I have disappointed Jamie Diamond.

I am, of course, loath to admit to this

personal failure but, it has to be confessed. I have made the CEO of Morgan Stanley
Chase Bank "tired" with my continual harping on how he and his banking brethren decide
to spend their money.

I wish Jamie had possessed the courage to speak to me directly about this failure,
on my part. However, he did not, and I had to hear about it from various press reports.

I should point out that, while I am certain I loom largest in Jamie's mind, I suspect
he is equally disappointed in many of you. Perhaps that, and not cowardice, was why
Jamie chose to alert us via the press. There are simply to damn many of us disappointing
persons to contact individually. That being so, being a man of impeccable manners, Jamie
felt it would be unfair to the rest of you if he contacted me directly and individually.

On the other hand, it could be that Jamie simply doesn't give a damn about any of
us. Perhaps he is simply pissed off at having to take any time from his busy day to deal
with our chronic and unreasonable bile. Could that be it, you think?

Whatever his inter motivations, Jamie's angst and aggravation is a symptom of a

much larger political struggle between two competing concepts of the role of government
in the American economy. It really isn't his fault he is a whiney little dweeb. It is his job
to maximize the returns to his shareholders and other stakeholders. I belong to neither of
these populations. So, I can see how he may well ask himself, "What business of it is
Copeland's?"

Putting aside the huge bailout the U S taxpayers paid to save the banking system
and J. P Morgan Chase, I have an interest in Jamie's complaints because they relate
directly to this political struggle that has, in no small way defined the nation. (Please do
not insult your or my intelligence by saving that Morgan and Goldman Sachs were two
banks that needed no bailout money but were made to take it. Had the rest of the financial
system not been rescued, both those banks would have died an immediate death. Further,
while it is clear Goldman Sachs staged the most brilliant daylight raid on the public
treasury in all history through the payments they received indirectly from the government
via AIG, I am not so certain as to Morgan's take from this haul. Perhaps that will come to
light in the near future.)

See, here's the thing, beginning, more or less, with the election of McKinley as
President, the nation began a sixty to seventy year march to protectionism. Not trade
protectionism, though that was sometimes a part of it, but protection of the less gifted of
us from the talents and energy of the most talented of us. This march to protection,
whether it was called 'Civil Service Reform' by Theodore Roosevelt, child welfare reform
by various Presidents, including Republican Presidents, other labor reforms by a variety
of Presidents from both parties, the New deal by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman,
the massive infrastructure projects and programs of Dwight Eisenhower, the New
Frontier of John Kennedy, the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson or the creation
of NOAA and the EPA under Nixon, the march to protection, sometimes called the
'nanny state,' was the consistent, primary national domestic policy of this nation until the
administration of President Ford.

Oddly, beginning in Johnson's administration, taking vicious root in Nixon's and

continuing unabated throughout time right on up to, and including, today, the national
policy shifted away from protecting the less talented from the potentially voracious
capacities of the most talented to freeing and empowering the most talented. Whether this
effort is called 'free trade, free movement of capital,' 'tax relief,' 'deregulation' or
"privatization,' it was all part of removing impediments to business by removing
protections covering the rest of the citizenry.

The Nixon and Johnson administrations, being cusp Presidencies, were rather
conflicted. Once past the cusp, it did not matter whether the president or the Congress
were controlled by Democrats or Republicans, the guiding policy was to create a 'playing
field' that favored the most talented of us and worked against everyone else. Carter's and
Clinton's policies were designed to accomplish this 'encouragement' of the wealthy no
less than Reagan's or the family Bush. The only difference was of degree, not intent.

I would like to think that this policy of empowering the rich at the expense of the
middle class and the poorer classes in our nation reached its zenith during the
administration of George W. Bush. Bush pushed through (Whatever you think about him,
'W' knew how to be President.) program after program of tax cuts for the wealthy and
deregulation and removal of protections and the general destruction of the heath delivery
system. He did all this never having more than a two vote majority in the Senate and
never more than a twenty vote majority in the House.

Moreover, 'W' had a genius for degradation and defilement of any program that
protected the middle and lower economic classes. In spite of this assault on the middle
and lower classes, he made many of those he hurt the worst love him for it. Though
history may record him as the worst President, I think he was one of the most effective at
pushing through the corporate statism by which we are now governed. More than any
other president, 'W' marshaled the political power of corporate America to help push his
programs through Congress. In doing so, he has left us with a tricameral legislature.

We now have what, in effect, are three houses of Congress: the Senate, the House
of Representatives and the body of corporate lobbyists. While the last group does not get
a direct vote on any issue, it does get to manipulate the legislative process and the
electoral process in a way that grants it effective control over any congressional action on
which a corporate consensus forms.

Never the less, the original two houses of Congress do still have some clout. That
there are some Representatives interested in all the "AIG emails" from the NY Federal
Reserve Bank directing the company to violate the open records law is something that
smacks of a reversal of the anti protection policy. While the people we have in Congress
probably have no interest in protecting anybody, the existence of these emails does offer
a little leverage over leaders of the third house of Congress. The representatives can use
these emails as leverage to extort some favor or other from the third branch. Maybe more
campaign money, maybe a new plant somewhere, maybe an out and out payment for
services rendered. Who can say?

How can you blame Jamie for being whiney and feeling put upon. Here he has the
very man, Timothy Geithner, on whose watch at the NY Fed the AIG counter party
payments were made, at one hundred cents on the dollar. It was also on Geithner's watch
AIG was ordered to stonewall, in violation of federal statutes, the press and Congress
about who received these payments.

Be charitable. Look at things from Jamie's point of view. Jamie has worked hard.
He and his fellow bankers apparently own the current President as surely as they owned
the last one. The bankers' man is the U S Treasurer. Congress should be fully to heel. Yet,
now these representatives are asking questions and complaining. That has to be
frustrating.

Well, surely now, now that I have explained it, you can understand Jamie's and
other banker's hurt feelings. I mean, how many times do Jamie and his banking brethren
have to buy the damn government before it stays bought?