The single most revealing moment in the coverage of JPMorgan's multibillion dollar debacle can be found in this take-your-breath-away passage from The Wall Street Journal:
On April 30, associates who were gathered in a conference room handed Mr. Dimon summaries and analyses of the losses. But there were no details about the trades themselves. "I want to see the positions!" he barked, throwing down the papers, according to attendees. "Now! I want to see everything!"
When Mr. Dimon saw the numbers, these people say, he couldn't breathe.
Only when he saw the actual trades — the raw data — did Dimon realize the full magnitude of his company's situation. The horrible irony: The very detail-oriented systems (and people) Dimon had put in place had obscured rather than surfaced his bank's horrible hedge. What he'd dismissed as a "tempest in a teapot" less than a month earlier had turned into a multibillion dollar humiliation. If Dimon had seen those positions — naked and unsummarized — back then, could his bank have saved itself and its CEO a lot of money and embarrassment?
