JPMorgan Chase moved up its earnings announcement to today in order to surprise the market with better than expected earnings. The company reported full-year income of $5.6 billion and 4th-quarter income of $702 million or $0.07 a share, beating consensus estimates of $0.01 a share. You should note, these numbers do not include the estimated $31.2 billion of writedowns associated with the Washington Mutual transaction. But, folks, for banks, this is as good as it gets.

It’s interesting to hear a chief executive of a major Wall Street firm speak openly and on the record about the economy. So, it’s refreshing to watch this video and see Jamie Dimon’s take on a number of economic issues ncluding house prices and infrastructure spending.

A few days ago, I showed you a video from a long session he did with Erin Burnett of CNBC. This is another segment of that session. On the whole, he sounds very reasonable. Take a look.

Jamie Dimon on the Economy

Jamie Dimon tells it like it is. When asked by CNBC’s Erin Burnett’s how business is going, Dimon replied “terrible.” Here’s how Reuters describes his comments: “November itself has been a terrible trading month … (and) December so far is pretty terrible,” Jamie Dimon told CNBC. “It will be a tough quarter.” Dimon said he was referring to the trading, loans and mortgage segments of the largest U.S. bank.

The financial services sector has been the hardest hit sector in the credit crisis so far. Banks with large exposures to mortgage-backed securities like Citigroup, UBS and Merrill Lynch have suffered the most. This is largely because the crisis has been in asset prices — chiefly home prices. However, as credit has become severely restricted, the credit crisis has become a global recession and that means the real economy will be impacted. This spells trouble for JPMorgan Chase.

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I love Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s CEO. He really tells it like it is. At last quarter’s earnings call, he called a spade a spade and said “prime looks terrible” in reference to prime mortgage loans.
This quarter his quote is even more to the point:
“If You Are Not Fearful, You Are Crazy.”
-Deal Book
Words [...]

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According to the Times of London, that’s what Lehman’s creditors seem to suggest in Lehman’s bankruptcy filings. Apparently, JP Morgan cut Lehman off the night before it filed for bankruptcy and creditors are blaming this action for Lehman Brothers failure.
RUUUBBISH! I don’t buy it one bit — Lehman was bankrupt all on its own. [...]

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JP Morgan Chase has taken over the deposit taking subsidiary of Washington Mutual. The transaction is effective immediately, meaning it has closed. This is the biggest deal in FDIC activity yet.
Note: I originally heard this story just before 9PM ET and Yves Smith at naked capitalism has her take on the news.
Obviously, this is [...]

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Not every financial services sector company is a basket case destined for bankruptcy. There are many well-run lower risk organizations in the bunch. Moreover, let’s not blame the banking model for individual companies’ woes. The Economist had a good article this weekend highlighting the fact that it is not the universal banking model which [...]

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Just because the financials are in for a few further rounds of pain doesn’t mean that quality financial institutions in the U.S. don’t exist. There is a stark difference in the level of risk some institutions took during the heydays of the housing and credit bubble.
For example, take yesterday. Dour Jamie Dimon reported [...]

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“Prime looks terrible.” Those are the words of Jaime Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase regarding the future of prime mortgage loans. Wall Street analysts were ecstatic at the largely positive news in JP Morgan’s earnings report even though earnings were down by more than half compared to a year ago. Yet, Dimon [...]