What Did JPMorgan Execs Know and When Did They Know It? - ProPublica

What Did JPMorgan Execs Know and When Did They Know It? - ProPublica

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The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are looking into JPMorgan Chase’s trading debacle — and if you think anything is going to come of that, well, I’m pretty sure that JPMorgan has some derivatives it would love to sell you.
A serious investigation is still necessary. The first lesson of the financial crisis is not that the capital markets were poorly regulated or that the banks were too leveraged or that the government needed better processes for taking over failing institutions.

About The Trade

In this column, co-published with New York Times' DealBook, I monitor the financial markets to hold companies, executives and government officials accountable for their actions. Tips? Praise? Contact me at jesse@propublica.org

The first lesson is that when they are in trouble, banks will mislead the world about their financials. And some will lie. Richard S. Fuld Jr. of Lehman Brothers, E. Stanley O’Neal and Charles O. Prince of Citigroup all played down their banks’ exposures before their institutions took vast losses. Were they deliberately misleading? Because of the failures to investigate the financial crisis adequately, we still don’t know.