Jamie Dimon

Sadly the man who thought (with good reason) he was more important than the Chairsatan (until the whole CIO fiasco blew up in his face of course), Jamie Dimon, will not be there (and will thus not be available to provide an update on the CIO's losses to date, which are likely orders of magnitude greater than the $2 billion benchmark previously disclosed, but that does not mean today's Senate hearing on lack of regulatory oversight and massive bank prop losses will be any less interesting. From C-Span: The Senate Banking Committee will hold an oversight hearing on efforts to overhaul the regulation of derivatives. Lawmakers will focus on the steps the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are taking to implement provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, and their efforts to reduce systemic risk and improve market oversight. The session also will spotlight J.P. Morgan Chase's $2 billion trading loss, which is under investigated by the FBI and the SEC." We, for one, can't wait to find out what the FBI's trained CDS forensic experts discover on this one...

Updated | The notion that the trades which caused the losses by JPM were put on in the last six months or so seems to have been widely accepted in the media. But is this really the case?

As anyone who has ever traded CDS (or any other OTC, non-exchange traded product) knows, when you have a short risk position, unless compliance tells you to and they rarely do as they have no idea what CDS is most of the time, you always mark the EOD price at the offer, and vice versa, on long risk positions, you always use the bid. That way the P&L always looks better. And for portfolios in which the DV01 is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (or much, much more if your name was Bruno Iksil), marking at either side of an illiquid market can result in tens if not hundreds of millions of unrealistic profits booked in advance, simply to make one's book look better, mostly for year end bonus purposes. Apparently JPM's soon to be fired Bruno Iksil was no stranger to this: as Bloomberg reports, JPM's CIO unit "was valuing some of its trades at  prices that differed from those of its investment bank, according to people familiar with the matter. The discrepancy between prices used by the chief investment office and JPMorgan’s credit-swaps dealer, the biggest in the U.S., may have obscured by hundreds of millions of dollars the magnitude of the loss before it was disclosed May 10, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to discuss the matter. "I’ve never run into anything like that,” said Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.’s Brad Hintz in New York. “That’s why you have a centralized accounting group that’s comparing marks” between different parts of the bank “to make sure you don’t have any outliers” .... Jamie Dimon's "tempest in a teapot" just became a fully-formed, perfect storm which suddenly threatens his very position, and could potentially lead to billions more in losses for his firm.

As we predicted some time ago, it would be only a matter of time before the story of how one failed prop desk trader, in this case Boaz Weinstein who blew up DB Prop only to be resurrected as the successful head of Saba Capital, took down the London whale Bruno Iksil. Sure enough over the weekend, the NYT penned a largely one-sided if entertaining read: "The Hunch, the Pounce and the Kill" which begins as follows 'It was last November, and Mr. Weinstein, a wunderkind of the New York hedge fund world, had spied something strange across the Atlantic. In an obscure corner of the financial markets, prices seemed out of whack. It didn’t make sense. Mr. Weinstein pounced." The trade of course was the IG 9 -10 year which we have dissected infinitely in the past two days. And while the NYT story makes for great copy, and has a great narrative it is missing one crucial feature, namely what happened in those two crucial months before Boaz was pitching the IG9 trade, and thus during which he was establishing the position (because only those "hedge fund managers" who appear on CNBC discuss their positions if they haven't already built up their max positions). What happened is the following: "Saba Capital Management LP... hired Toby Maitland Hudson from JPMorgan Chase & Co. as the firm’s assets reach $4.1 billion, according to people familiar with the hire. Maitland Hudson, who started at Saba in New York last month, ran JPMorgan’s proprietary trading of derivatives tied to commercial-mortgage bonds and will focus on relative value trades."

Remember when Jamie Dimon told the world the CIO stories were a "tempest in a teapot" during the firm's Q1 conference call the very same day we accused the CIO of being the world's biggest prop desk (aside from the Fed of course) and that the JP Morgan was merely "hedging" its positions? It appears that just like Vegas, it's the lie that keeps on giving. Because as it turns out in addition to being a massive undisclosed loss leader courtesy of 'unlimited downside' CDS pair trades (anyone remember DB employee Boaz Weinstein?) which have yet to be unwound, and which may have a total book loss of up to or over $31.5 billion as explained before, that was merely the tip of the prop-trading iceberg. The WSJ reports: "The JPM unit whose wrong-way bets on corporate credit cost the bank more than $2 billion includes a group that has invested in financially challenged companies, including LightSquared Inc., the wireless broadband provider that this month filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The group within the CIO doing the distressed equity investing is known as the Special Investments Group. Whether it should be part of the CIO in the future is something that Matt Zames, who was put in charge of the CIO this month after the losses were disclosed, is evaluating, according to a person familiar with the bank. He is also examining whether the bank should keep some of these investments, the person said... The Special Investments Group last year took a $150 million stake in closely held LightSquared, in a deal that J.P. Morgan lost money on, according to a person familiar with the bank." But, but, surely they were hedging their offsetting position in er, uhm, non-satellite, telegraph stocks? In yet other words, an SIO within the CIO... once again Wall Street's only value added shines through - baffle them with acronym-based bullshit. And of course, everyone is busy hedging, hedging, the firm's other positions... Or not: as these are pure play directional prop bets. And all are funded by, you guessed it, your deposit dollars. Which one day will go boom, when JPM suffers a loss so large that not even the Fed bails them out any more (Jon Corzine anyone?).

Goodbye, living spirit.

Earlier today we mocked Jamie Dimon for announcing the cancellation of his firm's stock buyback program, just two shorts months after March 13, when none other than JP Morgan forced the Fed to scramble and release the full stress test ahead of schedule, after Jamie Dimon decided to frontrun the full FRBNY stress test release (whose sole purpose was to determine under what worst case scenario the Fed was ok with allowing JPM and various other Bank Holding Companies to proceed with dividend raises/stock buybacks) and announce just that - a dividend increase and a stock buyback. Well, in addition to some well justified egg in Dimon's face, today's results actually have some far more troubling implications. Because while we now know that the buyback is over, what we still don't know, because Jamie Dimon refuses to tell us, is just how big the CIO P&L loss as of close today. Yes, there are many speculations but nobody knows for sure. Zero Hedge was the first to suggest based on reverse engineering of what the potential loss drivers may well have been, and subsequently the slower media corroborated, that the total loss would be orders of magnitude greater than the $2 billion announced on May 10. But how many orders? Well, for what may be a critical clue, we go to the Fed's stress test itself. Presenting Exhibit A - page 73 of 82...

Remember when Jamie Dimon showed the Fed who's boss and preannounced it was starting a share repurchase program? Turns out the Chairsatan will have the final laugh:

• DIMON SAYS JPM IS SUSPENDING SHARE REPURCHASES
• DIMON SAYS SUSPENDING REPURCHASE PROGRAM ISN'T RELATED TO LOSS
• DIMON SAYS SUSPENDING REPURCHASE PROGRAM ISN'T RELATED TO LOSS
• JPM'S DIMON SAYS THERE'S UNREALIZED $8B IN PROFIT FROM CIO
• JPM'S DIMON: DOESN'T SEE INVESTIGATION TO UNVEIL BIG SUPRISES
• DIMON SAYS LOSS IS AN ISOLATED EVENT

And the joke of the day:

• DIMON SAYS FORTRESS BALANCE SHEET REMAINS

The last time the body language (and ex-intelligence) experts from Business Intelligence Advisors appeared on these pages, their target was Ben Bernanke, and specifically his first ever post-FOMC press conference. This time around, BIA has chosen the analyze what has been left unsaid by none other than the head of JP Morgan in the context of his $2 billion (and soon to be far larger) loss which is still sending shockwaves around the financial world. As a reminder, "Using techniques developed at the Central Intelligence Agency, BIA analysts pore over management communications for answers that are evasive, incomplete, overly specific or defensive, potentially signaling anything from discomfort with certain subjects,  purposeful obfuscation, or a lack of knowledge." So what would the CIA conclude if they were cross-examining Jamie Dimon?

There's a big, fat "I told you so" coming down the pike. 

• Inside J.P. Morgan's Blunder (WSJ) - Where we learn that Jamie Dimon did not inform his regulator, the Fed, where he is a board member of the massive JPM loss even as he was fully aware of the possible unlimited downside
• Euro Attempted Recovery Countered By Asian Sovereigns (MNI)
• Santander, BBVA Among Spanish Banks Downgraded by Moody’s (Bloomberg)
• Defiant Message From Greece (WSJ)
• G-8 Leaders to Discuss Oil Market as Iran Embargo Nears (Bloomberg)
• Spain hires Goldman Sachs to value Bankia (Reuters)
• China to exclude foreign firms in shale gas tender (Reuters)
• Fed Board Nominees Powell, Stein Win Senate Confirmation (Bloomberg)
• Defiant Message From Greece (WSJ)
• Fitch Cuts Greece as Leaders Spar Over Euro Membership (Bloomberg)
• Madrid Hails Moves by Regions to Cut Spending (WSJ)

Tim Geithner outdoes himself this evening with three hypocritical, self-defecating-deceiving, and typically ignominious clips courtesy of his interview with Jeffrey Brown of PBS NewsHour. While we knew TurboTax was beyond him, the Treasury debacle-in-chief admits he doesn't understand how the debt limit has bubbled back up (seeing it as part of a partisan political agenda); admits that perhaps the NY Fed has a 'perception problem' with Jamie Dimon on the board; and his piece-de-resistance his cognitive dissonance erupts as he touts Obama's economic and jobs record: "look how well we are doing relative to any other major country". It seems the election cycle is well and truly upon us and revisionism and populism will once again trump sensibility and forthrightness.

The Issue Is Not Really Regulation ... It is a Malignant, Symbiotic Relationship Between Government and Wall Street

Update: JPMORGAN SAYS DIMON TO AGREE TO TESTIFY TO SENATE. Ummmm, there was an option?

As everyone (or at least Zero Hedge) long expected, JPM's prop trading debacle just got political and senators are about to demonstrate to the world just how little they understand about modern IG9-tranche pair trades. Expect to hear much more about JPM's "shitty" prop deal.

John Maynard Keynes, Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett all said or implied that gold was a barbarous relic. But what’s the barbarous relic? The precious metal that shows prices without a veneer of manipulation, or the paper currency that smudges the true state of supply and demand through money printing, thus misleading markets and society? Charlie Munger says gold is not for civilised people, but in reality gold may be the most civilised currency of all — because it allows civilised people to purchase insurance against the risk of civilisation failing.