As SEC Downloads More Cross-Dressing Porn, JPMorgan Lights the Fuse

Don’t worry your pretty little heads, JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Financial Officer Douglas Braunstein seemed to assure listeners on the bank’s quarterly earnings conference call last month. Regulators knew everything JPMorgan’s chief investment office was doing, he said.

In other words: Clearly there wasn’t a problem, because if there was, the regulators would have seen it. And of course, by all indications, they didn’t see it, even though they were embedded in JPMorgan’s offices. On May 10, JPMorgan divulged $2 billion of intra-quarter trading losses and said they might get worse. Once again, regulators seem to have been oblivious to huge risks at a bank they were supposed to be overseeing. To JPMorgan, however, they also have served a valuable purpose.

Having regulators around the clock at JPMorgan reinforces market expectations that the government has an obligation to stand behind the bank should it run into more serious trouble. Also, lest anyone forget, JPMorgan’s chief executive officer, Jamie Dimon, sits on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, even as the Fed is one of the agencies now investigating JPMorgan’s trading debacle. More...