Wall Street’s largest investment banks are both peddling and profiting from the latest corporate craze known as “inversion mergers” in which large U.S.-based companies sell themselves off to foreign companies or subsidaries in order to further insulate themselves from paying taxes in their home country.

According to a story in the New York Times on Tuesday, banks like J.P Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup are closing in on gathering nearly $1 billion in fees alone—collected over the last three years—as they advise corporate clients on how to off-shore their ownership structure.

The Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin reports that “with seven- and eight-figure fees up for grabs, Wall Street bankers — and lawyers, consultants and accountants — have been promoting such deals […] to some of the biggest companies in the country, including the American drug giant Pfizer.”

Wider reporting indicates that Wall Street has showed new urgency in initiating and completing such deals given the “inversion” trend has now received the attention of Congress and following recent remarks by President Obama who indicated he agreed with those who call the practice “un-patriotic”  and damaging to the overall economy.

“It’s legal, but it’s not right,” Obama said last week, addressing the issue while in California. “They’re technically renouncing their U.S. citizenship,” he said of the companies. “They’re declaring they are based someplace else even though most of their operations are here. You know, some people are calling these companies corporate deserters.”

According to Reuters:

As Sorkin notes, neither the public shaming from the president or other lawmakers, nor the growing uproar among regular individual tax-payers is likely to change the behavior of the Wall Street titans or their corporate clients both of whom see large potential profits for themselves even as the nation’s tax base will suffer greatly in the years ahead.

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“This is going to sound cynical,”  one senior banker told the Sorkin, “but as much as I may hate these deals and the ramifications for our country, if I don’t do the deal, my competitor across the street will be happy to do it.”

And as Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan said on a conference call with reporters as he defended the practice, “You want the choice to be able to go to Walmart to get the lowest prices. Companies should be able to make that choice as well.”