CapitalAccount 10/10/2012 - Nigel Farage on the Rise of UKIP, the Fall of Europe, and the Parallels for the US , Capital Account asks Jamie Dimon about the Failed Bear Stearns Acquisition at the CFR!

Nigel Farage on the Rise of UKIP, the Fall of Europe, and the Parallels for the US Welcome to Capital Account. Nigel Farage is a UK politician with a strong US following. He has seen his own party, UKIP, grow from a fringe faction to a viable mainstream alternative. By turning his European Parliamentary position into a bully pulpit for a growing movement of euro-skeptics, he has managed to ride an alternative political wave sweeping across the Atlantic. And many of his speeches before the EU have gone viral on the internet, particularly on the financial blogosphere in the United States, making the man and his United Kingdom Independence Party a force to be reckoned with. Nigel Farage joins us in studio to discuss all this, as well as what happens behind the scenes of Europe's Parliament and give us a sneak peak at his relationship with other MEPs behind the new iron curtain! Also, the IMF said Europe's banks may need to sell as much as 4.5 trillion dollars in assets through 2013 if policy makers fall short of their pledges to curb the crisis. This is 18 percent more than previously estimated. The failure to implement fiscal tightening could force EU banks to shrink assets, according to the IMF, and this painful deleveraging might crimp growth. We talk to Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party and Member of European Parliament, about how much pain is still left in the Eurozone. We ask him if he has been surprised at all, by the resilience of Eurozone leaders in their resolve to keep the monetary union together, and if he see's a timeline for a Grexit, a Spexit, and perhaps even an exit of France from the Franco-German Pact! And Jamie Dimon was in Washington today, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations. We are weeks away from the one year anniversary of MF Global's collapse. Since JP Morgan was a major counterparty and custodial bank of MF global, Capital Account tracked Jamie Dimon down to ask him about what he knew in the weeks before the broker's collapse. We also took him to task on the Bear Stearns acquisition and the civil fraud suit. Stay tuned to find out what he said at the end of the show! Capital Account asks Jamie Dimon about the Failed Bear Stearns Acquisition at the CFR! JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, said the bank did the Federal Reserve a "favor" by acquiring Bear Stearns in 2008 and that the bank has lost up to 10 billion dollars related to its acquisition through litigation, write downs, etc. Jamie Dimon was in Washington D.C., at the Council on Foreign Relations, where Capital Account segment producer Justine Underhill asked him if he now regretted working with the Fed to acquire Bear Stearns. Specifically, the New York Attorney General's filing of a civil lawsuit alleging fraud related to mortgage securities at Bear is what sparked the market's concern. Below we have some of Jamie Dimon's response: Dimon said JP Morgan Chase was asked by the government to buy Bear Stearns "at great risk to ourselves." When asked if he would reconsider acquiring Bear Stearns knowing what he knows know about the company, Jamie Dimon said: "it's real close," and said that his board wouldn't let him. Dimon said the 10 billion dollars in Bear-related losses can be put in the "unfair category," adding that he "thinks the government should think twice before they punish businesses every single time something goes wrong." Here's the Q&A from the press conference with Dimon's attempt to settle the score.