It’s been two months now since the JPMorgan trader known as the London Whale was harpooned on the market for credit derivatives, and it has not been an easy two months. For even if the bank recorded $5 billion in net income for the second-quarter, as it announced before a conference call with analysts today, and even if the bank’s famous fortress balance sheet was undented, you couldn’t say the same thing for the bank’s reputation. Mr. Dimon was called to Washington not once but twice, and if he acquitted himself well, he’d certainly lost his luster as America’s least-hated banker. Worse, while the bank conducted an internal review of the disastrous trade, the rest of the world speculated; and with every tale of the oversight failures that precipitated the losses, it was harder to credit the bank’s reputation as the gold standard in risk management.

Well, today’s earnings announcement gave the firm a chance to set the record straight, or at any rate, to put an end to the speculation of how bad the losses were, and just what caused them. And so The Observer was glued to computer screen for the firm’s two-hour webcast. What you need to know is here: Read More

This has become a theme: Former AIG chief executive officer Maurice “Hank” Greenberg took issue with Congress’s supposedly-rough treatment of Jamie Dimon after JPMorgan disclosed billions of dollars in losses on derivatives bets associated with the trader nicknamed the London Whale.

“It was really outrageous to have the CEO come down and testify before Read More

JPMorgan chief executive officer Jamie Dimon testified in Washington again today, and while the denizens of the House Financial Services Committee were, as promised, a little wackier than their counterparts on the Senate Banking Committee, the results were mostly the same.

Mr. Dimon took responsibility for the $2.3 billion-and-counting loss suffered by the firm’s chief Read More