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One of Len Blavatnik's companies lost $98 million in a $1 billion portfolio invested with JPM. It's not our fault! They say. So they're suing JPM. CMMF claims that when JPMorgan was retained in May 2006, it was given broad discretion in how it invested the funds but its goal was to “provide a high level of current income consistent with low volatility,” explains Francesco Guerrera at the Financial Times. The two sides disagree on how JPM allocated the funds. Blavatnik says JPM wrongly invested 46% of his company's money in asset backed securities. "Wrongly" because, his side argues, their...

No excerpt allowed from Bloomberg.com, story here.

The WaMu bankruptcy just got a little more interesting. Washington Mutual, the bankruptcy holding company, is asking a court to compel the FDIC, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and several ratings agencies to turn over emails and other documents relating to JPMorgan's acquisition of the bank. Reuters (via The New York Times) has a report here. Zach Lowe of The Am Law Daily has a report, including a breakdown of the legal teams, here. Reuters: The company wants to investigate discussions between JPMorgan Chase, regulators, competitors and rating agencies it said led to the seizure of Washington Mutual, or WMI, according to...

We are less than three weeks away from entering the next decade. The most important thing you need to know entering 2010 is that silver is the single best investment for the next decade. In our opinion, investing into silver is the only sure way to tremendously increase your purchasing power over the next ten years. Throughout world history, only ten times more silver has been mined than gold. If you go back about 1,000 years ago between the years 1000 and 1250, gold was worth ten times more than silver worldwide. From year 1250 to 1792, the gold to...

Obama's Big Wall Street Sellout The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel...

On Saturday, joined by hundreds of friends, family and colleagues on a snowy December day in Yonkers, NY, we celebrated the life of Mark Pittman. Readers of The IRA who wish to express their thanks to Mark and show support for his family may make contributions to the Pittman Children’s College Fund, c/o Dr. William Karesh, 30B Pondview Road, Rye, NY 10580. Bob Ivry from Bloomberg News gave a remembrance of Mark, including reading the letter that his daughter Maggie Pittman posted on zerohedge to dispel rumors that her dad might have been murdered. Some members of the zerohedge family...

Rep Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) recently met with senior officials of Goldman Sachs. The confusion she displayed during that meeting is astonishing. Here is her report : This week I had an opportunity most Americans would relish, just as I did. I was able to unload on two top executives of Goldman Sachs who descended from on high to my office because I clearly needed some educating. One was a Vice President and the other their Chief Risk Officer. I had authored a letter on October 28, along with Congressman Peter Welch, that read, "We understand Goldman Sachs is expected to...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Some big Wall Street banks are girding against the swine flu, but a flap over how the firms got the vaccine will make them miserable. The public is outraged about reports that Citi , Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley along with other big New York employers, received hundreds, even thousands, of H1N1 vaccine doses before hospitals and other healthcare providers, many of which have run out of the precious drug

We've been trying to figure out what, if any, preparations Wall Street has been taking to guard against H1N1. For the most part, the banks have been coy about their activities. But as noted on The Today Show this morning, several banks have been among the early recipients of H1N1 vaccine, allowing them to get ahead of hospitals in some instances. The story was originally broken by BusinessWeek this week. Goldman Sachs (GS) has received 200 doses in total -- the exact same as Lennox Hill hospital. Health officials say corporate partners are always part of the distribution of any...

Close followers of the Climategate controversy know that much of the mêlée surrounds an email in which Climate Research Unit (CRU) chief Phil Jones wrote about using “Mike’s Nature Trick” (MNT) to “hide the decline.” And yet, 17 days and thousands of almost exclusively on-line op-eds into this scandal, it still seems very few understand exactly which “decline” was being hidden, what “trick” was used to do so, and why Jones’s words have become the slogan for the greatest scientific fraud in history. As the mainstream media move from abject denial to dismissive whitewashing, CRU co-conspirators move to Copenhagen for...

Even Timmy is slowly realizing that the Administration will need to find a way to deflect Main Steet's anger at Goldman and keep it focused exclusively on Wall Street instead of equating it with Obama et al. The problem is - you make some very serious, tentacled enemies in the process. Geithner also flip flops on his prior position on the transaction tax. While before he was more opposed to the transaction tax than even Marla, his new "windsocked" position on the topic may now provide a challenge even to Nitric Oxide inhibitors. But here is the clincher for the...

A senior Chinese official who oversees the country's largest state-owned enterprises has publicly slammed Western investment banks for "maliciously" peddling complicated derivative products that caused huge losses for Chinese companies over the last year. In Beijing's strongest criticism on the matter to date, Li Wei, vice director of the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, singled out Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Citigroup in a long and highly critical article in the latest issue of an official Communist party newspaper. The large losses suffered by Chinese state companies were "closely associated with the intentionally complex and highly leveraged...

“I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank...

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

In Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83, Matt Taibbi takes on "the Wall Street Bubble Mafia" --investment bank Goldman Sachs. The piece has generated controversy, with Goldman Sachs firing back that Taibbi's piece is "an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories" and a spokesman adding, "We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good. " Taibbi shot back: "Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also...

If you haven't read Matt Taibbi's recent Rolling Stone piece on Goldman Sachs, make sure to get your hands on it ASAP. It's a must read on how Goldman Sachs and the U.S. government work hand in glove to produce giant investment bubbles... bubbles that allow Goldman to work over investors for hundreds of billions of dollars. We don't think you can lay all the blame for the housing bubble and the tech bubble at Goldman's feet... but we do find it suspicious that a ton of high level government posts are staffed by Goldman employees. It's close to a...

From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression -- and they're about to do it again -~&~- The FIRST THING YOU NEED TO KNOW about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's...

JPMorgan Chase & Co. lists lots of assets, ranging from loans to securities to cash, on its $2 trillion balance sheet. Not to be found is one that might be its most valuable -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. For JPMorgan, No. 1 in the too-big-to-fail bank club, Goldman has become the perfect lightning rod for populist outrage that might otherwise be directed at it. That has helped shield JPMorgan from questions about its own size, profits and payouts even as it reaps many of the same rewards as Goldman. Not a week goes by, for example, without what seems like...

Amazing story here.... you really need to read the whole thing. The salient point is here: The county paid JPMorgan and a group of banks $120.2 million in fees for $5.8 billion of derivatives, according to a series of stories published by Bloomberg News in 2005. The payments were about $100 million more than they should have been based on prevailing rates, according to estimates in 2007 by James White, an adviser the county hired after the SEC said it was investigating the deals. That's six times what they should have cost - that is, six hundred percent of market...

Sounds like it to me. Interesting info out of FT: The Galleon hedge fund at the centre of an insider trading scandal paid hundreds of millions of dollars a year to its Wall Street banks and in return regularly received market information that would not have been disclosed to most investors, executives familiar with the matter say. A person familiar with Galleon, whose founder, Raj Rajaratnam, was charged with insider trading this month, said it paid about $250m to its banks last year. Executives who dealt with the fund said it paid more in fees and other charges during the...

Gee, who could have seen this coming? On Monday the Federal Reserve held a major reverse repo test, as was announced by the NY Fed and by Zero Hedge. We have subsequently received several unconfirmed reports that the conducted test has been a disaster (we have calls into the Federal Reserve to confirm or deny this, we are eagerly awaiting their reply). How do you do a reverse repo when there's no cash to tender? Bottom line: JP Morgan/Chase appears to have only $21 billion in actual cash. Their "Cash" position as stated on Yahoo Finance and other places includes...

JPMorgan’s profit beat expectations in the third quarter, with investment banking operations posting strong gains, the company said Wednesday. But the company warned that credit costs remained high. The bank earned 82 cents a share in the third quarter, up from 9 cents a share in the same quarter a year ago. That was much higher than the 52 cents a share analysts surveyed by Thomson predicted. JP Morgan shares rose more than 3 percent in pre-market trading. Tier 1 common capital at JPMorgan [JPM 45.66 -0.42 (-0.91%) ] was also strengthened through capital generation during the quarter, up 8.2...

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. said third-quarter earnings soared, beating analysts' expectations, as the banking giant was carried again by strong investment-banking results. They more than offset by continued increases in credit costs, which Chairman and Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said will remain elevated "for the foreseeable future" in its consumer and credit-card operations. Jamie Dimon .Shares rose 3.3% premarket to $47.15. J.P. Morgan, the first of the major banks to report results, said it saw broad earnings growth across commercial and retail banking as well during the quarter. Overall, banks are expected to post falling earnings in the most...

Guillermo Loaiza, a loan officer for a unit of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. in Phoenix, has resigned from the board of Acorn Housing, a spokesman for J.P. Morgan said. Acorn Housing is an affiliate of the community-organizing group Acorn, the full name of which is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Both Acorn and Acorn Housing have been under fire since the recent release of secretly recorded videos that depicted Acorn employees offering advice on evading taxes, setting up brothels and smuggling illegal immigrants. J.P. Morgan has said it doesn't have a regular working relationship with Acorn...

Corporations that have given ACORN millions of dollars over the years are now cancelling their donations in the wake of videotape revelations of employees of the infamous community organizing giving advice on mortgage fraud, tax evasion, prostitution, and child sex slavery. Bank of America is reviewing its grant program, while Citigroup is waiting for the results of on-going investigations. JP Morgan Chase had previously ended its relationship with ACORN. Bank of America donated 28 grants totaling almost $3 million to ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC), since 2005, financial records show. A company spokesman said the activity exposed on videotape prompted the...

JP Morgan Chase has been challenged to sever its financial support for ACORN. As more video tapes are released of ACORN workers discussing illicit financial schemes, the bank has been called out for funding activities in violation of its own polices. Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), in a letter addressed to JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, warns that continued support could jeopardize the institution’s credibility. “Continued identification with ACORN harms the company’s brand name and reputation, and carries special risks for this company, a recipient of taxpayer TARP funds,” he wrote. “The New...

Remember when the US government had to bail out investment banks? Now a bank is bailing out the state of California. California had been covering its budget shortfalls by issuing IOUs to pay for services, making it the first state to issue its own fiat currency since the Civil War. The program ran into trouble when banks announced they wouldn't keep cashing the IOUs. Eventually California reached a budget deal and kicked the can down the road, but there's still the issue of the outstanding IOUs. Yesterday JP Morgan agreed to lend California $1.5 billion to

<p>A new book by Barron’s reporter Erin Arvedlund asserts that banking giant JPMorgan Chase became aware of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme months before his arrest, prompting the bank to liquidate its positions in a Madoff-related fund. Yet, the bank continued to accept deposits into Madoff’s main account at the bank from unsuspecting investors who were about to lose everything.</p>

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers received more than five million dollars last year from the hedge fund D.E. Shaw and collected 2.7 million in speaking fees from Wall Street firms benefiting from government bailout money, The New York Times reported Saturday. Citing new financial information about top officials in the administration of Barack Obama, the newspaper said Summers had made 40 paid appearances, including a speech to the investment firm Goldman Sachs, for which he was paid 135,000 dollars. Summers, a former president of Harvard University and treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, leads...

Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, was paid about $5.2 million by hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the past year, disclosure forms released by the White House showed on Friday. Summers was also paid $2.7 million in speaking fees by a range of organizations and companies, including several troubled Wall Street financial firms. The disclosure documents on Summers and other White House officials advising Obama on the global financial crisis covered 2008 and the first few months of this year. Summers became an official adviser on January 20 when Obama took office. Summers, who was...

IMPORTANT DEADLINE: for Washington Mutual Inc Shareholders July 6, 2009 SEATTLE, June 30 /PRNewswire/ -- All current shareholders of Washington Mutual should send letters to www.wamuequity.org to be received no later than July 6th 2009. These letters are very important to protect and/or enhance the future value of your Washington Mutual Stock. (WAMUQ WAHUQ WAMPQ WAMKQ). Do not delay in taking this important action on behalf of yourself and other Washington Mutual shareholders. Shareholders are urged to respond promptly via Toll Free FAX, e-mail or US Postal Mail, so that their signed letters arrive in our offices no later than...

You have to give credit to John Hempton, who continues to hammer away at Sheila Bair's seizure of Wamu and the giveaway to JPMorgan (JPM). Hempdon (who did lose money in the move) is convinced that the whole thing was a sham, purposely done to bail out JPMorgan at the expense of WaMu shareholders, and that it was the cardinal error of the government's handling of the crisis last fall. For what it's worth, this idea hasn't gotten much traction, except with angry Wamu shareholders. Now Hempton's got another interesting nugget in his arsenal following the release of the stress...

JPMorgan Chase and others are shoring up balance sheets by reducing or eliminating these financial lifelines to entrepreneurs For small business owners, a line of credit can be a lifesaver, giving them a buffer against cash-flow problems and enabling them to handle regular expenses such as payroll. But beginning in March, according to documents obtained by BusinessWeek, JPMorgan Chase suspended credit lines for a large number of business owners. According to someone familiar with the matter, the move affected thousands of businesses. They had been clients of Washington Mutual before Chase bought the ailing bank in September 2008. The documents...

After beating analysts' earnings expectations last week, JPMorgan Chase(JPM Quote) Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon vowed to return the $25 billion in government aid the bank had received "as soon as possible." Dimon should hold on to those funds. The pace of defaults in the company's credit card business, its third-biggest revenue source, rose for the eighth-straight quarter. If the economy weakens further, more of JPMorgan's customers will probably stop paying their bills. Banks are experiencing record credit card defaults as strapped consumers lose jobs and miss loan payments. The rate of uncollectable accounts is rising across the industry. Competitors...

$400 bn more losses at US banks: JP Morgan 21 Apr 2009, 0010 hrs IST, REUTERS NEW YORK: JP Morgan Securities said it estimates US banks to incur $400 billion more in losses from the credit crisis and expects there will be need for more capital for certain institutions. "We expect that total losses could reach $1.3 trillion. Banks so far have taken writedowns and losses of $920 billion, so they are roughly 70 percent through with total losses," the brokerage wrote in a note to clients. The bulk of the bank losses will come from loan books and less...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Washington Mutual Inc, the failed U.S. savings and loan, has sued the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp for well over $13 billion in connection with the loss of its banking operations, which was acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. In a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the thrift's former parent accused the FDIC of having on January 23 made a "cryptic disallowance" of its claims, prompting the lawsuit. It also accused the FDIC of agreeing to an unreasonably low price in arranging the a $1.9 billion sale of the banking...

With the economic crisis, and the collapse of AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, General Motors, Chrysler and other leading US firms, and with bailouts that have put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars, many contend that this is the time to stand with advocates of open government who have been concerned about the growing secrecy of the US government. Without question, the time has come for the American people to demand increased public transparency and access to government records in all parts of government as compared to the current attitude regarding...

JPMorgan sees home equity losses and 12,000 WaMu cuts 2 hrs 18 mins ago NEW YORK (Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) warned that up to 41 percent of its more credit-worthy home equity borrowers will owe more than their homes are worth by the end of 2010, up from 27 percent at the end of 2008. At an investor presentation on Thursday, the second-largest U.S. bank said it expects losses of $1 billion to $1.4 billion in each quarter this year from such lower-risk home equity loans because house prices are falling. /snip The bank expects a total...

<p>WASHINGTON — JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. are expanding their efforts to halt home foreclosures while the Obama administration develops its plans to help the U. S. housing market.</p> <p>JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said the New York company plans to halt new foreclosures for owner- occupied home loans through March 6. Dimon made the pledge in a letter to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, who released it Friday.</p>

JPMorgan chief says worst of the crisis still to come: FT Wed Jan 14, 10:13 pm ET LONDON (AFP) – The chief executive of US bank JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, told the Financial Times on Thursday that the worst of the economic crisis still lay ahead as hard-hit consumers default on their loans. "The worst of the economic situation is not yet behind us. It looks as if it will continue to deteriorate for most of 2009," he told the business daily. "In terms of our sector, we expect consumer loans and credit cards to continue to get worse."

It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going? But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it. "We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."

JPMorgan Chase is laying off 3,400 Washington Mutual employees in Seattle, according to spokesman Tom Kelly. That's more than 80 percent of the 4,300 people it employs in the city. Most branch workers will keep their jobs, however. WaMu's former headquarters city is taking the brunt of the 9,200 WaMu layoffs that JPMorgan is making nationwide. It employs about 43,200 people altogether. Many of the laid-off workers will be on the so-called "transition team," helping merge WaMu's business into that of JPMorgan, which bought most of the bank's assets for $1.9 billion after it failed in September. About 1,900 of...

Up to 19,000 employees of Washington Mutual face being laid off this weekend as JPMorgan Chase turns up the synergy on its recent acquisition. On Friday, JPMorgan Chase (nyse: JPM - news - people ) said it expects to retain the 22,000 employees who work at Washington Mutual branches and 2,000 workers in the mortgage and wealth management divisions in California, spokesman Tom Kelly told Forbes.com. The company has not yet determined the total numbers to be cut in other states, but it planning to inform all former WaMu employees of their job status by Monday. About 1,600 employees who...

The big bank ramps up a program to modify terms for 400,000 homeowners and kills a highly criticized type of mortgage In what may the biggest sign yet that banks are getting serious about attacking the nationwide wave of home foreclosures, giant JPMorgan Chase (JPM) announced on Oct. 31 that it is sharply ramping up its efforts to restructure the loans in its massive mortgage portfolio. For the next 90 days, JPMorgan will not place any new homes into foreclosure. The banking behemoth, which acquired troubled lender Washington Mutual on Sept. 25, says it hopes to modify terms for 400,000...

Barring an October surprise, the fall election has all but been decided. The next question on Wall Street is whom President Obama will install as Henry Paulson's successor as head of the Treasury Department. Though no decision has been made, the rumor is that the Obama camp has already reached out to its first choice. The eye-popper is that the potential pick -- Jamie Dimon -- has signaled an interest in the job. [snip] Dimon and the Democrats It wouldn't be a stretch to suggest Obama would simply be repaying a big campaign supporter. In the political world, Dimon hasn't...

The head of one of America's bigger banks blamed sluggish decision-making in Washington for prolonging the banking crisis Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, bitterly criticised Washington lawmakers yesterday, deriding their sluggish decision-making and describing the political system as suffering from “institutional sclerosis [...] unable to make a decision to make this country healthy”. His attack came hours after his bank had been forced to sell a stake in itself to the US Government, following the announcement of President Bush's plans to partially nationalise America's biggest financial institutions. It also comes after Wall Street watched with disbelief as...

If we look at the list of contributors to Obama’s presidential campaign, we can see that he is, for all intents and purposes, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lehman Bros., not to mention a J.P. Morgan, Citibank, real-estate holding companies, and a veritable Who’s Who of the sub-prime mortgage lenders who are now being bailed out at a cost to the taxpayers—so far—of $700 billion. Obama’s campaign would have us believe that he’s the anti-corporate candidate, a populist “man of the people” whose race for the White House is being funded by tens and twenties sent in by ordinary folks who...

Plunge also due to concerns about Mitsubishi investment; 'you can short Morgan Stanley today' The stock price of Morgan Stanley plunged as much as 25% on Thursday. The drop was attributed to the end of the SEC’s ban on short-selling of financial stock, as well as concern about the status of a planned $9 billion investment by Japan’s top bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. “There is continued unease about the prospects of the Mitsubishi deal going through, and that has also impacted (their) credit default spread,” said Matt McCormick, Portfolio Manager and banking analyst at Bahl & Gaynor Investment Counsel...

What is the consequences of having no bailout? Bush & Paulsen seem like they are desperate for some sort of bailout. We've been told that we could be facing some apocolyptic scenario if there is no government interaction. While we all understand that the Community Reinvestment Act, corrupt politicians, a huge US Debt, and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac is responsible for most of this mess, what I don't understand is the incredible urgency behind a "fix." Why the urgency? Is this a string of dominos that is about to fall? If so, what is the next domino ready to go? Is...

In the fall of 1907, it took J.P. Morgan just eight weeks to resolve a credit crisis similar to ours. Several years of buoyant growth and too much risk-taking in poorly understood investments led to needs for capital that could not be met. Morgan, then 70, locked the nation's top bankers into the ornate library at his home for late-night confession sessions. He asked them to lay bare their balance sheets, keeping himself alert with endless Havana cigars. snip We also seem to have forgotten a basic point well known to Morgan, who would have recalled the panics of 1837,...