July 2 (Bloomberg) -- Lord knows we’ve had more than enough
scandals ginned up by Wall Street over the years, and the
message that banking executives proclaim after each is: “Don’t
worry, we’ve learned that lesson, and it will never happen
again.”
Which is how we got to the recent spectacle of Jamie Dimon,
the chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., testifying
twice before Congress that although the bank’s chief investment
office was taking huge proprietary risks with some $350 billion
of its depositors' money -- and lost $3 billion (and counting) by
making a bunch of risky bets on an obscure, thinly traded
derivatives contract -- everything is now fine and dandy because
the unjustifiable gambling has been stopped dead in its tracks.
