One thing to understand about the Fail Whale debacle at JPMorgan Chase is that there were lots of warning signs. The trades were public knowledge for over a month; in fact, that’s part of the reason they failed so spectacularly, as hedge funds got wind of the trades and started taking the other side of [...]

I spent most of yesterday afternoon laughing my ass off about Jamie Dimon’s London Whale loss, but it’s actually not all that funny. JPMorgan Chase revealed a $2 billion loss on a bad bet they made on a credit default swap index trade. They described it as an egregious, self-inflicted mistake. I think Felix Salmon [...]

If financial regulators want to prove that they’re willing to take the necessary steps to protect the public and not the banks, they will soon have a great opportunity. Today, Public Citizen will send a formal petition to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Financial Stability Oversight Council, asking them to “recognize that [...]

The Financial Stability Oversight Council decided on one of its more important rules yesterday, offering for public comment a rule on oversight of non-bank financial institutions for systemic risk. It based the oversight on size, a big win for hedge funds who will end up under the standard. Financial companies that are not banks but [...]

Under Dodd-Frank, companies designated as a systemic risk to the economy are subject to greater regulation. And the Oversight Board designed to monitor systemic risk has come up with a novel way to determine those firms, allowing them to argue their way out of it! Financial companies under consideration for Federal Reserve oversight will get [...]

Shahien Nasiripour’s article about how close Citibank was to bankruptcy in November 2008 makes for pretty good reading. But the most significant part comes well into the story, when Tim Geithner drops some truth. Regulators throughout the SIGTARP report say they made “judgment calls” on how best to handle Citi’s problems; judgment calls, I might [...]

As you may remember, back in November Brad Miller wrote a letter to the Financial Services Oversight Council escalating the demands on them to do something to protect the economy from the risk of foreclosure fraud. It called on the FSOC to use its authority under Dodd-Frank to force the biggest financial institutions to divest [...]

One of the more amusing moments of yesterday’s House Financial Services Committee hearings on foreclosure fraud was when the representatives for the loan servicers were asked why they were subsidiaries of the large financial institutions. The link between the servicers and the big banks, mainly caused by a series of mergers, leads to all kinds [...]

“Clear and uncontested property rights are the foundation of the housing market. If these rights fall into question, that foundation could collapse.” -Ted Kaufman, Congressional Oversight Panel, November 16, 2010 The Congressional Oversight Panel, the TARP watchdog program formerly chaired by Elizabeth Warren and now helmed by former Senator Ted Kaufman, has released a report [...]

In a letter to the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the board made up of chief regulators of the financial industry, Rep. Alan Grayson has called for a national moratorium on all foreclosures because of the systemic risk of fraudulent practices. Grayson has essentially taken this up a notch, beyond the documentation problems that were the [...]

When the Senate returns into session this week, they may have a final vote on the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill. We know that Russ Feingold is the only Democrat who opposes the legislation, so that’s 57 votes in favor, pending a replacement for Robert Byrd. There’s a path to 60 without the Byrd replacement. Susan [...]