2012-05-22propublica.org

The first lesson is that when they are in trouble, banks will mislead the world about their financials. And some will lie. Richard S. Fuld Jr. of Lehman Brothers, E. Stanley O'Neal and Charles O. Prince of Citigroup all played down their banks' exposures before their institutions took vast losses. Were they deliberately misleading? Because of the failures to investigate the financial crisis adequately, we still don't know.

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So before we move on to other vital discussions -- about tightening the Volcker Rule, preventing the rollback of Dodd-Frank's derivatives provisions, whether these banks are Too Big to Manage and more -- we need to go back to the basics:

What did Jamie Dimon, the bank's chief executive, and Doug Braunstein, the chief financial officer, know and when did they know it? Were JPMorgan's first-quarter earnings accurate? Were top JPMorgan officials misleading when they discussed the chief investment office's investments?

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[The media reaction to the JPM crisis] is already a victory for bankers -- including Mr. Dimon. The first question on everyone's mind should be whether any existing laws were broken.



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