Hello - Dimon sits ON THE FRICKIN BOARD of the NY Fed. If he didn’t know the window was open to Bear and the other IBs, then he’s a moron. Hindsight had nothing to do with it.
Tell me - when the negotiations were going on that weekend, which hat did Dimon wear - that of th Fed or that of JPM. Just a little conflict of interest, no ? Secondly, Bear was the counterparty to a lot of the crap JPM owns. Don’t you think JPM tool/were forced to take BSC BECAUSE it allowed JPM to stay solvent, and that’s why the 30B was a necessity ?
As for Dimon's bank being exposed as a clearing entity and responding zero, The two can be mutually exclusive
"J.P. Morgan CEO James Dimon said his firm may have been the only institution in a position to help Bear Stearns and stop a potential chain reaction among other investment banks.
“Bear Stearns would have failed without this effort, and the consequences could have been disastrous,” Mr. Dimon told the committee in remarks prepared for delivery. “The idea that the Bear Stearns fallout would have been limited to a few Wall Street firms just isn’t so.”
He said J.P. Morgan couldn’t and wouldn’t have entered the transaction without the Fed’s backstop, but that it was the firm’s obligation as a “responsible corporate citizen” to help stem potential systemic risk if it could.
Mr. Dimon also took issue with the notion that the Fed has taken responsibility for Bear Stearns’ riskiest assets.
“We did not cherry pick the assets in the collateral pool,” Mr. Dimon said. “The assets taken by the Fed consist entirely of loans that are current and domestic securities rated investment grade.”