By Joe Nocera – For much of the last three years, as the Obama administration and Congress have grappled with how to rein in a financial system that had lost both its moorings and its ethical compass, no one has been more vocal in his opposition to a more regulated banking system than Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase. He has consistently flayed the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, which was ultimately Congress’s attempt to prevent another Lehman Brothers-style meltdown.
Even at a bank as ostensibly well-run as JPMorgan, the incentives still exist for giant, risky bets to be made that can go very wrong. JPMorgan can withstand a $2 billion hit, but not every bank can — and who’s to say that the next derivatives debacle won’t be $5 billion or $10 billion? Jamie Dimon is undoubtedly a very good bank chieftain, but he’s only one man in a large institution; he can’t oversee every trade. The only way to change incentives industrywide — and get bank risk-taking under better control. more> http://tinyurl.com/6nof783
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- WATCH: The Jamie-Dimon-Hates-Regulation Mashup (huffingtonpost.com)
- Capitalists and Other Psychopaths, William Deresiewicz, NYTimes.com
- The Bet That Blew Up for JPMorgan Chase, Peter Eavis and Susanne Craig, NYTimes.com
