I've skimmed some informed discussions at economics blogs about how JPMorgan Chase (JPMC) lost $2 billion and counting on their "synthetic credit portfolio." But educated guesses are still guesses, the next big problem in the financial system will be entirely different, and to be honest, it all gives me a headache.
Apparently I'm in good company.
"Paul Volcker by his own admission has said he doesn't understand capital markets," Dimon told Fox Business News earlier this year. "He has proven that to me." Dimon is less polite in private. Dimon reportedly was asked at a dinner for investors about Volcker's criticisms and the arguments by Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, that "too big to fail" banks should be broken up. Dimon said he had only two words for Volcker and Fisher: "infantile" and "nonfactual."
Industry lobbyists generally aren't so belligerent when talking to congressmen from the provinces, or at least they don't show it. Volcker and Fisher should know better, but congressmen? No, we suffer -- or benefit -- from the soft bigotry of low expectations. Bank lobbyists explain financial practices to us patiently, speaking slowly and using small words. As bank lobbyists patiently explained finance to me, I resisted the temptation to use expressions like "Shazam!" or "Well, g-o-l-l-y!" made famous by a fictional North Carolinian. When they explained the flaws in the predatory mortgage lending legislation that I first introduced in 2004, they always began with "while this legislation is well-intended... "
When we do pass reform legislation despite our obvious limitations, the law is enforced by regulatory agencies, which also tend to be staffed by mere mortals.
The Volcker Rule limits "proprietary trading" in derivatives by the biggest banks, and regulators may step in when any practice puts the solvency of a bank or the stability of the financial system at risk. Good luck with that. Some examiner is supposed to figure out whether hopelessly complex credit default swaps are impermissible "proprietary trades" or permissible "hedging" or "market-making," and the risks credit default swap positions might create.
Ina Drew, JPMC Chief Investment Officer, made $14 million last year. If she didn't understand the risk in their derivatives positions, then what chance does an examiner on a government salary have?
So trading in derivatives remains lightly regulated, which is more regulation than the repo market has. "Repo" is short for "repurchase agreement." Repo lending is a form of "shadow banking" and it's... well, there's a Wikipedia entry about it. There are $15 trillion in assets in shadow banking, more than the assets of traditional banking. Bear Stearns was borrowing as much $102 billion a day in the repo market to stay in business. What ultimately brought Bear Stearns down was an old-fashioned run in shadow banking, with repo lenders rushing to get their money out.
The biggest banks argue that if the lesser mortals who populate the institutions of democratic government don't understand the intricacies of their business, then we just shouldn't meddle. The laws Congress pass or the rules that regulators adopt may well have "unintended consequences." And if Congress or regulators forbid one practice, they'll just find another way to do the same thing. So really, regulation is just a pointless irritant.
The consequences of not meddling may be unattractive, however.
According to Tyler Cowen, an economist and blogger, the size of shadow banking and of the derivatives markets may create "a need for sudden payouts [that] could also prompt a run on a financial institution." "It now seems that the 21st century will resemble the 19th and early 20th centuries, with periodic panics and runs on financial institutions, perhaps followed by deflationary collapses," Cowen said. An economic recovery "may shove some problems into the future. But banking and finance remain a mess at their core. Welcome to the 21st century."
So how do we avoid this grim future created by financial practices beyond the ken of lesser mortals like congressmen and regulators?
We can just break the biggest banks up. A bank would almost certainly be easier to understand, both for the bank's managers and for safety and soundness regulators, if there is less to understand. And if a smaller bank's management and regulator don't understand a risk in shadow banking or derivative markets, the risk may bring the bank down, but it probably won't lead to a "deflationary collapse" of the economy.
There is little that a $2.3 trillion bank can do that ten $230 billion banks can't do as well or better, and banks the size of JPMC are far more than ten times the problem.
Last week Senator Sherrod Brown and I introduced the SAFE Banking Act to break up the biggest banks into banks that are small enough and simple enough to fail without bringing the financial system down. The biggest banks probably think that's an infantile idea, and that Americans won't support that solution to "too big to fail" banks.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
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I was initially disappointed that Rep. Miller would suggest that what TBTF banks were doing was incomprehensible to mere mortals until I realized that he was being facetious. The Congress has the power to pull the plug on the international bank's gambling casino a/k/a racketeering enterprise. He totally "gets it." Shut down this fraud operation. Make the banks (all of them) into public utilities. Don't worry about how the fake derivative debt will be paid. It cannot be paid because the money to pay it was not created and therefore does not exist.
If someone came to you trying to loan you money to sell you thin air, would you take out the loan to buy it? Would you pay someone's debt who borrowed thin air?
1. Normal people can't understand them
2. The Regulators can't understand them
3. They can't understand these transactions themselves. Jamie Dimon at Morgan is considered one of the smartest people in the industry and his recent conclusion was "we (Morgan) were stupid..." regarding a two, no three, billion dollar loss.
Teddy Roosevelt broke up Standard Oil. We need to break up the New York banking trusts AND regulate the hell out of the new industry that emerges. Republicans need to get used to this....We CAN'T HAVE world banking collapses every couple of years so Republicans can feel ideologically pure. The first to be broken up should be Goldman Sachs and Morgan but we should not stop there. And the first steps to be taken should be to get these damn compulsive gamblers and their 44:1 leverage ratios the hell away from middle class bank deposits....as in a long way away. As in...a different unrelated, unaffiliated company. ANd that's just Day One...
You chose to deposit your hard earned money in that bank rather than stowing it
in your mattress or hiding it in a coffee can buried out back. And you earned
interest on those deposits.
When you needed to purchase a house or a car you went to that same bank
and borrowed the needed funds. If you had the opportunity to start a small
business you returned to that bank and sought advice and funding.
The bank charged interest on the money they loaned. Plain & simple. Everyone was
content with that system because it was simple and it worked. It was understood.
What happened, you ask? GREED. Plain and simple, Banks became Casinos.
In terms of sophistication, the present day BANKSTER and CORPORATION organized crime syndicate's convoluted theft, coercion, collusion and yes, even murder schemes make a PhD to the mafia's kindergarten efforts.
There comes a point with evil criminality when you really don't need to understand every detail of its maleficent intent in order to perceive its destructiveness and utter lack of value to a society. You really don't need to prove the complete lack of moral or ethical content of a "business" to understand that the sole function of that "business" is to STEAL. You really don't need to know every thought and emotion of the JDs or the RBs or the KLs or the VPs or the JIs to know that NO moral or ethical center dwells in their chest because there is no heart beating there, no normal brain at work, only vicious, criminal brutality and avaricious, unquenchable insanity.
In one respect Jamie Dimon is correct. We don't need to understand the inside workings of the criminal arena known as Wall St to know, without doubt, that it is in fact nothing less than an organized crime syndicate at work. We simply know.
Exactly. And they act with impunity. Break them up. BEFORE the next crisis.
Strange argument.
As someone said recently, the saying "too big to fail" should be replaced with "too big to exist". It's clearly time to regulate the bankers and wall street - because they've proven they're incapable of regulating themselves.
Official data from the US Federal Reserve have laid bare the eye-watering size of trading positions built up by JP Morgan's chief investment office in synthetic credit indices, raising further questions about risk management standards at the bank.
According to the figures, which are reported by banks on a quarterly basis and posted on the Fed's website, JP Morgan's position in investment-grade credit default swaps jumped eightfold from a net long of $10 billion notional at the end of 2011 to $84 billion at the end of the first quarter this year.
The Fed data support previous reports about the nature of the trading strategy that has led to the losses. In investment-grade CDS with a maturity of one-year or less, JP Morgan's net short position rocketed from $3.6 billion notional at the end of September 2011 to $54 billion at the end of the first quarter.
Over the same period, JP Morgan's long position in investment grade CDS with a maturity of more than five years leapt five times from $24 billion to $102 billion (see chart).
The size of the positions lends credence to credit experts' views that it will take JP Morgan a long time to close out the position, particularly given the illiquidity of the off-the-run indices that are thought to be involved.
But what do we do about Congressmen who don't understand the Constitution? When it's WAY over their heads, apparently, and they can't follow it? Maybe we need to break up government into smaller bits, so that these politicians can begin to understand their actual jobs, not what they've been convinced to believe it is.
So prove that you know something about the Constitution and put forth an amendment that makes the creation and regulation of corporations a US government power. And, while you're at it, maybe read the Constitution and figure out that it actually DOES restrict the powers of Congress, very specifically, very plainly.
The same government that feels it can NOT be broken up, no matter how much it ignores the law.
It is not hard to prove the criminal acts: forgery and perjury in courts and deed registries throughout the nation prove this beyond a reasonable doubt. Ask Jeff Thigpen (Greensboro, North Carolina) or John O'Brien (Salem, Massachusetts) to provide evidence from two deed registries. Ask any foreclosure defense lawyer for proof of forged and perjured documents from their clients' files with their clients' consent. The scheme is ubiquitous. Ask Catherine Cortez-Mastro, Nevada Attorney General, for her office's research on the documents forgeries used by all the racketeering enterprises through their collective document forgery mill: Lender Processing Services (LPS). Look in every foreclosure filing in the USA and at every motion to lift the automatic stay brought by a mortgage claimant other than a local bank or credit union in the nation's bankruptcy courts. Read, for just one example, In re Lippold: http://www.nysb.uscourts.gov/opinions/mg/214874_19_opinion.pdf
When confronted with overwhelming evidence of repeated crimes, the only remedy is to provide due process, and when the violations of the corporate charters are proven, revoke the corporate charters.