为什么放走摩根大通“伦敦鲸”

    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  

    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.