"JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon got his real start with Sanford Weill at Commercial Credit in Baltimore in 1985…" – News report
The plan was hatched when we were smoking Viceroys
In the blue and modern building that we passed by every day
Laughing past the Harbor Court Hotel where they both stayed
On the way to Jesse Jackson campaign headquarters,
Or my father’s homegrown weed we tried to smoke
Unsuccessfully from my saxophone, by the bus stop where
Poe appeared in smoke to tell me “translate Baudelaire.”
We laughed at dreams of fame, and cried for those we saw
Everyday, as we we raged against the gap
In the long coke binge called Reagan’s America
Between the have-not’s and the hands who pulled the strings.
They were learning too, how to mainstream loan shark loans,
How to fool wholly-desperate, semi-literate black people
To buy insurance for the bank, “payment protection”
They would call it, in closed-folder closings to force
Squeegie kid parents to sign, techniques they refined
While we tried to enter antique stores to buy old dulcimers
Or listened to Soweto Jazz and Marxist agit-pop,
Or managed pain like waste, or walked the complaint plank
From bar to bar along the godforsaken town down the river.
Sub-prime loans, they finally called them, as they found their
Path to power, to become in ’98 the largest
Financial institution that the world had ever seen,
On the backs of the hapless poor,
While we were planting shrubs and forming families,
Grateful for the trickle-down of a Subaru on credit
And a home without a basement needing labor we called love.
They worked on credit default swaps and naked synthetic triggers,
Making phone calls so Glass-Steagall would go away,
To distract us from the plan to slash the wages
And living standards of America’s middle class
Permanently, on the backs of the hapless poor,
While we paused from life to look down the President’s pants
And count chads in Volusia County
And pretend that Al Qaeda was not El Al CIA.
And now we all are squeegee kids, with six-figure debt portfolios,
Every one of us, paramilitary troops and drones
Keep us off the armored limos of Jamie and his kept men
So they’ll be spared our “jealousy” at having to pay
For his $70 trillion dollars in stupid, greedy losses
With the blood and bones of our children, and the many
Generations after them. He eats at a cafeteria
In the building next to the one I work in now,
Where there never is the indignity of a bill
Or a shortage of blue fin tuna (that BP profits
Helped make possible). There’s a trail of slime behind him,
So many seedy ways to chisel people’s money:
The revolutionary overdraft processing system
That intentionally prioritized higher dollar transactions
So that as many transactions as possible could overdraft;
The $325 million in segregated MF Global customer funds
That he took when he was supposed to be custodian;
The bribed officials in Jefferson County, Alabama, one of
The poorest counties in the US, who entered into a derivatives
Transaction so deadly it forced the citizens to choose
Between sewage treatment and food;
The thousands of multi-million dollar lawsuits
And the paltry sums paid to make them go away
As the cost of doing business, nothing personal, for the world's
Largest public company, the biggest bank too big to jail
(Despite debt more than the entire GDP of the world
A few times over). He’s one of the good guys, the President says,
And maybe he is, in his heart of hearts, where he’s
Worried another wizard might be mixing something up
In some other basement shop. He knows how only
The best and most ruthless of any bunch will be
Immunized from loss, as he writes laws and Op-Ed pieces,
Collects the best politicians money can buy,
And sits on the board of the Federal Reserve
Bequeathing to himself unlimited sums of money
For free to lend at profit, or to gamble instead
For a higher return where he knows any loss from the risk
Will be made whole. His life is a gift to us
To see beyond all his transparent lies
To the vast infrastructure of corruption
That infects every channel of communication
And subverts every walk of life,
While I write poems that don't even change things for myself.
Captain James, painting by Robert McClintock
It’s that grounded merchant ship the Greek owner made
A restaurant of, as a gift to bountiful America,
Where no one ever came to eat. The only time
I ever saw him in all his years in Baltimore was there,
In the dark beyond the perfectly set tables,
Looking at all the invisible people. These were his people,
But even they were jealous, the ghosts who said
The only things that weren’t quite disrespectful.
The only things I ever heard as well.
Captain James posing with his blues guitar
