Posted on 05/10/2012 5:30:50 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
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 the sale of other financial assets, according to the bank, which said that the division that made the trades will now lose about $800m this quarter.
The trading losses are an acute embarrassment for Mr Dimon who has led Wall Street’s fight against what banks have deemed excessive regulation in the wake of the financial crisis. Mr Dimon said that the set of trades, which includes credit default swaps, was designed to shield the bank from risk in the financial markets. “In hindsight, it was bad strategy, bad execution,” he said.
However, the scale of the losses will prompt renewed debate about the level of regulation that is needed to ensure the safety and soundness of the financial system. The chief investment office (CIO), the part of the bank that put on the trades, had moved from hedging risk to making speculative bets designed to reap profits for the bank, Bloomberg reported last month.
Carl Levin, a Democratic Senator who has pushed for tougher regulation of banks' trading, said that the loss "is just the latest evidence that what banks call 'hedges' are often risky bets that so-called 'too big to fail' banks have no business making." Mr Dimon said
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The losses stemmed from trades at the bank’s chief investment office, where a single trader -- dubbed the “London Whale” -- was reported to have taken large positions for the bank in credit-default swaps.
What does all this mean? Can Wall Street even hold its dauber up through the election, long enough to unseat Obama.
Grant it, he has already stripped the nation of its wealth, but with some measure of austerity that doesn’t entirely collapse our will to produce, is there hope?
I just don’t know why these crooks aren’t in jail. Really, come on...
These JPM people have handed another present to Obozamma to hammer us all with. MORE REGULATION!! He’ll trumpet it over and over.
We are so screwed.
they WILL get bailed out by the Federal Reserve.
romney better win, he is chomping to sign tarp II
Oh gosh I'm sooo impressed. But save your stoicism --let's just see you --ONLY you-- handle the material LOSSES.
Private profits --> private LOSSES.
SAY NO TO FAKE CAPITALISM.
Worst part about all of this is the rapid conference call...they say we screwed up we fixed it no client money was touched. I wonder if they even had time to consult with big ben before going public because it was going to be found. Yes 20bil loss gets bailed out by fed reserve. Worse case we have losess of ~200-300bil which will probably hopefully be ok. It did take almost 1/3 of Lehmans balance sheet to go under and even at 300 it would only be around 15% of jpmorgs......
A bank gambled away its money? That’s odd.
I can't say that I am sure yet, but it is very significant that this came from London. London has lax rehypothecation laws, which allows companies to use client funds as their own without their customer's knowledge. In short, JPM was doing the same thing as MF Global, and has likely lost a lot of their customer's money, who didn't know they were taking these risks. Except this is bigger than MF Global.
This is something that can cause a loss of confidence in the system if any more people lose their funds, and cause a market crash.
The propaganda of using the word “bank”, instead of the real words “gambling house fascism” continues.
Gambling Party(s), free big chips from U.S. citizens.
>>> The propaganda of using the word “bank”, instead of the real words “gambling house fascism” continues. “ <<<
No kidding. A perfect example of confidence gone, but for the monster manipulaters. Anybody read Ulsterman tonight, on China pranks?
Just askin’.
JPMorgan’s investment bank reported $26.3 billion in revenue and $6.8 billion of net income in 2011.
They can afford a $2B hit. The stock just went down a bit.
Who made the $2B?
yitbos
Well said. If clients start getting antsy and yanking funds (from JPM or others) we could see a repeat of the 2008 liquidity crises that hit the financials.
Probably worse since Europe is now fully involved and the problems from 2008 where papered over which only made things bigger in terms of the inevitable fail. Then there is the Asian markets, China with apparent or faux internal leadership problems and there threatening of the Philippines.
I think the REAL issue is that Democrats and the Obama administration permitted these mega-banks to grow to a size that resulted in a huge concentration of banking assets in this country AND the regulation that they did pass did not address the risks that resulted in the 2008 banking crisis. Instead, they saddled the community banking side with onerous regulation that resulted in less credit being offered to the public and raised bank compliance costs that are passed on the the customer. You had better believe the Rats are culpable here. It is important to remember that these large, Wall Street banks were SUPPORTERS of the Democrats and Obama in the 2008 election. Supposedly, too big to fail is a thing of the past according the the Rats with the regulation they passed. But just watch while the Fed comes to the rescue.
Was “The Whale” a Muzzie by any chance? We know Al-Qaeda has been targeting the financial markets, what better way than to place a mole in a major banking firm?
The idiots regulated the wrong guys last time around. They are so stupid, the don’t know the difference between a retail bank and an investment. Morons running the government. Theives running the big banks.
They will all burn some day.
In other words, someone tonight (possibly named the "London Whale") is drinking the strong stuff and running a paper shredder all night long...
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