JPMorgan Fined 0.9% of Profits for Helping to Destroy Global Economy

[spanone]

What’s the price of dynamiting the global economy? About $154 million. That’s what JPMorgan Chase (JPM), a company that last year made more than $17 billion in profits, agreed to pay to settle SEC charges that it gulled investors into buying mortgage securities designed expressly to lose value.

Not that JPMorgan admits under the decree that it did anything wrong. It’s just handing over the dough and agreeing to tweak its marketing practices. The SEC administered a similarly feeble punishment last year to Goldman Sachs (GS), which like its competitor had gotten busted for colluding with a hedge fund to cook up a synthetic collateralized debt obligation structured to profit on the housing bust. The hedge fund that shorted the securities made a fortune, while investors who had been suckered into taking the “long” end of the deal lost big.

As in the Goldman transaction, securities regulators determined that JPMorgan failed to disclose to investors in a CDO the bank marketed in 2007 that hedge fund Magnetar Capital was involved in picking the underlying securities. Keep in mind that the mortgage sector was already swooning at the time. JPMorgan knew it had taken a huge financial hit on the Magnetar deal, dubbed “Squared,” even as it peddled the CDO. As one bank employee bluntly — and accurately — described the transaction at the time in an internal email:



Read more: http://www.bnet.com/blog/financial-business/jpmorgan-fined-09-of-profits-for-helping-to-destroy-global-economy/14412#ixzz1Q0dRHAOH

[Prometheus Bound]

1. And they wonder why we're wandering back into 2008 meltdown territory again.

What's changed?

[eppur_se_muova]

2. You have a true gift for phrasing a headline. :^)

:)

[xchrom]

3. What passes for ' & justice for all'. Nt

[progressoid]

4. Ouch, that slap on the wrist will certainly teach them a lesson!

:grr:

[gratuitous]

6. Oh yeah, boy

They won't soon snooker investors whilst pocketing billions. That million dollar fine and no admission of guilt or even wrongdoing is going to sting. Maybe a little too much. You know, thinking it over, maybe it's too harsh. I think crooked investment bankers are going to need another tax cut. Perhaps a couple of them should be put in regulatory jobs with SEC so that this kind of heavy-handed penalty by out-of-control government snoops doesn't happen again. In fact, we should just dismantle the SEC as inimical to best business practices!

[GOTV]

5. But imagine if Republicans were in charge!

They would have just gotten away with it!