When JP Morgan announced a shocking $2 billion loss, chief executive Jamie Dimon admitted the amount could double to $4 billion by the end of the year. Instead it has increased by 50% in a matter of days. Two billion has become $3 billion, as hedge funds and other investors "have fueled faster deterioration in the underlying credit
market positions held by the bank," DealBook reports.
It is, as Conor Sen quipped on Twitter, "like a BP oil spill in derivative form."
Two numbers add some perspective. The first number is $400 million. That's the sum Dimon warned that financial regulation could cost his bank in the first year of trading. Some critics of JP Morgan suggest that it would not have been permitted to make this trade under a strong so-called Volcker Rule. "In other
words," Rep. Barney Frank said, "JP Morgan Chase, entirely without any help from the government
has lost, in this one set of transactions, five times the amount they
claim financial regulation is costing them." It is hard to say with certainty, since the Volcker Rule still lacks definition and there are few public details about the nature of the trade that has now cost JPM $3 billion.
The second number is $3 billion. No, not the $3 billion lost by the investment office in this set of transactions, but the $3 billion profit JP Morgan is still expected to earn in the second quarter, after factoring in the current loss. "What's more," Nelson D. Schwartz and Jessica Silver-Greenberg report, "the
chief investment office earned more than $5 billion in the last three
years, which leaves it ahead over all, even given the added red ink."
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