Losing money is embarrassing. And an embarrassed Jamie Dimon publicly admitted that J.P. Morgan Chase goofed. Three senior executives lost their jobs as a result. But politicians and regulators in Washington are rushing to leverage the bank's misfortune for their own gain.

From the perspective of the corporate profit and loss statement, a trading loss is one expense item in the context of all revenues and expenses. So $2 billion should be compared to the bank's $26.7 billion in pretax profits for 2011, suggesting a reduction of something less than 10 percent in annual profit.

It’s depressing to watch, but it is missing the point that the Volcker rule would not have prevented the loss and is probably unworkable.

Jamie Dimon had no difficulty understanding one of the cardinal rules of Chicago politics, "Don't back no losers." That makes his apparent move to the Republicans very interesting.

The $2 billion loss at JPMorgan Chase (JPM) has reopened debate on the Volcker rule. The proponents of the rule have seized on the story as proof that the Volcker rule is necessary and should be quickly put into effect by regulation. In reality, however, if the facts are as thus far reported, what happened at JPMorgan is proof that the Volcker rule is unworkable and should be repealed. 

When you count contributions not only to the Obama campaign but also to the Democratic National Committee--and you focus not just on the last reporting quarter but on the full campaign cycle so far, you find that Obama has raised more from the financial services industry than all the Republican presidential candidates put together.

Instead of placing undue reliance on all-too-fallible bank supervisors and regulators, should we not now be considering doing something serious about the perverse incentives to overly risky bank lending, as well as to the ‘too big to fail’ problem in the US and global banking systems.

William Daley, whose appointment was announced Thursday, resembles the man who was installed on Wednesday as speaker of the House, John Boehner.