The Curious Way the Media Reported JP Morgan's $13 Billion Settlement With the Government
JP Morgan settlements with government regulators have become almost routine lately. Of course, this one, wherein JPM has agreed to pay $13 billion to the government, is a whopper. Curiously, though, the news was reported over the weekend, at a time and in a manner typically reserved for news items that either aren't that interesting, important or - perhaps in this case - someone wants to keep under wraps. Given the size of this settlement and the effect it may have on JPM's balance sheet, one can reasonable wonder whether it's the latter - the desire to keep this news somewhat under wraps - that led to the settlement being reached on Friday night, followed by a weekend media report.
And so a quick check of the media over the weekend, while it revealed front page coverage at the Wall Street Journal online, also revealed minimized coverage on Bloomberg.com (the lead story over the weekend being about Parisian real estate deals pursued by the mega-wealthy) and no mention of the story on Reuters home page. So it seems the effort to squash the impact of this news has been successful.
Notice, however, that a criminal investigation remains open here. But do you really expect anyone to be prosecuted after JPM has agreed to this enormous fine? I suspect not. What seems more likely here is that, just as the announcement of the settlement has been buried in the weekend news, so this investigation will drag on until it dwindles to the point where senior managers who might reasonably be implicated will come away unscathed. Where have seen this happen before? But we'll just have to wait and see.
Meanwhile, take your vitamins or whatever you need to do to keep your mind sharp if you want to remain at least somewhat reasonably informed about what's really going on in the economy and the markets as the biggest economic and financial crisis of our lifetimes continues to play out five years (almost to the day) after the near-collapse of 2008.
The settlement with the Justice Department is remarkable not just for the record-setting dollar amount, but for the fact that it still leaves a major potentially costly issue still unresolved—the criminal probe.The important take-away for we who struggle to stay informed without being sucked into the vast vortex of nonsense the media throws at us daily, is that checking your news sources on weekends can reveal both interesting and important insights into what's going on. Whenever something like this - and this is a glaring example - appears on a weekend, someone (individual, company, government) wants to minimize the impact of the story. Given the enormous amount of money being paid by JPM, you might imagine that the bank's management hopes the news has minimal impact on the share price. Perhaps their coming to an agreement on Friday went something like this: "Okay, we'll agree to the $13 billion, but you have to agree to do this deal on a Friday night so we can manage the news by burying it over the weekend. Agreed. Deal done."
And so a quick check of the media over the weekend, while it revealed front page coverage at the Wall Street Journal online, also revealed minimized coverage on Bloomberg.com (the lead story over the weekend being about Parisian real estate deals pursued by the mega-wealthy) and no mention of the story on Reuters home page. So it seems the effort to squash the impact of this news has been successful.
Notice, however, that a criminal investigation remains open here. But do you really expect anyone to be prosecuted after JPM has agreed to this enormous fine? I suspect not. What seems more likely here is that, just as the announcement of the settlement has been buried in the weekend news, so this investigation will drag on until it dwindles to the point where senior managers who might reasonably be implicated will come away unscathed. Where have seen this happen before? But we'll just have to wait and see.
Meanwhile, take your vitamins or whatever you need to do to keep your mind sharp if you want to remain at least somewhat reasonably informed about what's really going on in the economy and the markets as the biggest economic and financial crisis of our lifetimes continues to play out five years (almost to the day) after the near-collapse of 2008.
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