JP Morgan's $2 Billion Loss Was 4X the Alleged Cost of Financial Regulation

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Here is Barney Frank's statement on JP Morgan's of $2 billion loss in derivatives:

This regrettable news from JPMorgan Chase obviously goes counter to the bank's narrative blaming excessive regulation for the woes of financial institutions.  Interestingly, in the Economist's long attack on the financial reform bill, one of their leading examples of the harm the bill is doing was JPMorgan Chase's assertion that complying with the new rules will cost $400 to $600 million at the outset (a number which will obviously go down as compliance processes are set in place).  In other words, 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.

Here is the quote Frank is referring to :

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase's boss, reckons the direct costs to his bank, America's largest, will be $400m-600m annually. "Additional regulations resulting from the Dodd-Frank act may materially adversely affect BB&T's business, financial condition or results of operations," said one regional bank in its recent annual filing to the SEC. Other institutions are said to be in the process of drafting similar statements, or, at the least, planning to acknowledge the costs in the conference calls that surround quarterly earnings.

 


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Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees business coverage for TheAtlantic.com. More

Thompson has written for Slate, BusinessWeek, and the Daily Beast. He has also appeared as a guest on radio and television networks, including NPR, the BBC, CNBC, and MSNBC.

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