Author: mfnnews
Jamie Dimon’s ‘cockroach’ economy is eating Main Street alive
Jamie Dimon has been running JPMorgan Chase for nearly two decades. The business press still hails him as the man who steered the bank through the 2008 financial crisis.
I’m less impressed. It’s easy to look steady at the helm when you’re floating on a $29 trillion sea of taxpayer bailouts.
This is what half a century of bipartisan corruption produces: a crony capitalist system that privatizes profit, socializes loss, and lets the rest of us drown.
Yes, Dimon saw the 2008 crash coming and made some smart adjustments ahead of the collapse. Credit where it’s due — barely. But once the dust settled, JPMorgan rewarded itself handsomely for surviving the storm.
JP Morgan said yesterday that its earnings “fell short” of their potential last year — but it still felt able to hand its investment bankers a 22 per cent increase in their bonuses.
Kicking off what could be a stormy reporting season, America’s second-largest bank paid them $9.3bn, compared with $7.7bn in 2008. Total pay for its 222,315 employees came in at $26.9bn — 18 per cent from $22.7bn the year before — largely because of a sharp increase in bonuses paid throughout the bank. The announced sparked outrage among critics who described the figures as “obscene.”
“Obscene” doesn’t begin to cover it.
So when Dimon made headlines a couple of weeks ago with his “cockroaches” comment, I didn’t rush to celebrate another round of supposed insight.
“When you see one cockroach, there are probably more, and so everyone should be forewarned of this one,” Dimon told analysts, referring to the bankruptcies of subprime auto lender Tricolor and auto-parts maker First Brands.
Dimon’s metaphor was awkward enough — he mentioned two cockroaches while warning about seeing just one. But worse, he got caught by the same kind of subprime rot that tanked the global economy in 2008.
“Dimon said that JPMorgan is reviewing its controls after the Tricolor bankruptcy and said the $170 million loss is ‘not our finest moment.’”
No kidding. His “cockroach detector” still doesn’t work.
Now Dimon is back in the headlines again for another round of supposed “foresight.”
“JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned in an interview that the stock market could be in line for a significant correction within the next few years amid heightened uncertainty. Dimon told the BBC that there is an elevated risk of a stock market correction in the next six months to two years, saying, ‘I am far more worried about that than others.’”
Glad to meet you, Mr. Dimon. Some of us have been worried for decades.
RELATED: America’s debt denial has gone global
Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images
Back in 1989, when my high-school history teacher asked the class to name America’s biggest problem, I said “the federal debt.” Not just because debt is bad, but because Washington was pretending deficits didn’t matter — and voters let them.
Nearly 40 years later, nothing has changed. The numbers are bigger. The lies are the same. Ignore a problem long enough, and it grows until it devours you.
Our economy isn’t a Mr. Potato Head toy, where government spending sits neatly apart from everything else. It’s one big pile of money — and the federal government keeps shoveling from the productive side to the wasteful side.
Every dollar borrowed for political vanity projects is a dollar you can’t use to start a business or buy a home. As the federal machine consumes more and more of the pool, it’s not the elites who get crowded out. It’s everyone else.
Poor people’s home mortgages are down 46%. Rich people’s art-collection loans are up 30%.
This is what half a century of bipartisan corruption produces: a crony capitalist system that privatizes profit, socializes loss, and lets the rest of us drown.
Look at Walmart. The company pulls tens of billions of taxpayer dollars a year through the SNAP program — the same program many of its employees rely on to eat because Walmart won’t pay them enough to live.
Independent research confirms it: Thousands of Walmart workers depend on Medicaid and food stamps.
Big government lets big business pocket our tax money on both ends — profits in private, losses in public. Even their labor costs get offloaded to us.
So when politicians wail about a “government shutdown” disrupting SNAP payments, remember who they’re really worried about. It’s not the families at the grocery store. It’s the corporations cashing in.
RELATED: Trump admin blames Senate Democrats for SNAP debacle: ‘The well has run dry’
Photo by Mel Musto/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A system this warped can’t last. You can call America the greatest nation in history if you like, but greatness doesn’t square with more than $38 trillion in government debt and record levels of personal debt.
Household debt, credit-card debt, mortgage debt — all at historic highs. Nearly a quarter of Americans are buying food on layaway. And 42% have zero emergency savings.
Meanwhile, Washington keeps inflating Wall Street’s floaties.
Main Street drowns while Big Government keeps Big Business comfortably above the surface.
Jamie Dimon thinks he’s just spotted the first cockroach. But the infestation started long ago — right inside the marble halls of Washington, D.C.
And if no one finally fumigates the place, the rot will force-condemn the entire country.
Illegal alien pedophile allegedly ‘physically assaulted’ ICE agent during immigration operation: DHS
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent sustained serious injuries to his face on Monday during an immigration raid in Houston, the Department of Homeland Security reported on Thursday.
According to a DHS press release, Walter Leonel Perez Rodriguez, 33, was arrested during a Monday encounter with ICE agents in Houston.
‘This young officer’s life has forever been altered as a result of the continued hyper-politicization of routine law enforcement activities and spread of misinformation by the media, NGOs, and other groups opposed to immigration enforcement.’
During the encounter, Rodriguez is “alleged to have resisted arrest and physically assaulted an ICE officer with a metal coffee cup.”
The ICE officer sustained severe burns and a “deep gash” to his face that required 13 stitches.
RELATED: Illegal alien learns his fate after a Wisconsin judge allegedly helped him evade ICE
ice.gov
“This young officer’s life has forever been altered as a result of the continued hyper-politicization of routine law enforcement activities and spread of misinformation by the media, NGOs, and other groups opposed to immigration enforcement in this country,” ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Houston Field Office Director Bret Bradford said in a statement.
“By focusing on our officers and spreading false propaganda about how we accomplish our mission, they are emboldening dangerous illegal aliens like this child predator to physically resist arrest. This insanity has to stop before anyone else gets hurt,” Bradford added.
Rodriguez, a Salvadoran national, has a long criminal record prior to his recent arrest and charges.
The Department of Homeland Security stated Rodriguez illegally entered the U.S. “at least three times” and faced deportation in 2013 and 2020.
In addition to the immigration offenses, Rodriguez, a “pedophile and criminal illegal alien,” was convicted of sexually assaulting a child, child fondling, and “multiple” DUIs, according to the DHS.
“Anyone who lays a hand on our ICE officer will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” the Department of Homeland Security wrote on X.
Now in custody, Rodriguez was referred for prosecution on charges of illegal re-entry and assaulting a federal officer.
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Can leucovorin cure autism? Meet the moms determined to find out
A humble, decades-old folate compound — used not to fight cancer but to ease the side effects of chemotherapy — has become the latest flashpoint in America’s health wars.
On September 10, the Trump administration announced that the FDA would move toward approving leucovorin for children with cerebral folate deficiency, a rare metabolic disorder linked to autism in some cases. Supporters hailed it as long-overdue recognition of promising small studies; critics called it another example of the MAHA agenda politicizing science.
While bureaucrats and scientists bicker, families with real skin in the game tirelessly run their own experiments and share their results, hoping the science will eventually catch up.
The debate since has been fierce, with professional groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics advising against the off-label use of leucovorin for autism, warning that the evidence remains preliminary — while prominent physicians call for larger, biomarker-guided trials to confirm what early studies suggest.
A parent’s love
All parties insist their motives are pure, but this latest skirmish is a reminder of how tangled those motives can be. What drives the people and institutions pushing medical science forward is often a sincere desire to help people, yes — mixed in with ambition, rivalry, financial interest, and the unspoken urge to be the one who’s right.
But there’s another force at work here, deeper and simpler, and it tends to override all the rest: a parent’s love for a child.
This is the same love that kept the parents of children with cystic fibrosis pushing to understand a condition doctors considered hopeless, or that led a Hollywood father to resurrect a forgotten epilepsy therapy to help his son. And now it’s the force animating hundreds of parents who believe a decades-old folate compound has literally given their autistic children a voice.
While bureaucrats and scientists bicker, families with real skin in the game tirelessly run their own experiments and share their results, hoping the science will eventually catch up.
Even before the FDA signaled approval of leucovorin for cerebral folate deficiency — a rare metabolic disorder with links to autism — parents have been sharing reports of progress with the drug on Reddit forums and in Facebook groups to share anecdotal reports of progress. A few families have also told their stories in clinic-produced or news-segment videos.
A treatment’s hope
Leucovorin, also called folinic acid, is a bioactive form of folate. It’s been used for decades to “rescue” patients from high-dose chemotherapy. In autism, it’s being repurposed to bypass what some researchers call a “folate transport blockade.”
Up to 70% of autistic children in certain studies test positive for folate receptor alpha autoantibodies — immune proteins that prevent folate from reaching the brain. The result: cerebral folate deficiency. High-dose folinic acid appears to restore that supply, sometimes with striking behavioral effects.
Dr. Richard Frye, a pediatric neurologist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, led one of the first controlled trials in 2016. His team found improved verbal communication in FRAA-positive children treated with leucovorin. Later case studies described language bursts, better eye contact, and calmer affect.
RELATED: Tylenol fights autism claims, slams proposed FDA warning label as ‘unsupported’ by science
Photo by ISSAM AHMED/AFP via Getty Images
From ‘no words’ to the Pledge of Allegiance
The parents themselves provide more affecting testimony. Carolyn Connor’s son Mason was 1 when she realized something was amiss: “He wasn’t talking. No language. No words.”
When their pediatrician downplayed this lag in development as typical in boys, she and her husband began doing their own research, which led them to Frye. Three days after starting leucovorin, Mason spoke his first words.
Now 6, he continues to take the medication, and continues to thrive.
Beth Ann Kersse’s daughter was diagnosed with autism at age 3. “In her vocabulary she had about three or four words,” Kersse said in a video uploaded by Washington, D.C.-based Potomac Psychiatry.
“But she didn’t call me ‘Mom.’ She kind of would point at me,” she added.
That’s when Kersse and her husband began exploring leucovorin. Two years later, Kersse describes her almost 5-year-old daughter’s transformation as “incredible.”
“The other day she stood up and put her hand over her heart, and she recited the Pledge of Allegiance, and we were just like, OK … I didn’t know we knew that. … She’s able to have a full conversation; she can tell us how she’s feeling.”
Late last month, Nebraska pediatrician Dr. Phil Boucher posted a case study detailing how a 3.5-year-old autistic girl responded to leucovin treatment, citing texts from her mother reporting that she was “blown away” by the changes she observed:
She is starting to consistently look at people when they call her name. … She’s becoming more interested in her little sister. … She also has started taking some of the baby dolls that we have and has been covering them up with a blanket, giving them a kiss, and saying, “Night night.”
As Boucher is careful to point out, anecdotal success stories like these don’t prove the drug works. But to those experiencing the improvement firsthand, they’re a promising sign that a simple, inexpensive vitamin derivative can do what years of therapy can’t.
And if this promise does indeed bear fruit, leucovorin treatment will be the latest of many homegrown revolutions in medical care spearheaded by determined mothers and fathers unwilling to wait for consensus.
Alden Richards shares Christmas wish: Accountability, action against corruption
Alden Richards” Christmas wish this year is fairness for all, as well as accountability and action against corruption from those in power.
Gabbi Garcia sa pagbabalik niya bilang si Alena sa ‘Sang”gre”: ‘You guys won”t be disappointed”
Inilahad ni Gabbi Garcia ang kasiyahan sa kaniyang pagbabalik bilang si Alena sa “Encantadia Chronicles: Sang’gre.”
Caprice Cayetano, proud sa kaniyang mga magulang: ‘Pinalaki po nila ako nang maayos’
Isang proud na anak ang Sparkle artist na si Caprice Cayetano nang mapag-usapan ang kanilang mga magulang sa loob ng Bahay ni Kuya.
Dingdong Dantes to tackle unfulfilled infrastructure projects in ‘Broken Roads, Broken Promises”
Dingdong Dantes has an upcoming GMA Public Affairs documentary, “Broken Roads, Broken Promises,” which will tackle unfinished and unfulfilled infrastructure projects across the country.
Lexi Gonzales to star in upcoming ‘Magpakailanman’ episode
Trigger warning: This article contains mentions of abuse
Uwan intensifies into typhoon with 120 kph winds, says PAGASA
Tropical cyclone Uwan is now a typhoon with winds of up to 120 kph and gustiness of 150 kph as of 8 p.m., PAGASA said on Friday night.
