Jamie Dimon

Scandal After Scandal, Lie Upon Lie ... What's Going On?

Much has been said about JPM's CIO Loss (which so far has come at a little over $5 billion, just as we calculated in the hours after the original May 10 announcement). And with the so called final number out of the way, investors in JPM have breathed a sigh of relief and are stepping back into the company hopeful that a major wildcard about the firm's future has been removed. The issue, however, is that the CIO loss was never the question: after all JPM could easily sell debt or raise equity to plug liquidity shortfalls. The real issue is that just as we explained months before the loss was even known, the Treasury/CIO department was nothing short of the firm's unbridled hedge fund which could do whatever it chooses, and not be held accountable to anyone at least until its counterparties broke a story of an epic loss to the media. And thus the problem becomes apparent: now that every action of the CIO group is scrutinized under a microscope by everyone from management to auditors to regulators to analysts to fringe blogs, the high flying days of whale trades are forever gone. The question then is just how big was the contribution of the Treasury/CIO group, which until today was buried deep within JPM's Corporate and PE Group and not broken out. Thanks to the new breakout, reminiscent of Goldman starting to break out its own Prop Trading group some years ago, we now know exactly just how big the contribution to both revenue, but more impotantly, net income was courtesy of JPM's Hedge Fund.

The result is nothing short of stunning.

Just because the market is so stupid it completely ignores what the news of the day is: namely that JPM engaged in what Jacob Zemansky on TV just called criminal behavior when it consistently mismarked its CDS book, as it itself admitted 10 minutes before releasing its earnings today, an act that in itself is nothing short of what Barclays is in the 10th circle of hell for due to blowing up Lieborgate sky high, here is a stark reminder of what happened the last time a trader was caught fudging his CDS book...

When fraud has been exposed, one is best advised to baffle everyone with lots and lots of data, figures, numbers, and generally meaningless information overflow. Sure enough, as part of the Q2 earnings call, JPM has released a record 8 pdfs to go alongside Jamie Dimon sounding very confident, and pretending he knows what he is talking about. Remember: when in doubt, baffle them with bullshit.

Back on May 30 we wrote "The Second Act Of The JPM CIO Fiasco Has Arrived - Mismarking Hundreds Of Billions In Credit Default Swaps" in which we made it abundantly clear that due to the Over The Counter nature of CDS one can easily make up whatever marks one wants in order to boost the P&L impact of a given position, this is precisely  what JPM was doing in order to boost its P&L? As of moments ago this too has been proven to be the case. From a just filed very shocking 8K which takes the "Whale" saga to a whole new level. To wit: 'the recently discovered information raises questions about the integrity of the trader marks, and suggests that certain individuals may have been seeking to avoid showing the full amount of the losses being incurred in the portfolio during the first quarter. As a result, the Firm is no longer confident that the trader marks used to prepare the Firm's reported first quarter results (although within the established thresholds) reflect good faith estimates of fair value at quarter end."

As JP Morgan prepares to report how much the blow up of its CDS in Q2 "boosted" earnings, not to mention how much "improving" conditions forced it to reduce loss reserves, the WSJ reports that the rest of "whale team", or those responsible for the CIO's $5 billion loss, have left the firm.

Many were stunned when Ina Drew left JPM with millions in bonuses a few short days after Jamie Dimon told Senate and Congress those responsible for the multi-billions CIO loss would see compensation clawbacks. They can be unstunned now, following a report from the WSJ that in a few days JPM will announces millions in clawbacks from disgraced CIO executives. As for the final loss on the CIO? Recall what Zero Hedge calculated (not speculated, not surmised, not made up) in the hours literally after the JPM announcement of a $2 billion loss? We said: "Is JPM Staring At Another $3 Billion Loss?" and elaborated that "this is where we find ourselves now - the net notionals remain huge (and implicitly on JPM's shoulders), his lack of selling has left the credit index maybe 20bps rich to where it might trade given its rough correlation with the S&P 500 and this would imply at least $3bn of losses already in addition at fair-value." We were again spot on: from the WSJ: "J.P. Morgan is expected to announce Friday that the trading blunders will cost the company just over $5 billion in the second quarter, in which the bank is expected to show a profit, according to people familiar with the situation." Math: it's fundamental (Ph.D. economists - take note).

Who Are the Biggest Manipulators of All?

Attempts to manipulate free markets invariably end badly - after all, they are, supposedly, by their very nature, free. Over the past few weeks, the exposure of the Libor-rigging scandal has monopolized the headlines of the financial press. The rather obvious implication being that given almost half the reported inputs that help establish the Libor rate are discarded immediately, Barclays simply CANNOT have manipulated the Libor rate alone. Period. At best this is a cartel, at worst it’s outright fraud on a scale that is completely unprecedented. In Grant Williams' humble opinion, the Libor scandal will mark a fundamental change in the treatment of financial conspiracy theories in the media. The sheer amount of coverage it will undoubtedly receive will signal a shift in attitude towards the exposing of such scandals rather than the blind-eyes that have been regularly turned in recent years. Prime amongst conspiracy theories that may soon be finally proven to be either valid or the figments of overactive imaginations, are those alleged in the gold and silver markets. If the long-stated claims about government-sanctioned, bank-led manipulation of precious metals markets are eventually proven to have any validity whatsoever, the fallout from the Libor scandal will prove to be (to use the words of Jamie Dimon) just another “tempest in a tea pot” as the precious metals are the very underpinnings of the entire global financial system.

When on Friday news broke that German regulator BAFIN (which is just like the SEC except that it also regulates, investigates and actually prosecutes, instead of just watching porn all day) was launching a probe of the biggest bank in Europe, and actually, make that the world, Germany's Deutsche Bank, the shares took a quick, brisk hit, sliding 5% with everyone anxiously expecting to find out just which bank will follow Barclays into the scapegoat abattoir (because nobody had any clue Liebor manipulation was going on until a week ago). Yet while external inquiry into banks is to be expected (everywhere but in the US of course, because in the US no banks manipulated anything. Ever) as a proactive act on behalf of regulators to cover their back, things get a little more tricky when the bank itself admits there was an obvious supervision problem. From Reuters: "Two Deutsche Bank employees have been suspended after it used external auditors to examine whether staff were involved in manipulating interbank lending rates, German magazine Der Spiegel reported, citing no sources." Now what can possibly go wrong if the biggest bank in the world, with just shy of $3 trillion in "assets", which just happens to have a 1.68% Core Tier 1 ratio, is suddenly thrust smack in the middle of the scandal that the Economist just aptly named the finance industry's "tobacco moment"?

The FDIC decided to wait with its dose of pre-holiday humor until after the Barclays fixing for today's market close turned out to be spot on. And by that we mean that official release of the US banks' "living will" statements, which as far as we know is about the most worthless exercise ever conducted, and about the dumbest thing to be conceived by that very undynamic duo of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Because last we checked, the treatment of living wills in bankruptcy court, where all these firms will end up eventually anyway, is... non-existent. But the real fun is when one actually reads this indicative statement from Citigroup: "Citi is today a fundamentally different institution than it was before the crisis." And that's where we stopped. Because it is banks wasting their time (and taxpayer bailout money) on gibberish like this instead of analyzing the risk inherent in their prop positions that guarantees the next CIO-like blow up will not be just $5 billion but far, far more, and will certainly prove that living wills when one has to equitize tens of billions in unsecured debt are worth exactly didely squat.

It's escalating. Following the resignation of Barclays' Chairman this morning, the government announced a twin probe into the Libor system and banking standards; and Bob Diamond (Barclays CEO) is threatening, according to the FT, to reveal potentially embarrassing details about Barclays' dealing with regulators if he comes under fire at a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday over Lie-borgate. Unlike his almost-namesake Jamie Dimon who suffered through the indignity of a congressional probing, Bob has gone all Mutually Assured Destruction with confrontational tactics that could further aggravate the fraught relations between the bank and the authorities. "If he is attacked, he will fight back" seems to be well understood and the key aspect - as we have pointed out - is that if this is pursued too vehemently then the whole house of cards could come down as [regulators and politicians] "likely knew perfectly well those rates were not the ones where banks were prepared to lend to each other". So much was made at the time of several of these short-term liquidity measures as indicative of 'no' stress to the ignorant investing public when credit market participants were well aware of the dismal state of interbank reality - perhaps it is worth a glance at the current levels of Lie-bor (especially relative to EUREPO and CDS curves) to get a sense of just what could happen if the truth was ever allowed out into the public eye. M.A.D. indeed.

We have long said that the maximum potential loss of the JPM CIO trade based on the blow out in IG9 10 year (and associated trades complex), which has about a $200 million DV01, is far beyond not only the $2 billion that Jamie Dimon estimated on May 10, but above our own estimate which was $5 billion on that same day. Today, the NYT "according to people who have been briefed on the situation" which translated means just more media propaganda because all the news on the topic in the past month has been leaks by axed parties, says that 'Losses on JPMorgan Chase’s bungled trade could total as much as $9 billion, far exceeding earlier public estimates, according to people who have been briefed on the situation." Also according to the NYT, and roundly refuting what the other leak had told Bloomberg and other media outlets, "The bank’s exit from its money-losing trade is happening faster than many expected. JPMorgan previously said it hoped to clear its position by early next year; now it is already out of more than half of the trade and may be completely free this year." Obviously, this refutes media "reports" also based on "people familiar" or "conflicted sources" that JPM has unwound its trade, either by novating, or by transferring it over to helpful hedge funds. Bottom line: take everything with a grain of salt until Dimon himself gives an update in two weeks, as this could easily be an upper bound loss estimate starwman to set expectations very low, sending the stock soaring when the "final" announce loss comes in at ~$5 billion, courtesy of other well-known "masking" techniques such as loan loss reserve release and DVA benefits.

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Back on May 10, when JPMorgan announced its massive CIO trading loss (which may or may not have been unwound courtesy of a risk offboarding to another hedge fund which may or may not be backstopped by the Fed as the massive IG9 position was not novated but merely transferred) JPM also disclosed something else which may have bigger implications for the broader, and just downgraded, banking sector. As a reminder, in the 10-Q filing, the bank reported a VaR of $170 million for the three months ending March 31, 2012. This compared to a tiny $88 million for the previous year. According to the company, “the increase in average VaR was primarily driven by an increase in CIO VaR and a decrease in diversification benefit across the Firm.” What JPM really meant is that after being exposed in the media for having a monster derivative-based prop bet on its books, it had no choice, as it was no longer possible to use manipulated and meaningless risk "models" according to which the $2 billion loss, roughly 23 sigma based on the old VaR number, was impossible (ignoring that VaR is an absolutely meaningless and irrelevant statistical contraption). Turns out it is very much possible. Which brings us to the latest quarterly Office of the Comptroller of the Currency report, and particularly the chart on page 7. More than anything it shows what happens when a big bank is caught red-handed lying about its risk exposure. We urge readers to spot the odd one out.