JPM's trivial losses: too big to understand

JP Morgan has announced it has lost about $2 billion in its hedging portfolio. This is about 1.1% of its $183 billion of equity capital and is inconsequential in terms of the soundness of the bank. The problem is that the numbers are big; in fact, too big for the average person to understand how small they are. Let's reduce the scale. Our local bank, the Hingham Institution for Savings, is very sound and has $85 million in equity. A loss proportional to that of JPM would be about $900,000, which is 65% of the CEO's salary. Unfortunate, but not that important even for shareholders, let alone taxpayers. The problem is really one of management scale. I would estimate that Jamie Dimon weights around 200 pounds, about the same as the CEO of the Hingham Institution for Savings. Dimon would, however, have to scale up to 43,000 lbs to be big enough proportionally to manage JPM. JPM is too big for Dimon, as now proportioned, to manage.