Entrepreneurs entrepreneurin'
by Tom Sullivan
The JPMorgan Chase & Co. headquarters at 270 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan,
via Wikimedia Commons
Like Jesus the carpenter, I am a tradesman. Just without the sandals and his deep compassion and charity. My sin is, I don't aspire to be an entrepreneur. Unlike the sitting president, many of us just don't have the genes for entrepreneurship. Judging by policies that get the most traction in Washington, that makes us second-class citizens.
See, to be an entrepreneur is to be ennobled. A saint among citizens. A star in the capitalist firmament. Someone to make your mother proud. A job creator.
This is the gospel according to the ruling class, Ayn Rand, Horatio Alger, the Heritage Foundation and a heavenly host of other conservative think tanks. And quite a lot of politicians on either side of the aisle.
As venture capitalist Nick Hanauer said so memorably, "It's a small jump from job creator to The Creator. This language was not chosen by accident." It is, he said, a claim on status and privileges.
The business community let out a mighty, "We are not amused."
One of the stepping stones on the path to the Crash of 2008 was the Bush effort to create an "ownership society." Everybody should own a home. It is the American Dream and everyone should have one. Can't afford one? Not a problem. Financial wizards on Wall Street and their mortgage-backed securities could put you in a new home with no money down and no net cash flow. And then put your family out in the street when it all came crashing down.
Bankers did, by the millions, as David Dayen again details in a post this week for The Nation. Wall Street even paid its fines through fraud, according to a lawsuit now being heard in US District Court in New York City:
JPMorgan, it appears, was running an elaborate shell game. In the depths of the financial collapse, the bank had unloaded tens of thousands of toxic loans when they were worth next to nothing. Then, when it needed to provide customer relief under the settlements, the bank had paperwork created asserting that it still owned the loans. In the process, homeowners were exploited, investors were defrauded, and communities were left to battle the blight caused by abandoned properties. JPMorgan, however, came out hundreds of millions of dollars ahead, thanks to using other people’s money.Federal appointees at the Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight signed off on the JPMorgan. Former North Carolina congressman Brad Miller, a longtime advocate for financial reform, told Dayen:
“No one in Washington seems to understand why Americans think that different rules apply to Wall Street, and why they’re so mad about that,” said former congressman Miller. “This is why.”Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?