[ by Larry Goldfarb ]

The Senate is weighing in on the JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s "London whale" trading losses.  The Permanent Committee on Investigations, chaired by Sen. Carl Levin, is completing a report and it's contemplating holding a public hearing.  Such a hearing, the Committee anticipates, would include invited testimony from CEO Jamie Dimon and other JPMorgan officials. 

The perplexing side of the public hearings is that most if not all of the interviews have already been done in private.  Therefore, the Committee’s intention to hold public hearing must be entirely political. Public hearings into the trades could prove embarrassing for JPMorgan and Mr. Dimon and be a political coup for the members of the panel – banks and brokers have proven to be red meat for the angry public and enterprising politicians.

Other than Dimon, it isn't immediately clear who the Senate panel would call to testify if it decides to hold hearings. The panel could call upon regulatory officials from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the bank's primary regulator.  Senate investigators have been looking into whether the OCC failed to press the bank for details about the big London bet and how it managed its risks.

The OCC had about 65 examiners stationed at JPMorgan,but none of them were specifically assigned to the CIO or the London office where the bad trades occurred.  The OCC prepared an internal assessment of its oversight of the JPMorgan trades and shared a copy with the subcommittee, according to people familiar with the OCC report. An OCC spokesman declined to comment.

The panel also has examined the actions of Bruno Iksil, the trader nicknamed "London whale" because of the outsize bets he took in debt markets. Mr. Iksil has declined multiple requests to speak with the subcommittee, according to his attorney

Regarding Jamie Dimon.   The Committee would no doubt ask Mr. Dimon to comment on an April 2012 statement in which he referred to reports that a trader's bets had roiled debt markets as a "complete tempest in a teapot." In June testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, Mr. Dimon said he had been aware the trades were taking losses when he made the comment on the earnings call, but that senior executives at the bank had assured him the problems were an aberration and losses would subside. "I was dead wrong" about the public dismissal in April, Mr. Dimon told the panel.

For further details, go to:   [WSJournal, 2/19/13].