Zames is name of the game at JPMorgan

JPMorgan Chase, the biggest US bank, named Matt Zames sole chief operating officer as Frank Bisignano left to become chief executive officer of First Data Corp.

"Zames is expanding his role," JPMorgan Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said in an internal memo. Paul Compton, currently co-chief administrative officer of the corporate and investment bank, will become CAO of the company and report to Zames, according to the memo.

Bisignano's exit buttresses Zames' stature as a potential successor to Dimon, 57. Zames, 42, was promoted twice within the span of 100 days in 2012 as he helped Dimon regain control of a UK unit's wayward bets on credit derivatives that cost the bank more than $6.2 billion. Zames, who began last year as co-head of the fixed-income business, was named chief investment officer in May and co-COO in July.

Bisignano, 53, will begin his new job today, Chip Swearngan, a spokesman for Atlanta-based First Data, said in an e-mail. First Data, a unit of private-equity firm KKR, is the largest merchant acquirer in the US, helping retailers accept credit- and debit-card payments.

Technology and security were among Bisignano's responsibilities as co-COO, and he held executive roles within the payments industry earlier in his career.

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Not Dell to pay

Dell shareholders could still stand to profit even after Blackstone withdrew its bid to buy the PC maker, Barron's said yesterday. On Friday, Dell's stock closed at $13.35, below the $13.65-a-share proposed buyout from founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake.

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click For Restrictions

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Chill factor

Most popular songs

1. Gentleman, PSY

2. Just Give Me a Reason, Pink

3. Can't Hold Us, Macklemore / Ryan Lewis

4. Mirrors, Justin Timberlake

5. Stay, Rihanna

6. Thrift Shop, Macklemore / Ryan Lewis

7. When I Was Your Man, Bruno Mars

8. Get Lucky, Daft Punk

9. I Love It, Icona Pop

10. Radioactive, Imagine Dragons

Tivo favorites

1. NCIS

2. 60 Minutes

3. The Good Wife

4. The Voice, Tues.

5. The Voice, Mon.

Top video downloads

1. Pokemon prom proposal

2. Michael Bublé sings in NYC subway

3. Almost died

4. Have you ever seen an atom?

5. Teddy has an operation

Source: YouTube

Google trends

1. NASCAR

2. NFL draft grades

3. White House correspondents dinner

4. UFC

5. Yvette Prieto

Searches that have increased significantly.

NY Post hot topics

1. Boston suspects' 'helpers'

2. Selena a Belieber again

3. Thumping Iron

4. Warhol's secret diaries

5. The 20 worst shows right now

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Required Reading

The Woman Upstairs

by Claire Messud (Knopf)

In the latest novel from Messud ("The Emperor's Children"), 40-something would-be artist Nora Eldridge has settled. Instead of following her dream, she's a third-grade teacher in Cambridge with no children and no husband. Enter the Shahid family, which moves in downstairs. Their young boy is in her class; the mother is an Italian artist; the father is an academic. As Nora and the family intertwine, she is happier with her life. But this is no happily-ever-after story.

Bunker Hill

A City, a Siege, a Revolution

by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking)

Boston is well acquainted with struggle. Now Philbrick, the best-selling author of "Mayflower" and "Why Read Moby-Dick?" details the June 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill — and events leading up to it, starting with the Tea Party 18 months before. Colonial Boston, the author explains, was a town of 15,000 residents living in just over a square mile. Nearly everyone knew patriot soldiers who fought in the bloody battle. And the author gives an on-the ground view of everyday Bostonians — who were both for and against the Revolution.

The Mouth That Roared

My Six Outspoken Decades in Baseball

by Dallas Green and Alan Maimon (Triumph Books)

Baseball lifer Dallas Green is one of four men who managed both the Yankees and the Mets — but is distinguished as the only one who failed to reach the World Series with at least one of the teams. And while his tales of battles with George Steinbrenner, and with Mets management, are certainly entertaining, it's tragedy that makes this more than a typical baseball book. Green's granddaughter, Christina-Taylor Green, was killed in the Arizona shooting that wounded Rep. Gabby Giffords. His telling of that is heartwrenching. They say there's no crying in baseball. Not true.

The Prince of Paradise

The True Story of a Hotel Heir, His Seductive Wife, and a Ruthless Murder

by John Glatt (St. Martin's Press)

Ben Novack Jr. grew up in the 1950s and '60s in Miami's fabled Fontainebleau Hotel — more specifically, the 16th-floor penthouse — befriending the likes of Sinatra, Elvis and Ann-Margret, who all performed there. His parents owned the place. But his life ended at another hotel: He was beaten to death at a Hilton in Westchester County. His ex-stripper wife, Narcy, and her brother were later convicted of his murder. Veteran crime scribe Glatt gives us all the atmosphere, characters and facts to make an engrossing thriller.

Someday, Someday, Maybe

by Lauren Graham (Ballantine Books)

On Lauren Graham's résumé, we see "Gilmore Girls," "Parenthood" and . . . novelist? Yep. The popular actress, a Barnard grad, writes, apparently, from her own experience: In January 1995, Franny Banks has six months left on her self-imposed deadline to become an actress. An ad for ugly sweaters and waiting tables do not count. Her roommates, pal Jane and would-be sci-fi wrtier Dan, support her, but she needs more to get a career like her idol Diane Keaton (who blurbs the book).

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It’s always the economy

John Crudele

DEAR JOHN...THE ANSWER MAN

Dear John: Explain the following conundrum: Unemployment remains at about 8 percent, with an underemployment rate that is significantly higher.

Despite this, CNBC touts the return of the housing market.

I have spoken with consulting engineers, title companies, realtors and real-estate attorneys, and they are not seeing much of a pickup.

The government owes more than it can ever repay. We are in the classic definition of bankruptcy (liabilities exceeding assets), yet the stock market is on an upward tear that makes the irrational exuberance of the 1990s seem like sleepwalking.

At least that irrational exuberance had the tech explosion going for it.

The Federal Reserve has printed more money in the last three years than in the [previous] history of mankind, yet inflation is far lower than where it should be. We are about to have a mass retirement of baby boomers, yet we don't hear of the unsustainability of Social Security and Medicare.

Are we just a bunch of drunk, medicated gamblers hellbent on self-destruction? Or is the economy about to roar? A.P.

Dear A.P. What you are experiencing, I think, is people's desire to be optimistic — whether or not that optimism is warranted.

Let's talk about CNBC and all the other financial channels first. These stations need to fill hours and hours of on-air time. And the only way to do that is to invite guests from the financial community.

The vast majority of those guests are Wall Street salespeople in one form or another. So if you listen to these channels, you are going to get an overwhelmingly positive view of things, whether or not that view can be justified. There is just enough negativism to cover the stations' behinds in case there is financial calamity. CNBC learned its lesson the last time when it was criticized for luring people into financial deathtraps.

The other reason for the seemingly misplaced optimism is this: History tells us that bad economic times don't last forever. So, the experts figure, if they keep predicting an upswing in the economy, they will eventually be right. With the Fed, as you mentioned, pumping as much money as it is, can the upturn be far off?

But it's been five years, and we are still looking for that end-of-the-tunnel light.

I think the economy is growing very moderately. And it's worrisome that this is the best it can do, given the amount of stimulus provided by the Fed and the huge amount of money being spent by Washington. (That's also known as the deficit.)

I think inflation isn't as contained as the official numbers would make you believe. And price increases are only this moderate because there is not much demand for goods and services in this economy. In other words, the bad economy is keeping prices down.

I believe the housing market has gotten a little bit of a boost from people who think an investment in real estate is as good as anything else right now. But if the economy ever does break out, I think all the people who've wanted to sell their houses over the past five years will quickly glut the market with properties. And banks that have been holding onto foreclosed properties will also be sticking For Sale signs on a lot of lawns.

This is all a very dangerous situation. I hope I'm wrong, but this is one of those "better to be safe than sorry" sorts of economies.

Send your questions to Dear John, The NY Post, 1211 Ave. of the Americas, NY, NY, 10036, or john.crudele@nypost.com.

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App allows you to keep current

Are you looking for a convenient way to display business data next to personal info like upcoming events, incoming e-mails, tweets and news articles?

You might want to check out Status Board, a $9.99 iPad app that lets you configure various panels to display information from your e-mail, calendar and other services along with customized data.

Status Board comes with six built-in panels, displaying the time, weather, events and information from your inbox, Twitter account and RSS feed.

You can also create your own tables and graphs on more personalized data.

For your inbox, Twitter account and RSS feed, you can either have Status Board display incoming messages, tweets or articles, or chart their volume. You can also select from which local calendar Status Board pulls information. You can tap on a panel to change its settings.

You can create a bar graph or table using an Excel spreadsheet and then manually add it to your Status Board.

You can display only one Status Board at once. Although the app's manufacturer hopes to soon be able to let users switch between boards within the app, for now you can e-mail various Status Boards to yourself or colleagues and clients with the iPad app.

hlewis@nypost.com

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Slip of the tongue

Cilantro is the world's most divisive (legal) herb.

While some consider it a divine accent to most dishes, others have described it as "soapy," even "poisonous." There's a Facebook page called "I Hate Cilantro — an Anti-Cilantro Community" that boasts 11,000 likes, and beloved chef Julia Child once remarked in an interview with Larry King that it has a "dead taste."

Why such an extreme reaction?

Researchers aren't so sure. Studies have identified genes that might influence our appreciation of cilantro, but it's still just might be a matter of taste — one example of a sense that continues to befuddle scientists.

"There is a field that studies taste, and a field that studies smell, but very few people study their interactions. Taste and smell are still less understood than the other sense systems," says Yale neuroscientist Dana Small.

Sight and hearing, which seem more complex, are reasonably understood — while our everyday reactions to the foods we ingest remains a conundrum.

But then mysteries are right up science writer Mary Roach's alley. Roach has taken on sex, death and the supernatural in her previous bestsellers (respectively "Bonk," "Stiff," and "Spook"), and now she's back with "Gulp," tackling the most taboo of subjects: our digestive systems.

Most of the book isn't for the weak of stomach. Does one really to know what happens to our food after we swallow it? (For those who do, pick up the book for its chapters on Elvis Presley's constipation). But unlocking the puzzle of flavor is a delicious mystery.

Our sense of taste acts as the body's "gatekeeper," deflecting food that may be toxic (rotten or poisonous) and inviting in nutrient-rich foods (salts, sugars and fats) that are key to survival.

There are also taste receptors located in the gut, voice box and pancreas — but only the tongue's receptors report to the brain, where taste is discerned. The rest are believed to trigger hormonal responses and defensive reactions, such as vomiting.

Sweetness, for one, is believed to be enjoyed by nearly all humans because the brain associates it with fuel. Conversely, bitterness is often (but not universally) disliked because it can be a signal of poison.

Taste is the result of our estimated 10,000 taste buds (and their receptors) recognizing food chemicals and translating them into categories: sweet, bitter, salty, sour and savory.

This likely brings forth flashbacks of kindergarten, when we were forced to remember the diagram of the tongue mapped out into distinct locations for each taste (sweet on the tip, bitter in the back, for examples). Forget it — the diagram has been debunked. Instead, the taste buds and their varying receptors are located all over the tongue. No one area is responsible for one taste.

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In my library Richard Kind

Richard Kind often plays men who resemble his surname — amiable if slightly neurotic guys like the ones in "Mad About You," "Spin City" and "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife." So it's shocking — shocking! — to see him browbeating Bobby Cannavale's character in Broadway's "The Big Knife." In this Roundabout revival of Clifford Odets' slashing Hollywood drama, Kind's Marcus Huff is a monster, a studio bigwig who cries crocodile tears but will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Has he modeled Huff on any movie honcho in particular? "Not really," says Kind, a father of three, including 8-year-old twins. "But I don't trust any CEO's. I think that to get where they got, there's gotta be something askew." Here's what's in his library.

Getty Images

American Pastoral

by Philip Roth

It's set in the '60s, about a golden boy. He loves his family, and everything was going right for him until his daughter becomes politically active. She takes it a step too far, and his life crumbles. I was astounded at how hard that book hit me. You can do your best by your family and still something terrible can happen.

The Winter of Frankie Machine

by Don Winslow

I read his book "Savages." This one's about a hitman who's retired or at least peripherally involved, but suddenly forced back in. If you liked "Goodfellas" — a movie that, if I come across it [on television], I can't turn off — you'll love it. Robert De Niro has the rights to it, and I wish to God he'd make the movie. Do I want to be in it? Of course!

The Black Echo

by Michael Connelly

This is the first in his series about a grizzled police detective named Hieronymous Bosch, otherwise known as Harry. Since I had children, I'd fall asleep reading but I can read Connelly on a treadmill! I get the large print on my Kindle or iPad and jog. His books are easy to read and hard to put down.

Six Years

by Harlan Coben

We met at a charity poker event. I love his books. This one's like "North by Northwest." It's about an innocent man who gets caught up in a secret world of intrigue, all because he was involved with a woman who disappeared. Harlan told me Hugh Jackman was going to do the movie and then told me not to tell anyone. Two days later, I read it in the paper!

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An infested government: Rangel won’t go away

The Issue: Politicians who choose not to resign after a scandal, and instead try to continue their career.

***

Rep. Charlie Rangel, has some gall to say he is going to sue Speaker of the House John Boehner over his 2010 censure ("Charlie Rangel's War," Editorial, April 24).

Why doesn't he take his medicine like a man, and just step down?

He's lucky he was only censured and didn't face expulsion.

Tommy DeJulio

New Rochelle

As a constituent of Rep. Rangel, I am proud of the job he is doing and hope he continues for many years to come.

The Post should give up on the years-long vendetta against Rangel.

David McGlynn

Charlie Rangel

The congressman's judgment did not result in thousands killed and maimed in the Iraq War, which was based on lies.

The Post should concentrate on those issues.

John Santoro

Manhattan

Rangel, who should have been sharing a cell with Wesley Snipes, has the nerve to sue several members of the House to reverse his "humiliating" censure?

I know what a hardship it must have been to have to look at Nancy Pelosi for 30 seconds while she "berated" him for violating House ethics rules by getting caught — I mean, cheating on his taxes.

The only people worse than Rangel are the idiots in his district who continue to vote this criminal into office.

Steve Becker

East Meadow

So the thieving Rangel wants to sue his fellow congressmen for censuring him instead of giving him his "due process."

If he wasn't given censure and was given due process, he would be where he should be: prison.

Instead, he got to buy another congressional term.

Anyone with any sense of shame would have slithered away quietly. In the land of Spitzers, Weiners and Rangels, shame doesn't exist.

The low-moral voters will keep these losers around forever because they're Democrats.

Patrick O'Shea

Scotia, Pa.

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We’re not to blame for terror

The Issue: Whether America has brought acts of terror upon itself, as UN official Richard Falk suggests.

***

America is never held in high regard in the Islamic world, or among the liberal elites like Richard Falk, no matter what geopolitical or military decisions we make ("Oh, Terrorists, We're So Sorry," Michael Goodwin, April 24).

If we liberate nations from brutal secular dictatorships, like in Iraq and Libya, or barbaric mullahs, like in Afghanistan, we are "occupying forces" enhancing the "American global-domination project," as Falk bellows.

If we do not intervene, such as in Syria, we are uncaring.

Considering that we are broke, I agree with Ron Paul's isolationism. Let the other nations in the Middle East and elsewhere chart their own course while we save our gold and the precious blood of our soldiers.Herb Eichen

Bayside

If the Boston bombers had been right-wing loons instead of Muslims, President Obama & Co. would have acted immediately on the warnings we'd received from Russia.

Instead, he refuses to acknowledge that the American homeland is under siege from Islamists.

Shame on him and us for allowing this situation to continue.

Gerald Jacobs

Staten Island

Obama has refused to cite Islam as a motive for the Boston Marathon bombings, despite all the evidence.

It should be obvious that this was a case of "marathon violence," similar to the "workplace violence" that occurred at Fort Hood.

David Klein

Glen Cove

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