Category

Banks

Wall Street

How JPMorgan and the London Whale Can Sink Your Portfolio

By , Managing Editor, Money Morning - • Print | Email

In the spring of 2012, JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s (NYSE: JPM) not-so-rogue trader, Bruno Iksil, better known as the London Whale, made a series of derivatives trades on credit default swaps that only appeared to be unauthorized.

In reality, those trades were just one side of JPMorgan betting against the other in a doom struck hedging strategy.

We're talking about trades so big they made waves across a $10 trillion market.

Banking

A Simple, Scary Way to Neuter Goldman Sachs and Friends 

By , Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning • @ShahGilani_TW - • Print | Email

TBTF is the acronym for "too big to fail."

It's the crazy notion that certain banks are so large and systematically important (which really means so threatening to financial systems) that they must be kept alive by the government, because their failure would wreak havoc on the economy.

How will they be saved from their own greed? And how will we be saved from their greed so we can kneel at their altars another day?

Central banks and governments, who are not as powerful as central banks, will backstop them with printed paper and taxpayer blood. That's how they'll be saved, grow bigger, and one day rule the world.

Oh, that already happened… never mind