Dancing With Derivatives

By MAUREEN DOWD, NYT

WASHINGTON

Jamie Dimon calls it “a doozy.”

And it was. A $2 billion credit derivatives trading bungle that could mushroom to a $4 billion loss.

The shining industry agitator against some of the tougher regulations on banks has suddenly become the shining example of why still tougher regulations may be needed.

After the economy nearly atomized in a cloud of cupidity, Dimon became known as America’s least-hated banker. But now the blunt 56-year-old Queens native who snowed Democrats in Washington with all his talk about not lumping in “good banks” with “bad banks” has fallen off his pedestal.

If Jamie the Great and his “good bank” can make such a gigantic blunder, sending déjà vu shivers down America’s back, what hope is there for lesser bankers?

As Noam Scheiber writes in The New Republic, “we now have ironclad proof — as if we really needed it — that everyone is capable of disastrous stupidity.”

(More here.)