Wackydoodle sez: They give y'all a homosexual marriage certificate too!
Update: Jamie 'Show me the money' Dimon has suspended JP Morgan-Chase's share buyback program as the big bank's losses on the 'London Whale' derivative trades mount past $7 billion. The bank was set to buy back $15 billion in shares to meet new international rules on reserves. The Daily Telegraph reports that the head of risk management for the department incurring the losses, Irv Goldman was previously fired from a rival, Cantor Fitzgerald, for a major conflict of interest. He was found to be trading for his own account the same shares as he was trading for his firm. He is expected to resign from JP Morgan within a short time. The former head of Morgan's London trading department, Ina Drew, contracted Lyme disease in 2010. Her long periods of absence left the office in chaos. To add to the problem was the intense strife between the New York headquarters and London offices. The term 'London Whale' was the nickname of the London based trader, Bruno Iksil, who took huge derivative bets on a corporate debt index totaling $100 billion. Now, JP Morgan is in the extremely disadvantaged circumstances of unwinding its loosing trades against rival traders who know the bank's positions and are willing to increase their profits at the expense of the bank "too big to fail". Way to manage, Jamie!* {18-05-12}The US financial structure coming close to collapse in 2007 was a symptom of the unregulated speculation known as over-the-counter derivatives trading. The notional amount of derivative contracts outstanding at any one time can only be estimated, but JP Morgan's loss of $2 billion--which billionaire New York Mayor Bloomberg described as a "hiccup"--in the bank's City of London office gives some idea of the magnitude of the trading. According to CEO Dimon what is good for JPMorgan-Chase is good for the country. Dimon's bank has spent nearly $10 million since the beginning of 2011 on lobbying, mostly focused against the Volcker Rule that would largely prohibit risky proprietary trading by a federally insured bank. Even if the Volcker Rule were passed in the face of intense Wall Street opposition, Morgan's loosing gamble would probably be legal under a hedging loophole JP Morgan sponsored. Dimon has not explained what client position it was hedging with the "London Whale". The unregulated trading also goes a long way towards explaining why no major executive on Wall Street has been called to account for the abusive practices in the sub-prime mortgage securitization frenzy. Here is another fact recently disclosed that may also explain the absence of regulatory enforcement: the Obamanator has a checking account reported to be between $500,000 and $1,000,000 at, wait for it, JPMorgan-Chase. That makes him one of the 1% and Jamie Dimon his favorite banker, does it not?
*Dimon may be the poster-boy for what is wrong with America's financial system, but he is by no means alone. John Corzine former governor of New Jersey walked off with a cool $3 million in cash including a $1.25 million bonus despite his firm MF Global declaring bankruptcy. MF Global was exposed as having $1.6 billion shortage of customer funds. Corzine's total pay package in the last year of the company totaled $8 million, most of that tied to now worthless MF Global stock. Despite a 27% decline over three years and a 44% decline for 2011 in the value of Citigroup's stock, CEO Vikram Pandit was paid $43 million in 2011.