Weekly Wrap: JPMorgan and its growing losses
Reviewing the week's headlines on Wall Street. This week: On the latest news from JPMorgan that its losses have now reached $4.4 billion, and the traders lied to their bosses about how much the total was.
John Carney from CNBC and Felix Salmon of Reuters wrap up this week’s biggest business stories.
On whether the losses from JPMorgan can get bigger:
John Carney: Yes, it’s going to grow. The losses are not contained. JPMorgan still hasn’t completely exited the positions. It might not get much bigger than this, but it has potential to.
Felix Salmon: This is about the out-of-control traders in London who are gambling hundreds of billions of dollars of JPMorgan’s money, which is deposited with the bank by American depositors, guaranteed by the U.S. government, and then JPMorgan ships it off to London and gambles it.
Carney: And to make things even worse, the traders are lying to their superiors — and getting away with lying — for quite a bit of time about how much the losses were. I reported on CNBC today that the traders had actually told their bosses that they only had $12 million in losses when the number was actually 20 times that. This is a terrible thing for JPMorgan. That kind of loss shouldn’t be allowed to happen without somebody hearing about it.
For more analysis, listen to the full audio.