What we know for sure is that there is a derivatives trader in London working for JPM who was running a trading/capital position that is thought to be as large as $200 billion.  For JPM/Dimon to publicly claim that the embedded loss in this position is only 1% is complete fraud.    To begin with, JPM’s stated book value as of 12/31/11 is $183 billion.  There is no way in hell that JPM would call a surprise conference call to disclose a loss from a bad hedge that amounts to less than 1% of shareholder equity.  Even by today’s absurdly loose accounting standards, anything less than a 5% event is not considered to be meaningful. 

The Goldman Sachs coup that failed in America has nearly succeeded in Europe—a permanent, irrevocable, unchallengeable bailout for the banks underwritten by the taxpayers.

In January 2012, a permanent rescue funding program called the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) was passed in the dead of night with barely even a mention in the press. The ESM imposes an open-ended debt on EU member governments, putting taxpayers on the hook for whatever the ESM’s Eurocrat overseers demand.

Joe Weisenthal
Apr. 6, 2012, 4:33 PM

Were you annoyed by the “whining” in Jamie Dimon’s annual letter to shareholders?

Go download and read the shareholder letter from M&T bank CEO Robert Wilmers. Breakingviews calls it the “must-read missive of the season.”

Why? Because rather than whine about government regulation, Wilmers takes it to the banks themselves, and blasts the industry for destroying its own reputation.

The basic gist is that at one point banks were respected industries that facilitated economic progress. In the quest for growth and trading revenue at any cost, the industry became parasitical, ultimately causing the crisis.
Here are some key parts…

Remember the story about the Wall Street guy who rented out all 94 rooms of an Aspen hotel for three days for his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah?

The main character in that tale was an individual named Jeffrey Verschleiser, a former Bear Stearns executive who was instrumental in helping blow up that venerable firm. Verschleiser among other things was reportedly involved with an elaborate Wall Street version of a merchandise return scam, only instead of taking the proceeds from returned TVs and stereos, his unit was pocketing the cash from crap mortgages sold back to banks on behalf of investors.

Verschleiser also made a bundle burning Bear’s bond insurers, whom he bet against after inducing them to insure his crappy mortgage bonds, nicknamed “Sack of Shit” bonds by one of the funny dudes in his department. Verschleiser reportedly bragged that he made $55 million shorting his own bond insurers in the space of three weeks. Those interested in the whole sorry story should check out reporter Teri Buhl’s excellent Atlantic magazine piece entitled, ”E-mails Suggest Bear Stearns Cheated Clients Out of Billions.”

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/guy-who-rented-all-94-rooms-of-aspen-hotel-for-party-scores-awesome-new-goldman-job-20120312#ixzz1p07ut8u2

With growing fears about the stability of the financial system, today King World News interviewed legendary Jim Sinclair.  When asked about the ongoing crisis, Sinclair stated, “Well, the story this morning is we have it but we’re not going to spend it.  We are not going to buy our own bonds, we’re not going to cap the rates, but we have it and we might use it.  It’s like that every day.  Those guys can’t get their story together for more than fifteen minutes.

The ECB has the availability of funds for some activities in the euro bond market.  They will use it, they didn’t get it to look at.  Gold was up into the $1,760s, $1,755 (to) $1,760 has been a technical area to be challenged.  It was a fortuitous statement by Draghi that, ‘We might not use it,’ after which gold (traded) $1,709.  It’s something to watch.”

Jim Sinclair continues:

“But it’s the type of action in their market that bespeaks things to come.  Fundamentally we are locked and loaded to go into the $2,000 area.  Technically this chop is going to end real soon and we’re going to get direction.  And the direction, in my opinion, is not going to be on the downside, but rather on the upside.

Central Banks Take Joint Action to Ease Debt Crisis … The Federal Reserve moved Wednesday with other major central banks to buttress the financial system by increasing the availability of dollars outside the United States, reflecting growing concern about the fallout of the European debt crisis. The banks announced that they would slash by roughly half the cost of an existing program under which banks in foreign countries can borrow dollars from their own central banks, which in turn get those dollars from the Fed. The banks also said that loans will be available until February 2013, extending a previous endpoint of August 2012. “The purpose of these actions is to ease strains in financial markets and thereby mitigate the effects of such strains on the supply of credit to households and businesses and so help foster economic activity,” the banks said in a statement. – NY Times

Dominant Social Theme: Thank goodness the cavalry is here.

Free-Market Analysis: This is, of course, the Anglosphere power elite’s fundamental dominant social theme. Our Money Power is good and we use it wisely and well on YOUR behalf. The “system” cannot be allowed to falter or fail. Not an inch of it. Of course, we ask, “Whose system is it, exactly?”

It is not the system of about three billion people who live, around the world, on a dollar a day. It is not the system of homeless people in the West. It is not the system of a hungry child. It is not the system of a Latino day-worker. It is not the system of the beret-clad performance artist in Greenwich Village. It is not even the system of a US Marine fighting in Afghanistan.

It a system that is of peculiar benefit to the elites. They own it. They run it. They utilize its awesome power as necessary. How can one doubt the existence of a power elite when one watches the sort of spectacle described above by the New York Times (see excerpt)? Here’s some more: