A lawsuit was filed late on Thursday in the federal court in Manhattan accusing Bernard L. Madoff’s bank, JPMorgan Chase of aiding his crime. Victims of the Ponzi scheme claim that JPMorgan Chase continued to handle his checking accounts and trading, even after realizing that Madoff was running the massive fraud.
The complaint claims that the bank should have acted on its knowledge of the operation and frozen his bank accounts back in September. It was then that JPMorgan Chase pulled their own money ($250 million) from the Sentry funds, one of Madoff’s largest feeder funds. The lawsuit claims that if …read more

On Wednesday, the stock market saw positive signs for the second consecutive day. At the close, the Dow Jones industrial average was up to 6,930. Other stock indexes showed similar gains, with the Standard & Poor’s rising 1.8% to 721 and the composite index for NASDAQ improving 13.4% to 1,372.
Surprisingly enough, a lot of the improvement over the last two days has been in the banking and technology industries. Those two industries have had a rough year, with the banking industry losing billions upon billions of dollars.
Bank of America, JPMorgan and Citigroup each posted gains on the day. Bank of …read more

According to the New York Post it may be Washington Mutual.
This does not mean a government bailout, but Federal regulators have been in touch with several banks including JPMorgan and HSBC about the possibility of buying Washington Mutual.
WaMu officials insist the bank is not looking for a buyer and that stock price is not an accurate measure of performance.
The recent JPMorgan rumors have caused violent fluctuations in WaMu’s stock.  Perhaps WaMu should have accepted JPMorgan’s offer earlier this year at $8/share?

JPMorgan reported that second quarter earnings were down 53 percent versus the same quarter last year.
The banking behemoth posted net income of $2 billion on $19.7 billion in revenue. Net income for the investment banking arm of the firm shrank to one-third of last year’s figure, coming in at $400 million.
The drop in net income was less than expected and revenues were more than expected.  Analysts had lower expectations for JPMorgan and for good reason…broad factors looming over the financials such as tightened credit markets and risky loan portfolios or more specific factors such as losses from the acquisition of Bear Stearns.
JPMorgan’s news should make for a …read more