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JPMorgan is trying to unload the portfolio in question in a "responsible" manner, Dimon said, to minimize the cost to its shareholders. Analysts said more losses were possible depending on market conditions. Dimon said the type of trading that led to the $2 billion loss would not be banned by the so-called Volcker rule, which takes effect this summer and will ban certain types of trading by banks with their own money. The Federal Reserve said last month that it would begin enforcing that rule in July 2014. Some analysts were skeptical that the investments were designed to protect against JPMorgan's own losses. They said the bank appeared to have been betting for its own benefit, a practice known as "proprietary trading." Bank executives, including Dimon, have argued for weaker rules and broader exemptions. JPMorgan has been a strong critic of several provisions that would have made this loss less likely, said Michael Greenberger, former enforcement director of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates many types of derivatives. "These instruments are not regularly and efficiently priced, and a company can wake up one day, as AIG did in 2008, and find out they're in a terrific hole. It can just blow up overnight," said Greenberger, a professor at the University of Maryland. The disclosure quickly led to intensified calls for a heavier-handed approach by regulators to monitoring banks' trading activity. "The enormous loss JP Morgan announced today is just the latest evidence that what banks call `hedges' are often risky bets that so-called `too big to fail' banks have no business making," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
[Associated
Press;
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