We have been reading, over the last week or two, how JP Morgan “lost” $2 billion. Presumably, this was from the London trading office, but it was never clear to me, and irrelevant to the point I want to make.
According to the Financial Times, their net profit (note this is profit, not revenue, which was some 27 billion) for the first three MONTHS on 2012 was some $5.4 billion. That means they were tracking to net some $22 billion on the year. Why was there so much press over a “loss” of a mere $2 billion?
That this was a story is itself a story. That the media ran with it the way they did indicates to me that they were more or less given direction to run with the story. For its part, JP Morgan clearly did not suffer from this revelation. My best guess is that they continue to want to get burdensome regulations put on smaller banks that will reduce effective competition, and enable them to corral yet more of the market. They needed some lead-in to give the usual suspects, the paid politicians, some reason to shout about regulating the banking industry.
Truly, the stupidity of the press on this and nearly every other topic is quite breathtaking. I am not willing to believe they are all complicit; their complicity is simply not needed, their buy in is not needed, when all you have to is spin them three times then set them off in whatever direction you choose.
A herd of cattle would at least not do us the disservice of pretending to inform us. Silence is preferable to misdirection, most of the time.