Jamie Dimon lives a charmed life. In a normal world, he would be in jail or at least be out of a job--not earning millions of dollars in pay and benefits. Which is really a parable about the world in which we live in where nothing really changes.
First, the indictments (Wall Street Journal--paywall):
A federal grand jury in New York on Monday indicted two J.P. Morgan Chase Co. traders for allegedly hiding losses on bad bets last year that cost the bank more than $6 billion.
The jury accused Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout of manipulating and inflating the value of a trading position "in order to hide the true extent of significant losses in that trading portfolio," according to the indictment.
The trades were engineered by Bruno Iksil, known as the "London whale," who worked closely with Messrs. Martin-Artajo and Grout. Mr. Iksil hasn't been charged and is cooperating with law enforcement, according to people familiar with the matter.
And
the fines:
JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay more than $800 million to a host of government agencies in Washington and London — and make a ground-breaking admission of wrongdoing — to settle allegations stemming from a multibillion-dollar trading loss, people briefed on the matter said.
The settlements, expected this week, will help the nation’s biggest bank move beyond last year’s $6 billion blunder and mend frayed relationships with regulators. Senior JPMorgan executives also averted charges in the case, another victory for the bank despite initial questions about whether they misled investors about the risk of the trades.
And, yet, Dimon remains unscathed. Untouched. As I've pointed out,
Dimon and his posse continue to skate and he still has a job and it's just another example of
the Big Fish getting away.
A joke.