How J.P. Morgan Chase Has Made the Case for Breaking Up The Big Banks and Resurrecting Glass-Steagall, Robert Reich.org, May 10, 2012, by Robert Reich: Evans Liberal Politics wishes to thank Professor Reich for permission to publish his articles on an ongoing basis:

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the nation’s largest bank, whose chief executive, Jamie Dimon, has led Wall Street’s war against regulation, announced Thursday it had lost $2 billion in trades over the past six weeks and could face an additional $1 billion of losses, due to excessively risky bets.

The bets were “poorly executed” and “poorly monitored,” said Dimon, a result of “many errors, “sloppiness,” and “bad judgment.” But not to worry. “We will admit it, we will fix it and move on.”

Move on? Word on the Street is that J.P. Morgan’s exposure is so large that it can’t dump these bad bets without affecting the market and losing even more money. And given its mammoth size and interlinked connections with every other financial institution, anything that shakes J.P. Morgan is likely to rock the rest of the Street.

Ever since the start of the banking crisis in 2008, Dimon has been arguing that more government regulation of Wall Street is unnecessary. Last year he vehemently and loudly opposed the so-called Volcker rule, itself a watered-down version of the old Glass-Steagall Act that used to separate commercial from investment banking before it was repealed in 1999, saying it would unnecessarily impinge on derivative trading (the lucrative practice of making bets on bets) and hedging (using some bets to offset the risks of other bets).

Dimon argued that the financial system could be trusted; that the near-meltdown of 2008 was a perfect storm that would never happen again.

Since then, J.P. Morgan’s lobbyists and lawyers have done everything in their power to eviscerate the Volcker rule — creating exceptions, exemptions, and loopholes that effectively allow any big bank to go on doing most of the derivative trading it was doing before the near-meltdown.

And now — only a few years after the banking crisis that forced American taxpayers to bail out the Street, caused home values to plunge by more than 30 percent, pushed millions of homeowners underwater, threatened or diminished the savings of millions more, and sent the entire American economy hurtling into the worst downturn since the Great Depression — J.P. Morgan Chase recapitulates the whole debacle with the same kind of errors, sloppiness, bad judgment, and poorly-executed and excessively risky trades that caused the crisis in the first place.

In light of all this, Jamie Dimon’s promise that J.P. Morgan will “fix it and move on” is not reassuring.

The losses here had been mounting for at least six weeks, according to Morgan. Where was the new transparency that’s supposed to allow regulators to catch these things before they get out of hand?

Several weeks ago there were rumors about a London-based Morgan trader making huge high-stakes bets, causing excessive volatility in derivatives markets. When asked about it then, Dimon called it “a complete tempest in a teapot.” Using the same argument he has used to fend off regulation of derivatives, he told investors that “every bank has a major portfolio” and “in those portfolios you make investments that you think are wise to offset your exposures.”

Let’s hope Morgan’s losses don’t turn into another crisis of confidence and they don’t spread to the rest of the financial sector.

But let’s also stop hoping Wall Street will mend itself. What just happened at J.P. Morgan – along with its leader’s cavalier dismissal followed by lame reassurance – reveals how fragile and opaque the banking system continues to be, why Glass-Steagall must be resurrected, and why the Dallas Fed’s recent recommendation that Wall Street’s giant banks be broken up should be heeded.

Robert Reich was President Clinton’s Secretary of Labor and is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at California Berkeley. Time Magazine named Prof. Reich one of the ten most effective Secretaries in U.S. history. This article is from Professor Reich’s blog and can be viewed here.

Recommended: JPMorgan Chase Has Lost $20 Billion On Its Bad Trade, Taking Into Account Share Price, HuffPost Business, May 14, 2012, by Mark Gongloff:

By now you may have heard that JPMorgan Chase lost $2 billion on a bad trade. Multiply that by 10, and you’re starting to get a better idea of how much it has really lost.

That’s because the share price of the biggest U.S. bank by assets has tumbled by more than 11 percent since it announced the trading loss, shaving about $17.5 billion from its market value. JPMorgan shares were down another 2 percent on Monday, following a 9 percent tumble on Friday.

Shareholders aren’t necessarily upset about the $2 billion loss itself. The bank has lost more money than that at different times in other businesses, the New York Times reminded us this morning, without causing much of a ruckus. Though the loss could grow to $4 billion or more, by some estimates, that’s still a far cry from the $90 billion or so in revenue the bank has raked in over the past year.

The real worry for investors is the damage the episode has done to JPMorgan’s previously sterling reputation for managing its risks, the increasing heat of the water around CEO Jamie Dimon and — maybe most importantly — the fact that this debacle comes at the worst possible time for the bank, regulation-wise.

See White House urges bank reforms after JPMorgan loss, The Raw Story, May 14, 2012, by Agence France-Presse:

Investors punished the bank’s shares again Monday, sending them 3.2 percent lower, as JPMorgan announced that chief investment officer Ina Drew was stepping down and news reports said more heads were likely to roll.

See Romney Vowing Dodd-Frank Repeal Hits JPMorgan Risky Trades (Update 1), Bloomberg, May 14, 2012, by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Lisa Lerer:

Mitt Romney says he wants to talk about the economy in this presidential campaign, including his call to repeal the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s $2 billion trading loss in risky transactions isn’t the sort of conversation he had in mind.

So far, presumptive Republican nominee Romney has said little about the transaction that is roiling Wall Street and Washington, prompting an inquiry by the Federal Reserve, a call for a congressional investigation and a demand by Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic Senate candidate in Massachusetts, that JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon resign from the board of the New York Federal Reserve.

…

Romney, co-founder of private-equity firm Bain Capital LLC, has spotlighted his vow to repeal the Dodd-Frank law that aims to strengthen financial regulations, calling it one of several overly burdensome laws backed by President Barack Obama that costs jobs. Romney hasn’t directly commented on the JP Morgan losses since Dimon disclosed them on May 10; he ignored a reporter’s shouted question about the matter at a May 11 rally in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Also See JPMorgan Said to Weigh Bonus Clawbacks After Loss, Bloomberg, May 14, 2012, by Laura Marcinek, Donal Griffin and Dawn Kopecki:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), the biggest U.S. bank, will consider reclaiming incentive pay from employees including former Chief Investment Officer Ina Drew after her unit had a $2 billion trading loss, said two senior executives.

The lender can cancel stock awards or demand they be repaid if an employee “engages in conduct that causes material financial or reputational harm,” JPMorgan said in its annual proxy statement. The company will claw back pay if it’s appropriate, said one of the executives, who asked not to be identified because no decisions have been made.

The incident, which led to Drew’s retirement yesterday, may test JPMorgan’s claw-back policy amid mounting investor criticism over Wall Street pay practices and as regulators investigate the trades. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said the strategy that led to the loss was “poorly executed and poorly monitored” and that it gave ammunition to proponents of stricter bank regulation.