Banks are at it again, as usual, and these latest adventures in fictional finance are off the public radar. Maybe the public has lost their outrage and why the latest news is out of earshot. Maybe people are just exhausted, watching absurdity after outrage coming from these financial institutions and the ones who are supposed to watch them. After all, nothing ever changes.

The Senate Committee on Banking held a hearing, A Breakdown in Risk Management: What Went Wrong at JPMorgan Chase? They had one witness, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.

This one man apology show is about the $2 billion or greater trading loss JPMorgan Chase incurred due to speculative derivatives.

Truth be told the hearing was softball, not a grilling. This should be no surprise since JPMorgan Chase gives a lot of campaign contributions including those on the Senate Banking Committee.

Dimon revealed very little about the trade and not much more about his knowledge of it. He refused to discuss details of it, lest he reveal secrets to competitors -- who already know all about the trade and have been hammering JPMorgan on it, adding to the bank's losses. But the committee didn't challenge him on that, even after he turned down an offer to close the hearing to the public.

Bloomberg's story quote implies the Senators plain don't understand derivatives:

What a surprise, that biggest fighter against financial regulation of them all, JPMorgan Chase accrued a $2 billion dollar loss:

The $2 billion loss came from a complicated trading strategy that involved derivatives, financial instruments that derive their value from the prices of securities and other assets. JPMorgan said the derivatives trades were part of a hedge, meaning they were set up to offset potential losses on the bank’s large holdings of bonds and loans.

That loss was caused by derivatives and credit default swaps and in part due to a Value at Risk model. This is the same type of model which was part of the financial crisis and has been warned about repeatedly for not being mathematically complex enough to base one's gambling debts on. No surprise a VaR model was behind the loss.

It produced large losses even without extreme movements in the derivatives markets or underlying bond markets.

The Obama administration is having a shake up. Former Federal Reseve Chief Paul Volcker is quitting. His final act? Trying to get real financial reform, known as the Volcker Rule and was beaten down at every turn.

Now here comes Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, straight into the White House.

Gene Sperling, a former Goldman Sachs consultant and more infamous, architect for many of the current consequences our economy is suffering, laid down in the Clinton administration, is slated to replace the equally corporate driven Larry Summers for the top economic adviser spot.

Even Time Magazine calls Sperling Obama's corporate Ambassador and Dean Baker suspects Sperling thinks asset bubbles are cool:

The primary issue is not that Sperling got $900,000 from Goldman Sachs for part-time work, although that does look bad. The primary issue is that Sperling thought, and may still think, that the policies that laid the basis for the economic collapse were just fine.