BankThink

Breaking News This Morning ...JPMorgan Earnings: JPMorgan Chase bested analyst expectations by reporting a 34% rise in earnings and net income of $5.7 billion for its third quarter. The boost in profit is related largely to a spike in mortgage loan originations that counterbalanced an additional $449 million in derivative losses courtesy of the London Whale and caused CEO Jamie Dimon to declare "we believe the housing market has turned the corner." Now if the nation could just fix its pesky fiscal cliff. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times

"It was more like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick" says former FDIC chair Shelia Bair in response to Mitt Romney's assertion during the first presidential debate that the "systemically important" designation under Dodd-Frank was a the "biggest kiss" to Wall Street.

Federal Reserve Board Gov. Daniel Tarullo advocated size caps on banks and raised concerns about the lack of a definition of "financial stability" in the Dodd-Frank Act, during a speech.

Viable restructuring alternatives to bank holding company debt do exist and will open the door to conventional M&A options or attract fresh equity.

Proclaim the beliefs you would fight for – the essence of what differentiates your bank from others – then carefully ensure that every action, from your marketing, to your interactions and behaviors, matches those values.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...The JPMorgan Shuffle Continues: JPMorgan cannot stop revamping its organization chart. One month after an overhaul of its corporate and investment banking division and a week after two upper-level departures, multiple news outlets are reporting the bank's chief financial officer Douglas Braunstein will step down by the end of the year. The move isn't all that surprising given Braunstein found his role significantly diminished during another major executive shake-up back in September due largely to the botched London Whale trades. Both Braunstein and JPMorgan have yet to comment on the news, broken initially by the Journal and credited to "people close to the company." Braunstein is not expected to leave JPMorgan completely, but, instead, will take on a different job at the bank. Sources say this new role could be at the firm's corporate and investment division. New York Times, Financial Times

Bankers at institutions with between $10 and 50 billion can breathe a sign of relief. They've been anticipating an extension on the stress tests mandated by Dodd-Frank, and the regulatory agencies gave it to them in the final rulings.

Big banks' interchange revenue appears to be climbing out of the Durbin crater. At banks exempt from the Dodd-Frank price controls, meanwhile, such revenue is speeding along unscathed. Check out our interactive graphic that breaks out revenue for each institution.

The regulatory maze currently being created under the pretext of helping the consumer and preventing the next housing bust will do neither and will continue to impede the recovery.

Receiving Wide Coverage ...'Yet Another Bank': One week after New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a civil case against JPMorgan Chase alleging fraud in how Bear Stearns packaged and sold mortgage-backed securities, Wells Fargo finds itself being sued by the government for nearly a decade's worth of "reckless" mortgage lending. U.S. prosecutors (not affiliated with Schneiderman's mortgage task force, though he has promised more suits are on the way) are seeking "hundreds of millions of dollars" in civil damages from the bank on behalf of the Federal Housing Administration, alleging Wells "made false certifications" about the condition of their mortgage loans so that the government agency would insure them. FHA then had to foot the bill when the bank's alleged "mortgage factory" — Dealbook's interpretation of the complaint — output went belly up. "Yet another major bank has engaged in a longstanding and reckless trifecta of deficient training, deficient underwriting and deficient disclosure, all while relying on the convenient backstop of government insurance," United States attorney in Manhattan Preet Bharara said in a (perhaps obvious) statement.