One of the characters in the classic 1939 film "Stagecoach" is a
banker named Gatewood who lectures his captive audience on the
evils of big government, especially bank regulation - "As if we
bankers don't know how to run our own banks!" he exclaims. As
the film progresses, we learn that Gatewood is in fact skipping
town with a satchel full of embezzled cash. As far as we know,
Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, isn't
planning anything similar. He has, however, been fond of giving
Gatewood-like speeches about how he and his colleagues know what
they're doing, and don't need the government looking over their
shoulders. So there's a large heap of poetic justice - and a
major policy lesson - in JPMorgan's shock announcement that it
somehow managed to lose $2 billion in a failed bit of financial
wheeling-dealing. Just to be clear, businessmen are human -
although the Lords of finance have a tendency to forget that -
and they make money-losing mistakes all the time. That in itself
is no reason fo