Regulators Prepare Fines For JPMorgan Chase
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Just before the long holiday weekend, the New York Times reported about possible fines for the bank, JPMorgan Chase. The possible fines result from investigations by the Consumer financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Office Of The Comptroller Of The Currency (OCC) into allegations about how the bank sold identity theft protection services to credit card customers, and collected past-due bills from customers.
According to the newspaper:
"The most costly cases for JPMorgan center on concerns that the bank duped its credit card customers into buying products pitched as a way to shield them from identity theft. In separate actions reflecting their varied jurisdictions, the consumer bureau will levy a roughly $20 million fine, while the comptroller’s office is expected to extract about $60 million... In a public filing this month, JPMorgan disclosed to investors a bevy of pending investigations from federal authorities scrutinizing the bank’s financial crisis-era mortgage business and its multi-billion-dollar trading loss in London last year..."
In his Twitter feed, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich commented about the effectiveness of fines to prevent banking abuses:
"Fines effective only if risk of being caught x probability of being prosecuted x amount of fine > profits to be made."
I agree with that assessment 1,000 percent.
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