poetry and govern in prose but the proesz doesn t have to be chilly latin. what do you make of that? i don t go as far to say f. think about the gap in what we saw in candidate obama, his oratorical skills and ability to communicate. think about the achievements barack obama has passed. the stimulus. the recovery act, that is. financial regulation. re-regulation. and the health care bill. none of those things are very popular in the country. and the reason they re not popular, largely, or at least part of the reason is, the president has not done a very effective job convincing people they were the right thing to do. we heard more from bill clinton last night about why health care, why obama care, is a good thing and what its benefits are than we ve heard from this administration over the course of the last nine months or a year. the stimulus the recovery act, we aheard a better case mae on the stump by joe biden about why the recovery act kept us out of depression than we ever h
welcome back to morning joe. joining us now, academy award-winning director charles ferguson, the author of a new book, criminal nation. in the book, he writes in part this. there has still not been a single criminal prosecution of a senior financial executive related to the financial crisis, nor has there been any serious attempt by the federal government to use civil suits, asset seizures, or restraining orders to exact fines or restitution from the people responsible for plunging the world economy into recession. real punishment for large-scale financial criminality is a vital element of the financial re-regulation that is in turn essential to america and the world s economic health and stability. regulation is nice, but the threat of prison focuses the mind. there s a point there. you know, earlier this week, we were commenting on the new
years and want to be the circuit judge can and then the d.a. and then the federal judge. and there s is the case. if you re a prosecutor, what do you want to be? a judge or the state attorney general so then you can be the governor. and destroying your donor base, not a good way to do that. or if you want to go into the private sector as a lawyer representing some of the big corporations or some of the big guys. i think he s absolutely right about personal ambition. but i think he s even more right that they re not going take de-regulation system or re-regulation seriously. there s no jail time. it s like the guy that you wanted to do more than 30 days, he is doing 30 more days than anybody that caused the financial collapse in this country. that s insane. the loss of billions and bottoms billions of dollars. do the losses at jp morgan chase play into your calculations here? well, it s a continuation of
what do you make of this situation with jamie dimon and chase, $2 billion in losses? we talk about whether banks have quote/unquote learned their lessons here. doesn t this hold every stereotype that these guys want to play fast and loose no matter what? it may well. i don t know the details of the trade. we are in the midst of pitch battle right now in washington to figure out what dined of reregulation we can do. people talk about principles. unregulated markets always crashed. always produce masses losses on risky bets. if this was something that wasn t a legitimate hedge, it was more like a momentum trade, this is the kind of thing that can happen. we need rules in place to ensure that everyone understands what the rules are. i personally don t think you should be able to hedge a position you don t have. i don t think if you want to place a bet, we have places for that. they are called casinos.
that is not something we should do in markets open to the public. this calls attention to the fact complex, derivative transactions can be tremendously risky. you can lose a ton of money in a short period of time. this may have been a propriety trade, money lost by jpmorgan itself but points to the need for substantial re-regulation of markets that were recklessly deregulated over the last 15 years and fits onto the volcker rule of derivative training. it does reenforce the public sense that there is not an adequate system of regulation. there is not adequate accountability. even here where you have the volcker rule which may have prevented something like this from happening, jamie dimon pushing back saying this doesn t violate the volcker rule but violates the dimon principle. jpmorgan is not going to report a quarterly loss based on this. they took a bad trade. they took a trade on corporate