Why is everyone getting so outraged about JPMorgan Chase losing two billion bucks? It’s a bank. Isn’t losing money what modern banking is all about—you take in deposits from normal folk and then invest those hard earned funds in completely ludicrous schemes: subprime mortgage companies, credit card loans for people who aren’t creditworthy, Greece.
There is a small chorus of voices that is blaming neither government inaction nor banker recklessness for JPMorgan’s loss, but the policies of the Federal Reserve. These critics are arguing that excessive intervention by the central bank has distorted financial markets and forced big banks resort to risky moves in order to maintain profits.
The FBI has opened a probe of JPMorgan’s $2 billion botched trade, which has wiped out nearly $20 billion in shareholder equity and renewed calls for more aggressive regulation of Wall Street. News of the federal probe, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, came as CEO Jamie Dimon faced tough questions Wednesday [...]
JPMorgan’s $2 billion bungled trade has severely damaged the reputation of its CEO Jamie Dimon and vaporized nearly $20 billion in shareholder value. But will it lead to the kind of enhanced Wall Street regulation many experts have called for since the financial crisis?
JPMorgan Chase moved swiftly on Monday to contain the growing fallout from a trading loss that could reach $3 billion or more, replacing the bank’s chief investment officer Ina Drew and moving to tamp down a growing furor over whether safeguards exist to prevent a similar debacle in the future. Drew, who had worked her [...]
JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, said Thursday that it lost $2 billion in the past six weeks in a trading portfolio designed to hedge against risks the company takes with its own money. The company’s stock plunged almost 7 percent in after-hours trading after the loss was announced. Other bank stocks, [...]
Never discount Wall Street’s ability to turn the most basic parts of life into profits. Mother nature is the latest money spinner for financial firms. Despite the recent Northeast snowstorm, the unseasonably warm winter, and in general a lack of snow, could turn into big profits for the banks, brokerages and insurance firms that deal [...]
So far it appears the most noteworthy document of the 250,000 pages obtained by the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, which is holding a hearing on Wednesday on AIG’s government bailout, is a 44-page powerpoint presentation put together by bond firm Blackrock analyzing the insurer’s ability to negotiate haircuts on its largest CDS [...]
A reader (well, this Pulitzer-winning genius newspaper columnist of a reader), e-mails after reading my book: From the very beginning of financial capitalism, the goal seems to have been to beat the market, which is to say, anticipate and profit the upside and downside of the market—not the industry or business of the stock traded. [...]
