One of the things about this kind of derivatives is that it’s extremely opaque, and we only have JPMorgan’s side of the story at this point, without any real investigation, and JPMorgan’s story doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
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And the reason you’re calling it a hedge is because it’s illegal, under the Volcker Rule, to speculate in this fashion. So the story coming out of JPMorgan doesn’t make any sense as a financial matter. It seems reasonably clear that this is faux hedges.
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The list of systemically dangerous institutions that Jamie Dimon went through that failed, they all failed in large part because of these financial derivatives, what we call the green slime. So, that’s what brought down Fannie and Freddie and Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, Lehman, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia. After those catastrophic disasters that caused the Great Recession, cost six billion Americans their jobs directly, prevented another five to eight million jobs from being created, helped lead to a global crisis called the Great Recession—after that, the banks still fought to be allowed to do exactly the same kind of derivative trades.