By Floyd Norris
The housing crisis was not nearly as bad as it appeared to be.
At least that is what JPMorgan Chase has concluded. And that provided a big help for the company’s search for profits to offset the growing losses from the so-called hedge positions.
Those positions have not yet been wound down, the company says. But they have been transferred from one part of the empire to another — out of the chief investment office and into the investment bank, which the company says “has the expertise, capacity, trading platforms and market franchise to manage these positions.” The people who ran the investment office have been sent away.
The bank puffed up its second quarter results by taking $1.4 billion out of its allowance for loan losses “as mortgage delinquency trends continued to improve” and it “refined” its estimates of what it would have to spend on borrower assistance programs.
The rest via JPMorgan Discovers Good News in Housing – NYTimes.com.
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