JPMorgan Feigns Injury From Lawsuit Pinprick

Oct. 8 (Bloomberg) -- New York State Attorney General EricSchneiderman’s fraud lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase & Co. forthe misdeeds that occurred at Bear Stearns Cos. has sent exactlythe wrong message to Wall Street: Don’t worry, you can get awaywith seemingly criminal behavior.

And yet JPMorgan -- the bank that bought the stock of BearStearns in March 2008 with a $30 billion assist from the U.S.government -- is offended. The suit alleges that Bear Stearns’sbankers and traders manufactured and sold about $20 billion ofmortgage-backed securities containing home loans they knew werefraudulent. What JPMorgan objects to is that the governmentasked it to buy Bear Stearns “over the course of a weekend” tohelp keep the financial system from collapsing, and now, morethan four years later, it has the temerity to sue.