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The private-equity tycoon Stephen A. Schwarzman, backed by an array of mostly western blue-chip companies with interests in China, is creating a $300 million scholarship for study in China that he hopes will rival the Rhodes scholarship in prestige and influence. The programme, whose endowment represents one of the largest single gifts to education in the world and one of the largest philanthropic gifts ever in China, was announced by Mr. Schwarzman in Beijing on Sunday. The Schwarzman Scholars programme will pay all expenses for 200 students each year from around the world for a one-year master’s programme at Tsinghua...

Since prevailing fringe theory is that JPMorgan and the other bullion banks 'control' the price of gold, we thought it would be interesting to hear yet another explanation for last week's monumental precious metal market events... from the horse's mouth... Via JPMorgan, Who sold the gold? Gold’s 1 day fall of 9% on Monday was one of the largest 1-day falls in the history of the gold market, but what do we know about who was selling? We have three high frequency flow indicators for the gold market: CFTC futures positions, Gold ETFs and gold coin sales in the US. Of course,...

According to the study, the current food stamp Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card industry is dominated by three main players: J.P. Morgan Electronic Financial Services, Affiliated Computer Services, and eFunds. Together they collect money from 49 states and three territories. In fact, since 2004, 18 of 24 states that contract with J.P. Morgan have paid more than $560 million to the financial monolith.

BE afraid. That’s the takeaway for both investors and taxpayers in the 307-page Senate report detailing last year’s $6.2 billion trading fiasco at JPMorgan Chase. The financial system, thanks to dissembling traders and bumbling regulators, is at greater risk than you know. After bailing out the nation’s banking system in 2008, taxpayers and investors have been assured that such a crisis will not happen again. The Dodd-Frank legislation was supposed to make our system safe from the kinds of reckless banking activities... --SNIP-- But the true value in this Senate investigation is its spotlight on the ability of bank executives...

While the US Senate takes on Too-Big-To-Fail banks, other economic news hit the wires. First, the University of Michigan Survey of Consumer Confidence Sentiment fell to 71.8 and has not been above 80 last seen in 2007. Industrial production rose 0.7% in February and capacity utilization rose to 79.6%. Not quite 80%, but getting really close. But notice that the peaks of capacity utilization are falling. But the big news today was the Senate hearing on JPMorganChase and its CEO Jamie Dimon. JPMorgan Report Ignites Debate on Bank Size By Dawn Kopecki, Clea Benson and Hugh Son JPMorgan Chase &...

When two weeks ago we exposed the heretofore secret location of JPM's London gold vault (located under the firm's massive L-shaped office complex at 60 Victoria Embankment) we thought: what about New York? After all, while London is the legacy financial capital of the "old world", it is in New York that the biggest private wealth of the past century is concentrated, and it is also in New York where the bulk of the hard assets backing the public money of the world's sovereigns are located, some 80 feet below ground level in the fifth sub-basement of the New York...

J.P. Morgan Chase JPM -0.21% & Co. stepped up the pace of bank cost cutting, setting plans to eliminate 17,000 jobs by the end of next year and reduce expenses by at least $1 billion annually. The move announced Tuesday by the New York company, the nation's most profitable bank in 2012 and the biggest U.S. lender by assets, will reduce its staff by 6.5% in one of the most aggressive reductions to date amid widespread financial-industry cutbacks.

<p>MIAMI (AP)— Millions of food stamp recipients in 10 states were unable to use their debit cards for about six hours Friday after an outage at JPMorgan Chase.</p> <p>Bank spokesman Mike Fusco apologized for the inconvenience and said the technical glitch was resolved around 1 p.m. Friday, but he declined to discuss details of what exactly went wrong.</p>

In a startling assertion almost buried in last night’s “On the Record” interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa indicated he has criminal charges in store for an ATF official implicated in the Fast and Furious “gunwalking” operation. Referring to “double-dipping” by former Assistant Director William Hoover [CORRECTION: should be "McMahon"--transcription error on my part--DC], hired by the J.P. Morgan financial services conglomerate while he’s on leave from ATF and awaiting retirement, Issa let slip with what should be considered a bombshell announcement, and a precursor for things to...

(CNSNews.com) - The long-awaited inspector general's report on the Justice Department's botched gun-running scheme is finished, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said on Wednesday. But along with that news comes more questions: Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) are demanding to know why a top ATF official involved in Operation Fast and Furious remains on paid leave from ATF -- while simultaneously drawing a six-figure salary from J.P. Morgan, a major investment bank.

On July 18th, 2012, the German government sold US$5.13 billion worth of 2-year bonds at an average yield of -0.06%. Please note the negative symbol in front of that yield number. What this means is that the German government was able to borrow money for less than nothing. When those specific bonds expire in two years’ time, the German government will pay back the original $5.13 billion minus 0.06%. Expressed another way, investors knowingly and willingly bid the German government $5.13 billion in exchange for bonds that will pay no interest and are guaranteed to lose them money on expiration.1...

A day after spooking Wall Street with a massive trading glitch, Knight Capital Group (KCG: 6.94, -3.39, -32.82%) revealed a stunning $440 million pretax loss on Thursday tied to the incident, sending the embattled market maker’s shares plummeting another 58% and searching for an emergency loan from J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM: 36.00, 0.00, 0.00%). The turmoil has forced Knight Capital to reach out to J.P. Morgan for emergency financing aimed at shoring up the company’s depleted capital base, a source told FOX Business’s Charles Gasparino. Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2012/08/02/knight-capital-plummets-55-after-disclosing-huge-440m-pretax-loss/#ixzz22OhCrTQ8

Libor rates are calculated for different currencies each day under the auspices of the British Bankers' Association, using quotes that are submitted by banks on a panel, based on the banks' estimated borrowing costs. More than $800 trillion in securities and loans are linked to Libor, including $350 trillion in swaps and $10 trillion in loans, including auto and home loans, according to the CFTC. No other banks or individuals have been charged with wrongdoing. Banks that have disclosed they are being investigated include Citigroup Inc., C +3.72% Deutsche Bank AG, DBK.XE +2.02% HSBC Holdings HBC +1.00% PLC, J.P. Morgan...

Losses on JPMorgan Chase’s bungled trade could total as much as $9 billion, far exceeding earlier public estimates, according to people who have been briefed on the situation. When Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive, announced in May that the bank had lost $2 billion in a bet on credit derivatives, he estimated that losses could double within the next few quarters. But the red ink has been mounting in recent weeks, as the bank has been unwinding its positions, according to interviews with current and former traders and executives at the bank who asked not to be named because...

In these tough economic times, millions of Americans have leaned heavily on food stamps. This government assistance program also has done well by some of the country’s biggest banks and corporations.   An investigation by the advocacy group Eat Drink Politics found banks and businesses have reaped multi-million-dollar contracts from the government to administer food stamp programs at the state level. Yet, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), doesn’t make public how much profit the banks and other businesses earn by acting as government agents for the program.   One significant beneficiary...

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was hauled before Congress yesterday for a finger wagging over the bank's recent $2 billion trading blunder. For all the haranguing and grandstanding, Sen. Jerry Moran asked one of the only relevant questions of the hearing; he wondered if JPMorgan failed, then could it go down without costing taxpayers money? The answer was also the most telling. "Yes," Dimon replied. And at 11:42 EDT, reality died. The timing couldn't have been better. The day before, a JPMorgan internal assessment of what it would take to push the bank into bankruptcy was released. The conclusion: a...

Recently, JP Morgan made national headlines when it announced that it was going to take a 2 billion dollar loss from derivatives trades gone bad. Well, it turns out that JP Morgan did not tell us the whole truth. As you will see later in this article, most analysts are estimating that the losses will eventually be far larger than 2 billion dollars. But no matter how bad things get for JP Morgan, it will not be allowed to fail. JP Morgan is the largest bank in the United States, so it is essentially the "granddaddy" of the too big...

Former FDIC Chief Bair: JPMorgan Worth More in Pieces Friday, 25 May 2012 12:13 PM By Forrest Jones JPMorgan Chase and all other big banks should be broken up, says Sheila Bair, former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Big banks today are hard to manage, as evidenced by JPMorgan's recent $2 billion hedging loss, and they don't add too much value for shareholders anyway. Breaking them up would benefit all involved and create a more efficient financial services industry, Bair writes in a Fortune column. "Whatever economies the megabanks achieve from their size are more than offset by...

This is from the "Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review 2012" for JP Morgan, conducted by the NY Fed. Specifically, these are, among others, the permissive gating conditions, which if met, would still enable JP Morgan to proceed with the then announced buyback. The highlighted section above speaks for itself: the cumulative "realized losses/gains securities (AFS/HTM) and Trading and Counterparty Losses" amount to $31.5 billion for the pendency of the stress test. In other words $31.5 billion is how much pain JPM is allowed, in the NY Fed's view, to suffer before losses and dividends/buyback would jeopardize the capital structure, and...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The consumer Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley /quotes/zigman/182639/quotes/nls/ms MS +3.26% , the lead underwriter for last week's Facebook Inc. /quotes/zigman/9962609/quotes/nls/fb FB -4.64% IPO, trimmed his outlook for the social-networking firm's revenues just days before the deal went live, Reuters reported Tuesday. The report said that the action, which it said was relayed to some of Morgan's major clients during Facebook's pre-IPO road show, came as a surprise to many potential investors so close to the stock's debut. Reuters explained that the cut came after Facebook released an updated prospectus ahead of the share sale that cautioned...

Sometimes it’s hard to explain why we need strong financial regulation — especially in an era saturated with pro-business, pro-market propaganda. So we should always be grateful when someone makes the case for regulation more compelling and easier to understand. And this week, that means offering a special shout-out to two men: Jamie Dimon and Mitt Romney. I’ll come back shortly to the troubles at JPMorgan Chase, the bank Mr. Dimon runs. First, however, let me talk about Mr. Romney, whose remarks about those troubles were so off-point that they constitute a teachable moment. Here’s what the presumptive Republican presidential...

All the President's Man The Dodd Frank law was supposed to rein in abuses by Wall St. It was supposed to end "too big to fail." It was supposed to end so-called "risky trading" by banks. Some of us knew better. Barack Obama was effusive in his praise of the bill as he signed it. We are gathered in the heart of our nation’s capital, surrounded by memorials to leaders and citizens who served our nation in its earliest days and in its days of greatest trial. Today is such a time for America. Over the past two years, we...

Just in case you were wondering why Dear Leader has turned on supporter Jamie Diamond,  threatening investigations and new legislation when JP Morgan lost less than 1% of their own money in a bad trade... George Soros quadrupled his gold exposure in the first quarter, according to his latest 13-F filed with the SEC, increasing his position of 85,000 GLD shares during Q4 2011 to 320,000 shares by the end of March. That’s still a far cry from the 4.67M shares Soros held at the end of 2010. He dumped almost all of it in the following three months-. when gold still traded between...

The trading losses suffered by JPMorgan Chase have surged in recent days, surpassing the bank’s initial $2 billion estimate by at least $1 billion, according to people with knowledge of the losses. -snip- Hedge funds and other investors taking advantage of JPMorgan Chase’s distress have fueled faster deterioration in the underlying credit market positions held by the bank.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican who serves on the Senate Banking Committee, has called for a hearing on the $2-billion trading loss by JPMorgan Chase & Co., saying that "policies are going to be derived out of what’s happened." Corker, who was a key participant in the debate over the 2010 financial reform law, said it was important for policymakers to get the facts about the situation and whether pending regulations would have prevented it.

The FBI in New York has opened an inquiry into JP Morgan Chase's $2 billion loss, NBC 4 New York has learned. People familiar with the matter tell NBC 4 New York that the inquiry is not a criminal investigation. The FBI is taking a preliminary look at the incident. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon disclosed last week that the bank had lost the $2 billion by making a bad bet with so-called credit derivatives. Investors lopped off nearly 10 percent from JPMorgan's stock price the next day, and 3 percent more on Monday. Since Dimon made the announcement, nearly...

Last week, Jamie Dimon, CEO of the nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, revealed that the bank had made a $2 billion-plus trading mistake. The bank has more than $2 trillion in assets and made a profit of about $20 billion last year. So it lost one-tenth of 1 percent of its assets and an amount equal to about 10 percent of its income for last year. No big deal, despite all the hand-wringing of the political and media class. Predictably, Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat and arguably the most irresponsible member of Congress, immediately issued a press release calling for...

JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon has shocked Wall Street by disclosing the bank racked up $2bn (£1.2bn) of trading losses in the past six weeks and warned they could get worse. “It puts egg on our face and we deserve any criticism we get,” Mr Dimon told analysts in a hastily arranged call after stock markets closed in New York on Thursday night. America’s second-biggest bank said that the losses stemmed from a series of complex trades that were designed to hedge the bank's overall risk. Some of the losses have been offet by gains of about $1bn from...

Bernard L. Madoff said he never thought the collapse of his Ponzi scheme would cause the sort of destruction that has befallen his family. In his first interview for publication since his arrest in December 2008, Mr. Madoff — looking noticeably thinner and rumpled in khaki prison garb — maintained that family members knew nothing about his crimes. But during a private two-hour interview in a visitor room here on Tuesday, and in earlier e-mail exchanges, he asserted that unidentified banks and hedge funds were somehow “complicit” in his elaborate fraud, an about-face from earlier claims that he was the...

The DJIA is off over 100 points, 136 points, to 12,686. The NASDAQ and S&P 500 are off by similar percentages. The carnage is particularly severe in a few sectors. News that JP Morgan (NYSE: JPM) fired its chief investment officer reminded investors of how badly risk is managed at large banks. JPM has taken a $2 billion write-off its London traders took. JPM is down 2.81% to $35.90.Back of America (NYSE: BAC) is down 2% on similar sentiment about risk to $7.39, and Citigroup (NYSE: C) is down 2%. Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) is down 3.4%. Its debt will...

Recently, Barack Obama has refrained from mentioning Dodd-Frank as one of his big accomplishments as President. That's fortunate, because had Obama used that as a campaign claim this month, the huge loss taken by JP Morgan and one-time Obama ally Jamie Dimon would have done serious damage. As it is, Politico wonders whether Obama might have a big problem convincing voters that he's done anything significant to address the underlying issues that created the 2008 financial-system collapse: The giant $2 billion trading loss at JPMorgan Chase highlights a central problem in President Barack ObamaÂ’s case for a second term: Four...

The chief investment officer at JPMorgan Chase, one of the highest-ranking women on Wall Street, will retire, the company said Monday. She becomes the first casualty of the bank's $2 billion trading blunder. The bank said Ina Drew, 55, would retire after more than 30 years with the company. She will be replaced by Matt Zames, an executive from JPMorgan's investment bank. CEO Jamie Dimon said Drew's "vast contributions to our company should not be overshadowed by these events." JPMorgan, the largest bank in the United States, is seeking to minimize the damage from the trading mistake, which Dimon has...

On NBC's Meet The Press,' just now (May 13, 2012: Jamie Dimon said it's not fair to blame 'all banks,' you know of a particular bank that does something wrong go after that specifically. I accept all criticism. I am now "barely a democrat." Asked: 'What do you mean "barely a Democrat," Are you not a Democrat anymore? I mean I am still a Democrat... but BARELY... The current admin. - (environment) very 'anti-Business.' I don't blame the president but the Democrats were much more destructive than the Republicans.

The only Wall Street titan to emerge from the financial crisis without a black eye headed into the weekend with a concussion. JPMorgan Chase, fresh off the surprise news that it lost more than $2 billion in recent weeks to a complex trade in credit derivatives, saw its stock value plummet Friday more than 9 percent. The massive loss also reportedly led regulators to open up inquiries about the trading strategy and caused a downgrade of its credit by the rating agency Fitch, which in turn sent its stock lower in after-hours trading. To top it off, the reported loss...

Finance: JPMorgan Chase's surprise $2 billion trading loss brought immediate calls from Washington for still more regulation. But if anything, this shows the costly Dodd-Frank financial regulation has solved nothing. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been a loud critic of the Dodd-Frank financial law — particularly the Volcker Rule, which limits banks' investments for their own accounts. So no doubt there was some high-fiving in Washington over his bank's $2 billion trading loss. Dimon was blunt in his own assessment, calling his bank's trading strategy "flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored." "We will admit it, we...

When news broke of a 2 billion dollar trading loss by JP Morgan, much of the financial world was absolutely stunned. But the truth is that this is just the beginning. This is just a very small preview of what is going to happen when we see the collapse of the worldwide derivatives market. When most Americans think of Wall Street, they think of a bunch of stuffy bankers trading stocks and bonds. But over the past couple of decades it has evolved into much more than that. Today, Wall Street is the biggest casino in the entire world....

Shares of JPMorgan are off over 6% after hours. The reason? The company has shocked the world by announcing a surprise $2 billion+ trading loss in its synthetic derivatives portfolio. In particular, this paragraph from the company's 10-Q filing is what's causing people to get nervous: Since March 31, 2012, CIO has had significant mark-to-market losses in its synthetic credit portfolio, and this portfolio has proven to be riskier, more volatile and less effective as an economic hedge than the Firm previously believed. The losses in CIO's synthetic credit portfolio have been partially offset by realized gains from sales, predominantly...

Since this information was from Bloomberg I did not post it but I find it funny that the person who headed the department that so far has lost $2 billion for JPMorgan was a women named Ina R. Drew. I point thus out because the NOW-type hags claimed if women were in charge of Wall Street there would of been no financial crisis since testosterone driven males can't help themselves but make big bets that exploded.

JP Morgan Chase & Co. is rocking the financial markets with the disclosure that its in-house trading operating lost $2 billion in the past six weeks, raising new questions about whether the big banks that caused the financial meltdown have sufficiently changed their ways. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said the trading loss was an "egregious" failure in a unit managing risks, but he added in a call with analysts after the markets closed Thursday that just because the bank did something "stupid" that doesn't mean other firms are having such trouble. "There were many errors, sloppiness and bad judgment,"...

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% in after-hours trading after the loss was announced. Other bank stocks, including Citigroup and Bank of America, suffered heavy losses as well. “The portfolio has proved to be riskier, more volatile and less effective as an economic hedge than we thought,” CEO Jamie Dimon told reporters. “There were many errors, sloppiness and bad judgment.” The trading loss...

JP Morgan Chase, one of America’s leading banks, has closed down an account held by the Vatican bank at its Italian branch office in Milan. Neither the American bank nor the Vatican bank (formally known as the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR) offered any public comment on the move. But officials at JP Morgan Chase acknowledged that the IOR account was closed because of concerns about the possible use of the Vatican bank for money-laundering.

Yesterday, an open letter posted in the public comments section at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) by a self described JP Morgan insider and whistle-blower was removed in short order (no cache of the page exists, but it was briefly indexed by search engines). It was dead on arrival. A direct link to the letter now leads to an empty page in the hopes that it will never be seen by the 99% of Americans who tune in only to mainstream news sources for their daily dose of truth. Don’t worry, though, because if there’s one thing alternative news...

Rampant silver manipulation? Rampant gold manipulation? Rampant LIBOR manipulation? Hiding MF Global client assets? These are all happening at JP Morgan according to an open letter reportedly written by an anonymous employee of the firm. The whistleblower also warns of a "cascading credit event being triggered" by derivatives related to Greek government debt. Unlike Greg Smith at Goldman Sachs, this whistleblower has chosen to remain anonymous for now. According to the letter, the whistleblower is still an employee of JP Morgan and has not resigned. But that does make it much more difficult to confirm what he is saying....

New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman sued three of the nation's largest banks over a private national mortgage registry system, contending it has resulted in a wide range of deceptive and fraudulent foreclosure filings. The lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, names units of Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo Corp. as defendants, as well as MERSCorp., which owns and operates the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, known as MERS. In his complaint, Mr. Schneiderman alleges that MERS has effectively eliminated the public's ability to track property transfers because those...

Michael Lewis has a column in Bloomberg today called Princeton Brews Trouble For Us 1 Percenters. The satirical article refers to the following video posted earlier this month by Occupy Princeton.In this brilliant prank, around 20 students masquerading as job applicants disrupted a JP Morgan recruiting session. One student in a suit stood up and shouted "Mic Check" and the other Occupiers repeated after him. Then he led the Occupiers in a recitation of this script:"Princeton's motto is: In the nation's service and service of all nationsJP Morgan-Chase, your actions violate our mottoYour predatory lending practices helped crash our economyWe've...

Bankrupt brokerage firm MF Global, which is missing some $600 million in customer funds, recently discovered that about $659 million of its customer segregated accounts resided in an account at banking heavyweight JPMorgan Chase (JPM: 33.78, -0.60, -1.73%), according to The Wall Street Journal. However, it’s unclear whether the money MF Global found out was at JPMorgan is directly tied to the customer funds that regulators have been searching for since the New York-based company filed for bankruptcy on Monday, the Journal reported on its website. For its part, JPMorgan plans to say this “isn’t the missing money,” a source...

Matt Drudge’s red and bold headline screams about Mayor Bloomberg’s prediction of civil insurrection by disaffected youth against the government. But is Bloomberg actually encouraging, rather than predicting, disruptive behavior on the eve of the US Days of Rage protest led by former SEIU official Stephen Lerner? Surely the mayor is aware of Lerner’s plan and background. The US Days of Rage is scheduled as a “nonviolent” protest outside the JP Morgan Chase tomorrow, Saturday, September 17. It has been organized by Lerner, a far leftist, to bring down Wall Street and the banks and ultimately collapse the economic system...

Dear Banks, Remember all of that bailout money you received? Sure hope you saved some of it. US authorities are preparing to sue more than a dozen big banks over claims they misrepresented the quality of mortgages sold during the 2006-7 housing bubble.The US Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which is overseeing the remains of failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is reportedly planning to argue that America’s biggest banks failed to check the health of mortgages before they sold them on to investors. The collapse of hundreds of thousands of sub-prime mortgages triggered the 2008 credit crisis...

U.S. Set To Sue Big Banks Over Bad Mortgages Agency says B of A, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, others misrepresented securities By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ The federal agency that oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is set to file suits against more than a dozen big banks, accusing them of misrepresenting the quality of mortgage securities they assembled and sold at the height of the housing bubble, and seeking billions of dollars in compensation. The Federal Housing Finance Agency suits, which are expected to be filed in the coming days in federal court, are aimed at Bank...

Submitted by GoldCoreGold at $1,950 Within the Month Reaffirm UBS; JP Morgan $2,500 Year End Call Remains Gold is higher against most currencies and especially the euro. Gold is trading at USD 1,792.50, EUR 1,245.10, GBP 1,098.30, CHF 1,471.50 and JPY 137,624 per ounce.GoldÂ’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,791.00, EUR 1,243.49, GBP 1,097.56 per ounce. Gold fixed marginally higher than last FridayÂ’s AM Fix which was at USD 1,787.00, EUR 1237.10, GBP 1,094.17 per ounce which suggests physical demand is supportive at the $1,800 level.Cross Currency TableAsian equities rose again today but ChinaÂ’s stock markets were...