The recently passed Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act had the laudable goal of giving small companies easier passage to IPOs, but it did so by unwinding some Sarbanes-Oxley protections and permitting a new method of financing called crowd-funding.
If JPMorgan's losses were from a hedging strategy, they would not have been prevented by the Volcker rule, which specifically permits hedging. The problem is hedging is virtually indistinguishable from proprietary trading.
Having established the viability and popularity of virtual currencies, and with the major financial players now involved, the next step is monetization.
JPMorgan's flawed value at Risk modeling failed to catch the danger in its Chief Investment Office. But the metric's elevated readings now threaten the bank's ability to take risk elsewhere.
That $2 billion trading loss is just last week's headline. Is Chase so big and complicated that no CEO could apply, teach and enforce decency and the smell test?
Until now, there was no expectation that anyone at Tuesday's shareholder meeting would complain about the enormous booty Jamie Dimon earns. The $2 billion trading loss changes everything.
If community banks aren't willing to separate themselves from their larger counterparts, they risk appearing to be agents - or dupes - of the bigger banks.