Big Banker Bill Harrison's Bogus Brief for Broken Big Banks

By Richard (RJ) Eskow
August 23, 2012 - 8:03pm ET

Every day we rise and tell ourselves this will be a good day, free of that unique combination of predation, self-pity, mediocrity and disingenousness which characterizes the modern bank executive. And every day somebody proves us wrong.

Today it's William B. "Bill" Harrison, Jr., the retired banker who engineered the mega-merger which created JPMorgan Chase. That means the capstone of Harrison's career was the creation of an institution that has repeatedly broken the law, deceived its customers, foreclosed on homeowners with a motley crew of college-aged temps known as "the Burger King kids," received billions in public assistance ...

... and still underperformed the Dow Jones average, dropping in stock value to $37.23 (Thursday's closing price) from around $53 per share when it was created by Harrison in 2000.[1] You'd have been better off buying Treasuries.