Long live the Whale.

    The most fascinating thing about the government's charge that JPMorgan Chase employees committed fraud in connection with the bank's $6 billion trading loss, and the one that will have the largest reverberations for Wall Street, is not who is being charged, but who isn't.

    Ina Drew, the long-time head of the chief investment office and the person who pushed the bank to take on more risk and was well aware of the trades, does not stand accused of any wrongdoing. (Why not charge her with failure to supervise?) Nor is JPMorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon, who told investors the issue of the London Whale was "a tempest in a teapot" even after he was alerted to the size of trade, if not an accurate picture of the losses. Dimon also signed off on JPMorgan's faulty books, which eventually had to be restated, something Sarbanes Oxley was supposed to hold executives accountable for. Nor are any of the bank's multiple risk officers who signed off on the change in the risk model that allowed the London Whale's ill-fated trade to get bigger, even as the bank's books appeared to show that JPMorgan was reducing its trading risks.

    Also getting off mostly scot-free is JPMorgan (JPM). The SEC says its investigation is continuing. And regulators have already ordered the bank to improve its risk controls. But it appears JPMorgan is looking at a minor slap on the wrist.

    And remember the London Whale himself, Bruno Iksil, the actual architect of the ill-fated trades? Yeah, he's off the hook as well.

    The Justice Department and the SEC's cases against Javier Martin-Artajo and Julien Grout, the two who are being charged, give an amazing window into what it's like to be a trader these days on Wall Street, especially the ones who are responsible for multi-billion dollar portfolios of the market's riskiest stuff. Martin-Artajo was Iksil's direct boss. Grout worked under Iksil, and was responsible for valuing Iksil's portfolio, computing the gains or losses.

    The conversations detailed in the government's complaints are not what you would expect from three guys in the heat of the market, facing the most difficult trade of their careers. In early 2012, when the losses appeared to be mounting, there was no discussion by any of the three about what bonds or derivatives they might sell or buy to minimize their losses -- also known as trading. In fact, Martin-Artajo seems to be driven by a desire to keep the synthetic portfolio, which had grown by this time to have a notional value of $157 billion, as is for as long as possible. That is not a trade.

    Instead, according to the court filings, the three traders spend a lot of time (all of their time?) talking about valuations and marks. What are the trades they have worth, and how can they make the losses they've got look as small as possible. It starts off as minor tweaking. By the end, Grout is maintaining a spreadsheet showing the traders' actual losses are as much as $800 million more than what they are reporting up the chain. In one telling moment, on the last day of the first quarter, Martin-Artajo tells Grout that he wants to show a daily loss of just $200 million, even though it's likely the portfolio had sunk that day alone much more than that. When Grout does this, Martin-Artajo goes back and asks whether they can get the loss number down to $150 million. The daily loss they end up reporting: $138 million.

    Late in the game a JPMorgan risk officer does catch up with Martin-Artajo and asks him to explain the way the portfolio is marked, to which Artajo responds basically, "Hey, I ain't no accountant." And that you know is a pretty funny excuse because all these guys seem to be doing is accounting, but not actually a legal one.

    “伦敦鲸”生生不息。

    美国政府称，摩根大通（JPMorgan Chase）的60亿美元（370.2亿元人民币）交易损失与员工的欺诈行为有关。这样的判断将在华尔街引起前所未有的反响，而它的最奇妙之处不在于谁受到了指控，而在于谁没有受到指控。

    长期担任首席投资官的艾娜•德鲁是促使摩根大通更敢于冒险的人，而且对公司的交易情况了如指掌，但她一项罪名也没有（为什么不指控她监督不力呢？）。首席执行官杰米•戴蒙也是如此。虽然不清楚具体亏损数额，但戴蒙清楚“伦敦鲸”的交易规模。即便如此，他仍对投资者说“伦敦鲸”事件是“小题大做”。戴蒙还在有问题的账目上签了字，但最终摩根大通不得不重述这些账目。按照《萨班斯-奥克斯利法案》（Sarbanes Oxley Act），高管应该对此负责。摩根大通多名负责风险控制的管理人员也没有受到牵连。他们批准了对风险模型的调整，让这笔前景堪忧的交易越变越大。与此同时，摩根大通的账目则显示，这家公司正在降低交易风险。

    同样平安无事的还有摩根大通公司本身。美国证券交易委员会（SEC）表示，该机构的调查仍在进行之中。监管部门也已要求摩根大通加强风险控制。但摩根大通似乎认为美国政府只会小小地惩罚它一下。

    还记得“伦敦鲸”布鲁诺•伊克希尔吗？没错，作为这些失败交易的实际操作者，他同样逃过了一劫。

    美国司法部和SEC对哈维尔•马丁-阿塔霍和朱利安•格鲁的指控让我们有机会窥见现如今成为华尔街交易员的奇妙之处，特别是那些掌握着数十亿美元最危险资产的交易员。马丁-阿塔霍是伊克希尔的顶头上司，格鲁则是伊克希尔的下属，他负责对伊克希尔的投资进行估值并计算盈亏。

    当时，这三个人处于危急关头，而且面对着从业以来最困难的交易局面，但政府指控书公布的三人之间的详细对话让人感到意外。2012年初，他们的损失有扩大的趋势，但他们中间没有任何一个人提出通过买卖债券或衍生产品来尽量减少损失，或者说进行交易。实际上，马丁-阿塔霍似乎希望在尽可能长的时间里继续持有这笔组合投资，此时其面值已达到1,570亿美元（9686.9亿元人民币）。而这样做并不是交易。

    相反，提交给法院的文件表明，这三名交易员用了大量时间（不知道是不是他们的全部时间）来讨论价值和账面数字。也就是他们持有的哪些资产有价值，以及如何让损失看起来尽可能的小。最初他们只是进行了细微调整。到了最后，格鲁计算的实际损失和他们向上报告的数字之间的差距已高达8亿美元（49.36亿元人民币）。关键时刻，也就是今年第一季度的最后一天，马丁-阿塔霍告诉格鲁，他希望账面上的日亏损额只有2亿美元（12.34亿元人民币），尽管他们当天的新增亏损都可能比这个数字大得多。格鲁按他说的做了，马丁-阿塔霍随后又问能不能把损失降到1.5亿美元（9.26亿元人民币）。最终，他们报告的日损失额为1.38亿美元（8.51亿元人民币）。

    这次事件接近尾声时，摩根大通负责风险控制的管理人员确实找过马丁-阿塔霍，而且要求他解释相关投资的入账方法。对此，马丁-阿塔霍的回答大概是：“嘿，我可不是会计。”可以看到，这个借口相当滑稽，因为这几个家伙似乎一直在做账，只是他们做的不合法规。

    At some point along the way, Iksil jumps ship. According to the government's case, Iksil breaks with Martin-Artajo and starts reporting larger losses than Martin-Artajo wants to acknowledge to others at the bank. And he tells the other two traders that it's time to come clean. That, along with the fact that Iksil is cooperating with the government, appears to be why Iksil is not being charged.

    Ironically, Grout was the first of the three to warn that Iksil's derivative trades could produce huge losses. In early January, Grout drew up a plan for the bank to get out of the trades, but it would end up creating a $500 million loss. Iksil and Martin-Artajo told him no thanks.

    At the heart of it, the government's case is about traders hiding their losses. And back in late 2011, that's exactly what Iksil did. He had a portfolio of bets that would pay off if a bunch of companies defaulted. But the U.S. economy was improving and that wasn't happening. So Iksil's trades were becoming costly for the bank.

    So Iksil came up with a way to keep the trade on, but make it magically look like it was all of a sudden profitable. He figured out a way by taking on a massive amount of offsetting bets on a slightly different index to make his slowly losing trading into one that was cashflow positive, which was brilliant, but also opened the bank up to a lot more risk.

    That shouldn't have been allowed. But Iksil's superiors -- including Drew, and in part Dimon -- signed off on new risk models that would make the vastly larger portfolio appear like it was actually smaller, at least risk-wise. The Senate's investigation into the trading loss criticized JPMorgan for not telling investors that it changed its risk model, not actually for changing its model. JPMorgan and other banks change their models all the time. It's allowed.

    The difference here is that Iksil and Drew and the others at JPMorgan not facing charges hid the losses in the bank's portfolio in a regulatory compliant kind of way. Martin-Artajo and Grout, on the other hand, did it in a lying kind of way. The end result of both techniques were the same: Investors and regulators were misled as to the size of JPMorgan's potential losses.

    There will be some griping as to why Iksil and other weren't charged as well. But that's not the fault of the Justice Department or the SEC. Or really Iksil's either. He knew when his colleagues had crossed over from bending the rules of the market to breaking the laws of the land, and he wasn't willing to follow. That's not quite righteous, but it isn't wrong either.

    What's really at fault is our still overly complicated, loophole-ridden financial regulations that allow banks to hide the huge risks they take all the time that are subsidized by the government and that taxpayers would have to pay for if they go colossally bad. In the end, the message to Wall Street of Jamie and the Whale is, unfortunately, that you can still do that and stay out of jail, as long as you are clever about it.

    曾经有某个时刻，伊克希尔开了小差。政府的指控书显示，伊克希尔切断了自己和马丁-阿塔霍的联系，开始向公司里的其他高管报告损失，而且他报告的亏损数字也超过了马丁-阿塔霍打算承认的水平。伊克希尔还告诉另外两名交易员，坦白的时候到了。有了这样的态度，再加上和政府合作，这似乎就是伊克希尔没有遭到起诉的原因。

    具有讽刺意味的是，在这三个人中，是格鲁首先警告伊克希尔衍生产品交易可能带来巨额亏损。1月初，格鲁曾为公司起草了一份平仓计划，但这样做可能带来5亿美元（30.85亿元人民币）的损失。伊克希尔和马丁-阿塔霍对此婉言谢绝。

    从本质上讲，政府起诉的是交易员掩盖损失的行为。而这正是伊克希尔在2011年底的所作所为。如果有许多公司破产，伊克希尔的投资就能赚钱。但当时美国经济正在好转，没有出现大批公司倒闭的局面。就这样，伊克希尔的交易活动给公司带来的成本变得越来越大。

    因此，伊克希尔想了个办法来保住自己的交易仓位，他像变魔术一样让这笔投资突然显得有利可图。他找到的方法是针对一只走势稍有不同的指数建立大量对冲仓位，从而让自己手中缓慢亏损的资产出现正向金流。这种做法非常聪明，但也可能让公司蒙受的损失大幅度上升。

    摩根大通本不该允许他这样做。但伊克希尔的上司，包括德鲁和承担一部分责任的戴蒙，都认可了新的风险模型，从而使原本巨大的投资仓位显得好像比较小，至少风险较小。美国参议院调查交易损失之后，对摩根大通提出谴责。原因是它没有将调整风险模型一事告诉投资者，而不是因为它调整了风险模型。摩根大通和其他银行一直在调整模型。这是合法行为。

    本次“伦敦鲸”事件的不同之处在于，伊克希尔、德鲁以及其他没有受到指控的摩根大通成员以符合监管规定的方式掩盖了本公司的投资损失，而另一方面，马丁-阿塔霍和格鲁在这样做时则撒了谎。两种做法产生的结果相同，它们都造成投资者和监管机构在摩根大通的潜在损失问题上受到了误导。

    有人可能会问，伊克希尔等人为什么没有遭到指控？这不是司法部或SEC的过错。甚至，它实际上也不是伊克希尔的问题。他发现同事们的行为已经从扭曲市场规则变成了违反法律，而且他不愿意同流合污。这不是什么正义行为，但也没有错。

    真正有问题的是我们的金融监管机制，它过于复杂而且充满漏洞，它让金融机构得以隐藏一直存在的巨额损失。这些窟窿都由政府来补，如果局面变得不可收拾，纳税人就得出钱。最后，华尔街的戴蒙们和“鲸”们从这次事件中获得的讯息是，只要够聪明，他们就可以继续这么干，而且继续逍遥自在。太不幸了。（财富中文网）

    译者：Charlie