London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard Money

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Delph1an
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London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard Money

Post by Delph1an »

So.

In wake of $2 bil loss on a single bet by Mr.Iksil at JP Morgan I would like some clarification on proprietary trading practices at our too big to fail banks and the safety of custodial account money.

According to Bogleheads Wiki on Vanguard Safety:
http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Vanguard_safety
By contrast, Vanguard (and every other US-regulated mutual fund company) must custody their assets with a third party. All of the funds managed by Vanguard have their assets held with JPMorgan Chase.
So our invested money is held in a JP Morgan custodial account. To reiterate the question, would JP Morgan be able to perform proprietary trading (or something similar, but not called that) with our custodial account money?

If so, what's there to prevent our hard earned dollars from falling into hands of gambling traders.
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2 ... s-blow-up/Felix Simon [Reuters]:
Whenever a trader has a large and known position, the market is almost certain to move violently against that trader — and that seems to be exactly what happened here. On the conference call, when asked what he should have been watching more closely, Dimon said “trading losses — and newspapers”. It wasn’t a joke. Once your positions become public knowledge, the market will smell blood.

Does anybody know who are the custodians for Chuck Schwab and/or Fidelity?

(seriously concerned) Andrew
Last edited by Delph1an on Sat May 12, 2012 1:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by investor1 »

All large investment firms use multiple custodial banks.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Delph1an »

investor1 wrote:All large investment firms use multiple custodial banks.
So which ones (other than JP Morgan) would Vanguard use? Also the same for Schwab and Fidelity
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Steelersfan »

Custodians (most of whom are banks) do not have any authority to trade assets they hold in custody for someone else.

Only the actual asset owner, e.g. Vanguard, can do that.

J. P Morgan owned the securities they were trading.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by averageJoe »

JPM bonds are also in some of our bond funds .....but at least there is diversification and time will tell if performance is effected.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Steelersfan »

J. P. Morgan apparently lost $2 billion on the deal gone bad. Their annual profit last year was $17.5 billion.

They'll lose some reputation and future business but are not in any (financial) trouble.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Doc »

Steelersfan wrote:Custodians (most of whom are banks) do not have any authority to trade assets they hold in custody for someone else.

Only the actual asset owner, e.g. Vanguard, can do that.

J. P Morgan owned the securities they were trading.
Jon S. Corzine, MF Global Holding Ltd. (MFGLQ)’s chief executive officer, gave “direct instructions” to transfer $200 million from a customer fund account to meet an overdraft in a brokerage account with JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), according to a memo written by congressional investigators
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-2 ... -says.html

Was MF Global a "custodian" for its customer fund account? Did it have the authority to move the money to (of all firms) JP Morgan? Did they move the money without authority anyway? How is MF Global any different from JP Morgan other than size? Is JP Morgan bigger than what Lehman was?

I am not overly concerned with this but we do split our investment accounts among three firms and our checking accounts between two two banks. All the transactions download to Quicken so there is no extra effort involved.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Steelersfan »

Doc wrote:
Was MF Global a "custodian" for its customer fund account? Did it have the authority to move the money to (of all firms) JP Morgan? Did they move the money without authority anyway? How is MF Global any different from JP Morgan other than size? Is JP Morgan bigger than what Lehman was?

I am not overly concerned with this but we do split our investment accounts among three firms and our checking accounts between two two banks. All the transactions download to Quicken so there is no extra effort involved.
There are similarities between MF Global and J.P. Morgan in that they were trading for their own account and trying to make money for their corporate coffers. MF Global committed fraud with their client's money.

Vanguard has no such incentive and a completely different corporate culture.

Everyone has their own risk profile. I'm happy with one bank (to use the local brick and mortar branch) and one investment firm (for 90% of my assets).
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Delph1an »


Vanguard Mutual Funds ARE NOT SIPC FEDERALLY INSURED

How many times do we have do say this?

Unless your funds are through Vanguard Brokerage you are NOT SIPC insured
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Delph1an »

Steelersfan wrote:
Doc wrote:
Was MF Global a "custodian" for its customer fund account? Did it have the authority to move the money to (of all firms) JP Morgan? Did they move the money without authority anyway? How is MF Global any different from JP Morgan other than size? Is JP Morgan bigger than what Lehman was?

I am not overly concerned with this but we do split our investment accounts among three firms and our checking accounts between two two banks. All the transactions download to Quicken so there is no extra effort involved.
There are similarities between MF Global and J.P. Morgan in that they were trading for their own account and trying to make money for their corporate coffers. MF Global committed fraud with their client's money.

Vanguard has no such incentive and a completely different corporate culture.

Everyone has their own risk profile. I'm happy with one bank (to use the local brick and mortar branch) and one investment firm (for 90% of my assets).
I agree that VANGUARD does not have such incentive ... BUT

JP Morgan Cetainly does. They're in the league that's competing with Goldman Sachs and Merril Lynch. After the first decade of 21st century if you told me Goldman Saschs was invested in illegal weapons trade and blood diamonds.

I would NOT be shocked. Problem is with the holder of the CUSTODIAL account. Why can't Vanguard choose somebody like Barclays or maybe even the FED.

ANYBODY ... EXCEPT the firm that just LOST TWO BILLION DOLLARS due to a gambling bet by one of these traders.

Mel Lindauer, Taylor Larimore...ANYBODY
. Please reassure me that my Vanguard money is going to be there when JP Morgan folds like a house of cards that Lehman Brothers was.

...

(shaken) Andrew
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Muchtolearn »

Delph1an wrote:
Steelersfan wrote:
Doc wrote:
Was MF Global a "custodian" for its customer fund account? Did it have the authority to move the money to (of all firms) JP Morgan? Did they move the money without authority anyway? How is MF Global any different from JP Morgan other than size? Is JP Morgan bigger than what Lehman was?

I am not overly concerned with this but we do split our investment accounts among three firms and our checking accounts between two two banks. All the transactions download to Quicken so there is no extra effort involved.
There are similarities between MF Global and J.P. Morgan in that they were trading for their own account and trying to make money for their corporate coffers. MF Global committed fraud with their client's money.

Vanguard has no such incentive and a completely different corporate culture.

Everyone has their own risk profile. I'm happy with one bank (to use the local brick and mortar branch) and one investment firm (for 90% of my assets).
I agree that VANGUARD does not have such incentive ... BUT

JP Morgan Cetainly does. They're in the league that's competing with Goldman Sachs and Merril Lynch. After the first decade of 21st century if you told me Goldman Saschs was invested in illegal weapons trade and blood diamonds.

I would NOT be shocked. Problem is with the holder of the CUSTODIAL account. Why can't Vanguard choose somebody like Barclays or maybe even the FED.

ANYBODY ... EXCEPT the firm that just LOST TWO BILLION DOLLARS due to a gambling bet by one of these traders.

Mel Lindauer, Taylor Larimore...ANYBODY
. Please reassure me that my Vanguard money is going to be there when JP Morgan folds like a house of cards that Lehman Brothers was.

...

(shaken) Andrew
Andrew, we all hate to go there. As a custodian, JP Morgan cannot legally touch client funds. That should be sufficient for us. But MF Global did. And the clients appear to be out of money while nobody appears to know what is happening and nobody is going to jail. Obviously the screws need to be tightened a bunch and they will be.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by edge »

This is a silly thread. In any case, if JPMC goes down, the whole modern economic system would fall right along with it (about 2 seconds after).
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Post by Steelersfan »

edge wrote:This is a silly thread. In any case, if JPMC goes down, the whole modern economic system would fall right along with it (about 2 seconds after).
+1
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Mrs.Feeley »

There's been some discussion that MF Global may have used clients' funds as collateral for their own high-risk trading. It's called re-hypothecation, according to the Wikipedia entry: "Re-hypothecation occurs when banks or broker-dealers re-use the collateral posted by clients such as hedge funds to back the broker's own trades and borrowing." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehypothec ... othecation

Assumedly Vanguard prohibits JPMorgan from using its assets as collateral for the banks' own trades. But does JPMorgan, and the other custodians Vanguard uses, strictly follow the terms of that agreement? Scarey stuff when you think about it.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Epsilon Delta »

Delph1an wrote:
Steelersfan wrote:
Vanguard has no such incentive and a completely different corporate culture.
I agree that VANGUARD does not have such incentive ... BUT
I disagree. Any custodian, trustee, fiduciary etc. has an incentive to make bets with other peoples money. Bluntly, if you can steal and get away with it you can be rich. Hopefully this incentive is countered by a combination of ethics, controls that make it hard to do undetected, and penalties if caught.

As The Gipper said "Доверяй, но проверяй".
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by DismalScience »

Vanguard insures its mutual funds with a fidelity bond.

Similarly, JP Morgan insures its custodial accounts with a fidelity bond.

It's insured, although insurance is only as good as its provider.

EDIT: The insurance is only necessary if JP Morgan misappropriates Vanguard's assets. If JP Morgan merely declares bankruptcy, then Vanguard is not merely an unsecured creditor.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by LadyGeek »

From Rebecca Katz, a Vanguard employee: are you a muppet?
Rebecca_Katz wrote:Larry- Yes, the assets of every Vanguard fund are held by an independent third-party custodian. The funds use several custodians – some of our funds do use JP Morgan, while others use Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., State Street Bank and Trust Company, or Bank of New York Mellon. You can find a particular fund's custodian in Statement of Additional Information.

Vanguard employs a multi-provider strategy to mitigate the risk of any one custodian bank's failure, closely and frequently monitoring the financial position of each bank. Should a custodian bank be in danger of becoming insolvent, the mutual fund's board of directors would transfer the funds' assets to another custodian.

Under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and related SEC rules and regulations, mutual funds are required to place their assets with a qualified custodian, typically a large U.S. bank. Each fund's contract with its custodian requires fund assets to be physically segregated from the bank's other assets. (A Fund's custody agreement is also filed as an exhibit to its registration statement, available on the SEC's EDGAR website).

Vanguard funds' assets are held in separate accounts in the name of the funds. Daily checks are made between Vanguard mutual funds and their custodians to make sure assets are where they’re supposed to be, and the assets cannot be used as collateral or to satisfy the bank's creditors. Furthermore, custodians may not deliver cash or securities unless they have received proper instructions from an officer of the fund.

I hope that clarifies things!

Rebecca Katz
Also, 2 posts down are you a muppet?:
LadyGeek wrote:To further clarify, the wiki has background info: Statement of Additional Information.

In the example shown for the Vanguard European Stock Index, click on the link and open the file. Look under Description of the Trust, page B-2:
Custodian. Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.
Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Spades »

I remember the muppet thread and I forgot that bit was in there. I hope that information clarifies things and helps allay worries.

:sharebeer
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by VictoriaF »

Epsilon Delta wrote:As The Gipper said "Доверяй, но проверяй".
Did he really take credit for a 500-year old Russian proverb?!

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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Epsilon Delta »

VictoriaF wrote:
Epsilon Delta wrote:As The Gipper said "Доверяй, но проверяй".
Did he really take credit for a 500-year old Russian proverb?!

Victoria
He properly attributed it the first time he used it publicly.

IMO it is as reasonable to associate an idea with somebody who uses it as the (unknown)person who created it.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Macmungo »

Isn't JP Morgan Chase the custodian for TIAA-CREF as well as Vanguard? That's a lot of stuff to have in custody.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by ilmartello »

I don't trust any of the big banks, or what ever is left of them , after some got bankrupted and folded into other companies, but that's for another discussion. But I still think it's folly to compare them to MF Global. When Vanguard or any other large institution has a custodial accounts, they cross-check those assets always. They trust each other less than you trust them :happy
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by afan »

A few big banks hold a huge share of the custody market. JP Morgan, Brown Brothers, Bank of NY Mellon and State Street. If you have money in mutual funds, there is a good chance they do the custody for at least some of your assets. Moving money to a different fund group might not even change who the custodian is. Since any fund group, including Vanguard, can change custodians, moving because you are worried about the custodian really does not make sense. You could end up back with that same bank.

I do get the concern about MF Global. It seems to be different in that the losers were individuals who simply assumed there money was safe. Note the practice from Vanguard "Daily checks are made between Vanguard mutual funds and their custodians to make sure assets are where they’re supposed to be, and the assets cannot be used as collateral or to satisfy the bank's creditors."

In the MF Global case some big corporations did pull their money from the firm when they did not like the answers they were getting. There were instances when banks demanded confirmation that MFG had the legal right to transfer funds. Individual investors are not going to be in a position to make these daily checks, and no dealer would put up with it, unless you were parking billions with them. But a major fund company can insist on it, and apparently Vanguard does.

I suppose it is possible that a custodian could beat all this scrutiny and still manage to steal mutual fund assets. At that point there may be nothing one can do except keep the money in a brokerage account- and worry about the same thing happening with broker firm. Could have accounts with enough brokers to never exceed the SIPC insurance, but that could become a record keeping nightmare.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by khh »

This might be a good poll question. Something along the lines of 'If you had (or do have) over $2M to invest, would you (or do you)... a) keep it at one firm; b) divide it between 2 firms; or c) put no more than the SIPC coverage limit in any one firm.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by 555 »

Please explain the dynamics of this process.
edge wrote:This is a silly thread. In any case, if JPMC goes down, the whole modern economic system would fall right along with it (about 2 seconds after).
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Post by VictoriaF »

555 wrote:Please explain the dynamics of this process.
edge wrote:This is a silly thread. In any case, if JPMC goes down, the whole modern economic system would fall right along with it (about 2 seconds after).
The Second law of Thermodynamics.

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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by edge »

555 wrote:Please explain the dynamics of this process.
edge wrote:This is a silly thread. In any case, if JPMC goes down, the whole modern economic system would fall right along with it (about 2 seconds after).
It is pretty simple. The big banks are all extremely interconnected via a set of increasingly complex insurance-like products and other derivatives. If one falls, they all do. If all the big US banks fall, then all the big Euros will fall too - because they are about as interconnected and tend to get sold the bottom of the barrel stuff. And so on.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by ilmartello »

edge wrote:
555 wrote:Please explain the dynamics of this process.
edge wrote:This is a silly thread. In any case, if JPMC goes down, the whole modern economic system would fall right along with it (about 2 seconds after).
It is pretty simple. The big banks are all extremely interconnected via a set of increasingly complex insurance-like products and other derivatives. If one falls, they all do. If all the big US banks fall, then all the big Euros will fall too - because they are about as interconnected and tend to get sold the bottom of the barrel stuff. And so on.
Take it you've sold all your stocks then? Since the somewhat likely Greek exit from the euro will probably create that chain reaction using your logic?
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Post by HomerJ »

edge wrote:
555 wrote:Please explain the dynamics of this process.
edge wrote:This is a silly thread. In any case, if JPMC goes down, the whole modern economic system would fall right along with it (about 2 seconds after).
It is pretty simple. The big banks are all extremely interconnected via a set of increasingly complex insurance-like products and other derivatives. If one falls, they all do. If all the big US banks fall, then all the big Euros will fall too - because they are about as interconnected and tend to get sold the bottom of the barrel stuff. And so on.
Didn't we just see some big banks fail 4 years ago? Did the whole modern economic system fall with them?
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by edge »

rrosenkoetter wrote:
edge wrote:
555 wrote:Please explain the dynamics of this process.
edge wrote:This is a silly thread. In any case, if JPMC goes down, the whole modern economic system would fall right along with it (about 2 seconds after).
It is pretty simple. The big banks are all extremely interconnected via a set of increasingly complex insurance-like products and other derivatives. If one falls, they all do. If all the big US banks fall, then all the big Euros will fall too - because they are about as interconnected and tend to get sold the bottom of the barrel stuff. And so on.
Didn't we just see some big banks fail 4 years ago? Did the whole modern economic system fall with them?
The biggest ones didn't fail, and JPMC is the biggest.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by edge »

ilmartello wrote:
edge wrote:
555 wrote:Please explain the dynamics of this process.
edge wrote:This is a silly thread. In any case, if JPMC goes down, the whole modern economic system would fall right along with it (about 2 seconds after).
It is pretty simple. The big banks are all extremely interconnected via a set of increasingly complex insurance-like products and other derivatives. If one falls, they all do. If all the big US banks fall, then all the big Euros will fall too - because they are about as interconnected and tend to get sold the bottom of the barrel stuff. And so on.
Take it you've sold all your stocks then? Since the somewhat likely Greek exit from the euro will probably create that chain reaction using your logic?
I don't agree with your premise so can't agree with your conclusion.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by momar »

rrosenkoetter wrote:
edge wrote:
555 wrote:Please explain the dynamics of this process.
edge wrote:This is a silly thread. In any case, if JPMC goes down, the whole modern economic system would fall right along with it (about 2 seconds after).
It is pretty simple. The big banks are all extremely interconnected via a set of increasingly complex insurance-like products and other derivatives. If one falls, they all do. If all the big US banks fall, then all the big Euros will fall too - because they are about as interconnected and tend to get sold the bottom of the barrel stuff. And so on.
Didn't we just see some big banks fail 4 years ago? Did the whole modern economic system fall with them?
It only required unprecedented action and trillions of taxpayer dollars pumped into them, and they still are not healthy and we are still in the midst of a depression.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by gkaplan »

...and we are still in the midst of a depression.
If you had actually had to live through a depression, you wouldn't be saying this.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by ilmartello »

edge wrote:
ilmartello wrote:
edge wrote:
555 wrote:Please explain the dynamics of this process.
edge wrote:This is a silly thread. In any case, if JPMC goes down, the whole modern economic system would fall right along with it (about 2 seconds after).
It is pretty simple. The big banks are all extremely interconnected via a set of increasingly complex insurance-like products and other derivatives. If one falls, they all do. If all the big US banks fall, then all the big Euros will fall too - because they are about as interconnected and tend to get sold the bottom of the barrel stuff. And so on.
Take it you've sold all your stocks then? Since the somewhat likely Greek exit from the euro will probably create that chain reaction using your logic?
I don't agree with your premise so can't agree with your conclusion.
Which part of my premise do you not agree with?

(1) Greek exit from the euro or
(2) big us banks connected to big euro banks
or (3) big euro banks will hurt if greece exits from the euro and defaults again
(2) was taken from your own comments and i think 3 is self-evident, you can speculate on the likelihood of (1) but the conventional wisdom seems to lean that way
Last edited by ilmartello on Mon May 14, 2012 6:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by momar »

gkaplan wrote:
...and we are still in the midst of a depression.
If you had actually had to live through a depression, you wouldn't be saying this.
The Great Depression is not the minimum bar, other countries have fared much worse (Britain's slump has been worse than the 30s), and we started off far far richer so even a giant fall doesn't leave us in bread lines. Semantics, though, whether you consider it the Great Recession or Lesser Depression.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by Culture »

Epsilon Delta wrote:As The Gipper said "Доверяй, но проверяй".
For those who don't speak the mother tongue that is "trust but verify."
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by 555 »

edge wrote:``I don't agree with your premise so can't agree with your conclusion.''
That's illogical.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by edge »

ilmartello wrote: (1) Greek exit from the euro or
(2) big us banks connected to big euro banks
or (3) big euro banks will hurt if greece exits from the euro and defaults again
(2) was taken from your own comments and i think 3 is self-evident, you can speculate on the likelihood of (1) but the conventional wisdom seems to lean that way
Hurt is different than failing. The ECB/eurozone banks can survive Greece. JPMC going down would cause a much bigger chain reaction than Greece.
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by edge »

555 wrote:
edge wrote:``I don't agree with your premise so can't agree with your conclusion.''
That's illogical.
In what way?
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Re: London Whale, JP Morgan and (safety of)Our/My Vanguard M

Post by 555 »

edge wrote:
555 wrote:
edge wrote:``I don't agree with your premise so can't agree with your conclusion.''
That's illogical.
``In what way?''
If 1+1=3, then 2+2=4.
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