ProPublica reported that as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York moved to beef up its oversight of Wall Street two years ago, the team charged with supervising the nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, was in turmoil.
New York Fed examiners embedded at JPMorgan complained about being blocked from doing their jobs. In frustration, some requested transfers.

Top New York Fed managers knew about the problems, according to interviews and secret recordings of internal meetings obtained by ProPublica. Similar frustrations had surfaced among examiners at other banks as well.

The revelations of internal strife add new details to the summary of an investigation by the Federal Reserve Board’s inspector general into the New York Fed’s supervision of JPMorgan before the “London Whale” trading scandal. The disastrous series of trades, which became public in April 2012, cost JPMorgan $7 billion in losses, settlements and fines and forced it to admit to securities law violations.

“You’re not the only one experiencing difficulties at an institution,” one New York Fed manager told Carmen Segarra, an examiner stationed at Goldman Sachs who made the surreptitious recordings. “You’ve heard about all the issues at JPMorgan.”

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