Kaptur asked who the worst offender was and she was told it was JPMorganChase. That same night she had dinner with Jamie Dimon, the bank's president and during the course of the evening said to him: "{Y]our company is the largest forecloser in my district. And our Realtors just said to me this morning that your people don't return phone calls. We can't do workouts." In response Mr. Dimon told Ms. Kaptur that he talks to the Governor of Ohio frequently and also talks a lot to the Mayor of Columbus, an interesting, if irrelevant response, since it is unlikely any of those conversations pertained to the governor or the mayor trying to refinance his house in order to avoid foreclosure. Ms. Kaptur suggested he needed to talk to people in the Northern part of the state where foreclosures were abundant. His response was to give her his business card and tell her he'd have someone call her.
People at JPMorganChase are very busy. No one called Ms. Kaptur even though her office repeatedly called the bank. Then a funny thing happened. Ms. Kaptur was on a national news show and told the interviewer how her calls were not returned by JPMC. Within ten minutes the bank called her office and said: "Oh, we'll work with you. We'll try to do some workouts in your area." As Ms. Kaptur explained: "We planned the first one after working with them for weeks and weeks and weeks. Their people never showed up. . . . We kept calling saying, 'Where's your person? Where's your person? And they finally sent somebody down from Detroit by 3:00 in the afternoon. But our people had been waiting all morning . . . ."
Ms. Kaptur's experience resonated with me and causes me to share with readers the Tale of Two Trusts. JPMorganChase was the trustee. This tale would never have made it into print but for the fact that it proves that JPMorganChase is no respecter of persons. It treats the mighty and the lowly alike-shamefully. The lowly in this tale were the three beneficiaries of two trusts worth less than $2 million. They were hardly worth noticing. JPMorganChase didn't. It assigned them to a trust officer who, among other things, did not return phone calls, used the assets of one trust to pay the bills of the other, put money belonging to one trust into the other, failed to make required distributions and issued no reports. When asked to resign, the bank said it would if all beneficiaries joined in the request. They did. Then a sad thing happened. The bank changed its mind. (That may have been because its fortunes were declining. Less than two months after changing its mind it received a bailout of $25 billion dollars.) The bank said the beneficiaries would have to go to court if they wanted to compel it to resign. So the beneficiaries hired lawyers and the bank hired lawyers. After many months and thousands of dollars in legal fees, the bank corrected the errors it had made and agreed to resign. As part of its agreement to resign, however, it required the beneficiaries to agree that their trusts would pay the more than $12,000 in legal fees it had incurred after reneging on its agreement to resign.
JPMorgan Chase is a Big Bank. It is too bad that the writer and Ms. Kaptur don't have a better understanding of the problems Big Banks face. If we did, this column would never have been written.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Christopher Brauchli
Christopher Brauchli is a Common Dreams columnist and lawyer known nationally for his work. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Colorado School of Law where he served on the Board of Editors of the Rocky Mountain Law Review. For political commentary see his web page at humanraceandothersports.com.
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
-- Laurence John Peter, The Peter Principle
The consumer doesn't understand how hard it is to be a Big Bank and, therefore, expects the Big Bank to be just as concerned about its customers as was the little bank Big Bank swallowed. I was reminded of that by Bill Moyers' Journal. It was a discussion of JPMorgan Chase (JPMC) that clients of mine had recently been taught was so big it could not possibly take care of its customers. In teaching them that lesson, it also taught them that it could charge tuition for the lesson. It was a very valuable lesson for me as well as for JPMC's customers but I'll share my lesson at the end of this column. First, Bill Moyers.
One of the participants in the Moyers interview was Marcy Kaptur (and the quotations herein are all taken from that interview). She is a member of Congress from Ohio. Serving her 14th term in Congress, she is the longest-serving Democratic Congresswoman in the history of the House. She discussed foreclosures.
Foreclosures in Toledo have gone up 94 percent. When Ms. Kaptur was home in Toledo she met with realtors and asked them what she should know about what was happening and they said: "Well, first of all, you should know the worst companies that are doing this to us." Ms. Kaptur asked who the worst offender was and she was told it was JPMorganChase. That same night she had dinner with Jamie Dimon, the bank's president and during the course of the evening said to him: "{Y]our company is the largest forecloser in my district. And our Realtors just said to me this morning that your people don't return phone calls. We can't do workouts." In response Mr. Dimon told Ms. Kaptur that he talks to the Governor of Ohio frequently and also talks a lot to the Mayor of Columbus, an interesting, if irrelevant response, since it is unlikely any of those conversations pertained to the governor or the mayor trying to refinance his house in order to avoid foreclosure. Ms. Kaptur suggested he needed to talk to people in the Northern part of the state where foreclosures were abundant. His response was to give her his business card and tell her he'd have someone call her.
People at JPMorganChase are very busy. No one called Ms. Kaptur even though her office repeatedly called the bank. Then a funny thing happened. Ms. Kaptur was on a national news show and told the interviewer how her calls were not returned by JPMC. Within ten minutes the bank called her office and said: "Oh, we'll work with you. We'll try to do some workouts in your area." As Ms. Kaptur explained: "We planned the first one after working with them for weeks and weeks and weeks. Their people never showed up. . . . We kept calling saying, 'Where's your person? Where's your person? And they finally sent somebody down from Detroit by 3:00 in the afternoon. But our people had been waiting all morning . . . ."
Ms. Kaptur's experience resonated with me and causes me to share with readers the Tale of Two Trusts. JPMorganChase was the trustee. This tale would never have made it into print but for the fact that it proves that JPMorganChase is no respecter of persons. It treats the mighty and the lowly alike-shamefully. The lowly in this tale were the three beneficiaries of two trusts worth less than $2 million. They were hardly worth noticing. JPMorganChase didn't. It assigned them to a trust officer who, among other things, did not return phone calls, used the assets of one trust to pay the bills of the other, put money belonging to one trust into the other, failed to make required distributions and issued no reports. When asked to resign, the bank said it would if all beneficiaries joined in the request. They did. Then a sad thing happened. The bank changed its mind. (That may have been because its fortunes were declining. Less than two months after changing its mind it received a bailout of $25 billion dollars.) The bank said the beneficiaries would have to go to court if they wanted to compel it to resign. So the beneficiaries hired lawyers and the bank hired lawyers. After many months and thousands of dollars in legal fees, the bank corrected the errors it had made and agreed to resign. As part of its agreement to resign, however, it required the beneficiaries to agree that their trusts would pay the more than $12,000 in legal fees it had incurred after reneging on its agreement to resign.
JPMorgan Chase is a Big Bank. It is too bad that the writer and Ms. Kaptur don't have a better understanding of the problems Big Banks face. If we did, this column would never have been written.
Christopher Brauchli
Christopher Brauchli is a Common Dreams columnist and lawyer known nationally for his work. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Colorado School of Law where he served on the Board of Editors of the Rocky Mountain Law Review. For political commentary see his web page at humanraceandothersports.com.
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
-- Laurence John Peter, The Peter Principle
The consumer doesn't understand how hard it is to be a Big Bank and, therefore, expects the Big Bank to be just as concerned about its customers as was the little bank Big Bank swallowed. I was reminded of that by Bill Moyers' Journal. It was a discussion of JPMorgan Chase (JPMC) that clients of mine had recently been taught was so big it could not possibly take care of its customers. In teaching them that lesson, it also taught them that it could charge tuition for the lesson. It was a very valuable lesson for me as well as for JPMC's customers but I'll share my lesson at the end of this column. First, Bill Moyers.
One of the participants in the Moyers interview was Marcy Kaptur (and the quotations herein are all taken from that interview). She is a member of Congress from Ohio. Serving her 14th term in Congress, she is the longest-serving Democratic Congresswoman in the history of the House. She discussed foreclosures.
Foreclosures in Toledo have gone up 94 percent. When Ms. Kaptur was home in Toledo she met with realtors and asked them what she should know about what was happening and they said: "Well, first of all, you should know the worst companies that are doing this to us." Ms. Kaptur asked who the worst offender was and she was told it was JPMorganChase. That same night she had dinner with Jamie Dimon, the bank's president and during the course of the evening said to him: "{Y]our company is the largest forecloser in my district. And our Realtors just said to me this morning that your people don't return phone calls. We can't do workouts." In response Mr. Dimon told Ms. Kaptur that he talks to the Governor of Ohio frequently and also talks a lot to the Mayor of Columbus, an interesting, if irrelevant response, since it is unlikely any of those conversations pertained to the governor or the mayor trying to refinance his house in order to avoid foreclosure. Ms. Kaptur suggested he needed to talk to people in the Northern part of the state where foreclosures were abundant. His response was to give her his business card and tell her he'd have someone call her.
People at JPMorganChase are very busy. No one called Ms. Kaptur even though her office repeatedly called the bank. Then a funny thing happened. Ms. Kaptur was on a national news show and told the interviewer how her calls were not returned by JPMC. Within ten minutes the bank called her office and said: "Oh, we'll work with you. We'll try to do some workouts in your area." As Ms. Kaptur explained: "We planned the first one after working with them for weeks and weeks and weeks. Their people never showed up. . . . We kept calling saying, 'Where's your person? Where's your person? And they finally sent somebody down from Detroit by 3:00 in the afternoon. But our people had been waiting all morning . . . ."
Ms. Kaptur's experience resonated with me and causes me to share with readers the Tale of Two Trusts. JPMorganChase was the trustee. This tale would never have made it into print but for the fact that it proves that JPMorganChase is no respecter of persons. It treats the mighty and the lowly alike-shamefully. The lowly in this tale were the three beneficiaries of two trusts worth less than $2 million. They were hardly worth noticing. JPMorganChase didn't. It assigned them to a trust officer who, among other things, did not return phone calls, used the assets of one trust to pay the bills of the other, put money belonging to one trust into the other, failed to make required distributions and issued no reports. When asked to resign, the bank said it would if all beneficiaries joined in the request. They did. Then a sad thing happened. The bank changed its mind. (That may have been because its fortunes were declining. Less than two months after changing its mind it received a bailout of $25 billion dollars.) The bank said the beneficiaries would have to go to court if they wanted to compel it to resign. So the beneficiaries hired lawyers and the bank hired lawyers. After many months and thousands of dollars in legal fees, the bank corrected the errors it had made and agreed to resign. As part of its agreement to resign, however, it required the beneficiaries to agree that their trusts would pay the more than $12,000 in legal fees it had incurred after reneging on its agreement to resign.
JPMorgan Chase is a Big Bank. It is too bad that the writer and Ms. Kaptur don't have a better understanding of the problems Big Banks face. If we did, this column would never have been written.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.