Mr. Dimon Goes to Washington

Jamie Dimon will be playing a new role in Washington this Wednesday, called to explain JPMorgan's recent trading debacle after years of being known as the Wall Street banker who got it right during the financial crisis.

The Senate Banking Committee is expected to press Dimon on how much more the estimated $2 billion trading loss will grow, and whether the purported failed hedging strategy was really a speculative bet that went largely undetected until it was too late.

The embarrassing loss from a series of trades out of JPMorgan's London office has also raised questions about the oversight of regulators and whether proposed rules curbing proprietary trading will be adequate.

The Senate Banking Committee has asked Dimon to come prepared to provide "a thorough accounting of the trading losses," a committee aide said. Senators will also ask what he knew about the risks involved in the trading strategy.

Analysts say Dimon, who was once Washington's token banker ally after JPMorgan salvaged the wreckage of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual during the financial crisis, can't be too coy in his answers.

"The main question on people's minds is how did this happen?" said analyst Jason Goldberg of Barclays. "People don't understand how something can go from nothing to something in relatively short order and not be detected until it was too late."

So far Dimon has been contrite, calling the trades "sloppy" and saying "egregious mistakes" were made.

But in four prior public appearances about the trades, Dimon declined to provide many details on what happened, saying that he feared doing so would give trading adversaries clues to how to take advantage of JPMorgan's still-open positions.

Mark Calabria, a former Republican aide on the Banking Committee, now with the libertarian Cato Institute, said Dimon will at least have to show he's got a handle on the portfolio.

"He's got to relay that 'I've got control of the company, I've got some sense of what's going on and there are not a whole lot of little bombs in the company that I'm not aware of,'" Calabria said.

Goldberg from Barclays expects the market will get just a morsel of information about the trades. Dimon has said that investors and analysts will have to wait for more details on the portfolio until mid-July when the company announces second-quarter financial results.

"I view Wednesday as the appetizer, but you have to wait to mid-July for the main course," said Goldberg.

Dimon also may shed more light on the bank's decision to radically change the way risk was measured in the Chief Investment Office responsible for the loss.