Just a Stupid Mistake

David Gregory interviewed Jamie Dimon on Meet the Press on Sunday, May 13, 2012, concerning the 2 billion dollar loss by one of JPM”s traders in London.  He asked Dimon how he could explain such an egregious error, especially in light of the fact that JPM was supposed to be tops in money management.  

Some of the adjectives Dimon used to describe the disaster were terrible mistake, egregious, dead wrong, bad judgment and stupid.

It got me thinking about my 31 year career with Delta Air Lines, 23 as a captain. In my career, any one of those adjectives could have caused the immediate deaths of me, my crew and passengers.  Not only that, but within hours, the entire planet would have known about it because pictures of the tragedy would have been on the front page of nearly every newspaper in the world as well as on every TV channel. 

As if the specter of death was not enough incentive to avoid egregious mistakes, be dead wrong, use bad judgment or act in a stupid manner, the fact that your stupidity would be held up for all to see was an additional incentive to “straighten up and fly right” as the old 40’s song warned.   

Obviously, shareholders can’t march the captains of finance out into the courtyard at sunrise and shoot them for their egregious, stupid mistakes, but I’ll bet a little more transparency might go a long way to mending the industry before another ship goes down.