Yesterday, Jamie Dimon, the boss of J.P. Morgan - who is known as the "King of Wall Street" (as opposed to, say, the "Wanker of Wall Street") - welcomed David Cameron to an event in Bournemouth, where his bank employs 4,000 staff. Dave probably didn't have to face any of the sort of impertinent questions from the assembled "workers" he was subjected to by members of the audience during his enormously successful Sky News appearance on Thursday night (well, not unless any J.P. Morgan employee was particularly keen on ending up in a tank filled with ravenous piranha fish).Mr. Dimon backed up the Prime Minister's dire warnings of economic ruin in the event of a vote to leave the EU by saying (no doubt more in sorrow than anger) that he would have "no choice" but to reduce headcount and shift jobs to some European country where voters haven't been offered a choice on whether to leave the EU (or where they have in effect voted to leave, but have been over-ruled by Eurocrats). A very adroit move on the part of the PM, I thought, to show himself hobnobbing with an American "one percenter" (or, rather, 0.00000000000001 percenter) - an international banker, no less - at the exact point in his campaign when he stands accused of being out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Britons.
Whenever J.P. Morgan is mentioned, it inevitably brings to mind the following passage from page 231 of Isabel Paterson's 1943 libertarian classic, The God of the Machine, in which she discusses the relief provided by the American government to alleviate financial distress following the Great Crash of 1929:
So when the current head of this august financial institution decides to go all Tony Soprano on Britain's collective butt, I would be surprised if the natural reaction of most Britons weren't to invite him to fuck off at the earliest available opportunity.
Bloody cheek!
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