it wasn't the case of jp morgan even though ironically jp morgan had invented it. and saying yes, it's kind of useful but it's only useful as a part of a set of techniques measuring risk. so i think that contributed to the risk they took. and the other about diamond he was actually prepared to face up to the analysts on wall street and say here. that's critically important. actually jp morgan wasn't doing that brilliantly. and there was a huge chorus of criticism from the analysts saying, why are you guys lacking behind. we thought diamond was going to come in and basically solve the problems and the revenues ain't that great. there were other banks who were responding to that intense shareholder pressure, spot market pressure and saying, yes, we got to try to start chasing after credit revenues as fast as we can. and they had goldman envy and be as good as goldman sachs. diamond on a number of occasions said no, we ain't going to go down that route and beat everyone purely through chasing after the quick and easy p & l. but again, it doesn't mean they didn't make

jp morgan is not even up there in the top half dozen from my memory. yeah, you can actually see the breakdown who benefited most from the rescue. i think jp morgan was somewhere around 10 or 11 but i can get the figures for you >> but what about -- >> and the model i think -- they thought it was nuts. there was a discussion with bill -- this story is so many of the mistakes and the terrible things -- you know, egregious things that were done in 2005/2006 were discussed by the original jp morgan team back in 1998 and 1999. one of the things he used to do was try to put as many shorts on the monolines because he thought they were stupid. very prescient. in 2005/2006 when they were having a discussion what should with doe with super sr. they had the discussion, you know, shall we basically do what's called the negative basis with monolines and they recognized, yeah, sure if you use the monolines you could exploit all the accounting rules and make it seem as if the risk magically disappeared which was basically what ubs and merrill was doing but the genuin

one of the first things i started to do, and this is where the story of the jp morgan group comes into being was to go down to nice to attend the european securitization forum that they held once a year. so i went down and walked into the center in nice, a great big bit of french architecture, and into plush velvet-seated conference room to find out what was going on in the credit world. and that scene that i walked into, i remember it very clearly even today, felt almost immediately like walking into a strange new sort of alien jungle, if you like. there were a bunch of people walking around in smart casual, lots and lots of loafers and chinos and things, there were lots of people talking about large sums of money but doing so in a language that i, even though i'd been working for a financial paper, did not have the foggiest idea what they were talking about. it was like suddenly hearing a strange new dialect going on that, frankly, was alien ating. and it almost felt familiar, too, because before i became a journalist, i worked as a social anthropologist, and i did a ph.d. out in the