JPMorgan's Mortgage Confessions Don't Include O.J. Simpson

The JPMorgan mortgage settlement came out today, but it's been about to come out for so long now that I think I should get a pass from writing about it. The thing that everyone knew would happen, happened, in about the way everyone knew it would happen. Lotta money: $13 billion in all, of which $7 billion is civil securities settlements, $2 billion is "a civil penalty to settle the Justice Department claims under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act (FIRREA)," and $4 billion is "in the form of relief to aid consumers harmed by the unlawful conduct of JPMorgan, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual," although importantly not the unlawful conduct that is settled here, which is all about tricking buyers of those loans, not borrowers. Though I guess the working thesis is that tricking the buyers led to the financial crisis, which hurt consumers too, I don't know, sure, why not.

If I told you that the statement of facts, in which JPMorgan admits to all of its and Bear's and WaMu's sordid mortgage misdeeds, is boring, you'd be like, well, it's a list of mortgage misdeeds, of course it is boring. And I can't argue with you there. But it is not boring in the usual way that lists of mortgage misdeeds are boring. The usual way is: