Tuesday, May 22, 2012

US banks' soap opera shows a detachment from reality





According to gulfnews.com Jamie Dimon was right about one thing: The embarrassing $3-billion-and-counting (Dh11 billion) trading loss at JPMorgan Chase has played right into the hands of pundits who think Wall Street needs to be put on a shorter leash.

Honestly, we pundits probably couldn't have made up a better story than this one: A low-profile trading operation charged with hedging risk and safely investing excess cash winds up doing just the opposite, along the way earning a quarter of the bank's annual profits — and a $15 million pay package for its chief. A cocky London derivatives trader known variously as Voldemort and the London Whale who overplays his hand and finds himself squeezed by a couple of hedge fund sharks who pocket tens of millions of dollars profiting from his miscalculation.

Risk management models that were flawed and risk managers who were ignored. Press warnings that were dismissed as a "tempest in a teapot" by a celebrity chief executive who seems to have been unaware of the risk in a $100 billion trading position. And all of it going on right there under the noses of resident bank examiners desperate to show they won't let it happen again. So much for the idea that the greatest threat to the financial system is overzealous government regulation....



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