Fed's Bear Stearns bonds down $100B; JPMorgan's 'regret'
"We didn't anticipate the anger or backlash"
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has listed $166 billion in damaged mortgage loan-backed investment portfolios, which it took over when it bailed out Bear Stearns & Co. in the fall of 2008 so JPMorgan Chase & Co. could buy the more attractive parts of the failing, over-indebted, risk-mismanaged investment firm cheap.
The estimated value of those home loan bonds is now down to $65 billion, Fed says here. That's a $15 billion drop from the $80 billion the Fed paid when it bought them, already at deep discount, back in 2008, with $73 billion in Fed funds, $5 billion from AIG, which insured some Bear Stearns assets, plus loans of $1 billion each from AIG and JPMorgan, whose interest payments have defrayed the Fed's estimated losses a bit.
Bloomberg News, which gets credit for pushing the Fed to make public what it took over in the public's name when it bailed out Bear Stearns, starts sorting the losses here.
SEPARATELY: JPMorgan chairman Jamie Dimon, who's looking to retire this year, tells investors (in a long and interesting annual shareholder letter) that he has "regret" that he accepted government help for his bank, because it didn't really need it, it cost the bank money, and "we didn't anticipate the anger or backlash" from the public and politicians.