JPMorgan

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon will today, once again, stand before the authors of Dodd-Frank and attempt to make the case for why a $2 billion trading loss was a stupid mistake, not a willful breach of at least the intent of the law. Our representatives who wrote the law should hold him to the standards set by JPMorgan’s own Code of Conduct: following the spirit and intent, not just the letter, of the law.

When Mr. Dimon’s predecessor J.P. Morgan Jr. was called before the Senate in 1933, he spoke humbly of a banker as a member of a long-standing profession for which there had grown a code of ethics and customs, “on the observance of which depend his reputation, his fortune, and his usefulness to the community in which he works.”

Reactions to departing Goldman derivatives salesman Greg Smith’s “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs,” which appeared as an op-ed in the New York Times last week, have ranged from the hyperbolic — Robert Reich’s “If you took the greed out of Wall Street, all you’d have left is the pavement” — to the addicted — Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “we need their taxes” (my paraphrase).

Both views are problematic, as I will address. But first, some historical context:

Foreign Policy’s recent “How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis” reflects the dangerous, myopic thinking all too prone to “blame Wall Street” that is a natural consequence of Wall Street’s appalling, anti-social behavior in recent years.

So declared JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon regarding the prospect of a US default on its debt, after which he received a standing ovation at the University of Colorado’s Denver School of Business.  Hmm…Let’s do a little press review - the following items quoted from recent news articles: