Los Angeles Times reports: “The ‘King of Wall Street’ returns to Capitol Hill today, this time to explain how JPMorgan Chase & Co. sustained a $2-billion hole in its ‘fortress balance sheet.’”

THOMAS FERGUSON, thomas.ferguson at umb.edu
Ferguson is professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, senior fellow of the Roosevelt Institute, and contributing editor at AlterNet. AlterNet has just published his “How Wall Street Hustles America’s Cities and States Out of Billions.”

He also recently wrote “Senate Banking Chair Calls Jamie Dimon to Testify: But JPMorgan Chase is His Biggest Contributor!”

Ferguson said today: “We obviously need clear answers about what went wrong with risk management at JPMorgan Chase. We have been told repeatedly that America’s banks were well hedged against disaster in Europe. But who now would put much stock in those assurances as investors run on Spain and Italy and we approach the fateful Greek election? But the Senators can’t stop there. They also need to ask some hard questions about the banks’ unwillingness to let our cities and states out of disastrous swap contracts they sold them. These have cost taxpayers billions of dollars. American bankers have benefited from from vast amounts of taxpayer assistance. Not just TARP, but super cheap Federal Reserve financing, Fed, Freddie, and Fannie purchases of mortgage-backed securities, and deposit guarantees as well as tax concessions granted by the Treasury in the wake of the 2008 disaster. For the banks to keep mulcting the people who bailed them out is unconscionable. [Senate Banking Chair Tim] Johnson (D-SD) in particular needs to stand up and represent, not his contributors, but his constituents and start asking the hard questions.”

Also see Ferguson’s piece on Congress and money in the Financial Times.