[At the request of Miss Karen and in honor of Jersey Central Power and Light‘s request to increase electric rates by $600 million, I am reprising this tongue-in-cheek vignette originally published last November]

PR Staffer: Ladies and Gentlemen, our CEO, Jamie Dimon, has an important announcement:

Dimon: Good morning everyone, thank you for coming to this emergency press conference. I have a prepared statement: “JP Morgan Chase regrets to inform its shareholders, customers and partners that we have had a catastrophic breakdown of all of our systems. Databases, accounting records, communication and other systems are completely down. We are unsure when they will be back online. Any questions?”

Reporter: Mr. Dimon, what exactly caused the breakdown?

Dimon: The wind blew.

Reporter: The wind blew? And that caused, in your words, “a catastrophic breakdown?” I am sorry sir, but doesn’t the wind blow all the time?

Dimon: Well the wind blew really hard. And there was some rain.

Reporter: And you had no backup systems for a really hard wind? That kind of problem seems foreseeable.

Dimon: Nope. None. Oh, did I mention that pretty much all of our systems are down? Heck, they are using bungee cords to close vault doors. It’s a real mess.

Reporter: So when do you expect systems to be back up?

Dimon: No idea. Wouldn’t tell you anyway.

Reporter: Why not?

Dimon: We have to manage expectations. We can’t go around saying things will be fixed by a certain date. Then if we don’t deliver people get mad.

Reporter: So what are you doing?

Dimon: I am glad you asked. We have implemented what we call the Blanche Dubois Protocol.

Reporter: I am afraid to ask. Just what is the Blanche Dubois Protocol?

Dimon: You know, Stella’s sister from Streetcar Named Desire? Blanche Dubois says that she, “relies on the kindness of strangers.” That’s our plan. We called Wells Fargo, Bank of America. We even called Citibank, though we not expecting much from them.

Reporter: That doesn’t sound like much of a plan. How will you communicate your progress?

Dimon: We won’t.

Reporter: You won’t?

Dimon: What’s the point? People need us. They should be grateful we are doing anything at all.

Reporter: Grateful that you are not performing promised services?

Dimon: Look, we didn’t promise anything.

Reporter: Ok, let’s move on. So what can we expect in the future?

Dimon: Higher fees. Much higher fees.