Jamie Dimon Testimony: JPMorgan Chase CEO Heckled At Hearing With Lawmakers

Protestors were present on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 13, when JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon testified on Capitol Hill in Washington.

The activists reportedly heckled Dimon as the head of the largest bank in the U.S arrived to take his seat at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

The heckler, described as a man in a brown blazer, began shouting in the direction of Dimon as photographers snapped away at the CEO's facial response.

Jamie Dimon's a crook, the man yelled, as Dimon appeared unfazed. This guy should be going to prison, he added, according to the Los Angeles Times.

As Capitol police allowed the man to quiet down and eventually take his seat, a chant erupted soon after.

Stop foreclosures now! yelled protestors, including the earlier heckler, both of whom were eventually removed.

Once the hearing got under way, Dimon suggested to lawmakers that JPMorgan Chase's massive loss was due to insufficient risk controls and a failure by traders to understand the bets they were placing.

The 56-year-old bank executive went on to defend the bank, saying that it will be solidly profitable in the second quarter.

The Jamie Dimon testimony is in response to JP Morgan's announcement last month that the bank had suffered a multi-billion dollar loss on trades built around contracts tied to corporate bonds that were originally intended to hedge the bank's exposure.

Dimon came under fire when lawmakers started questioning the bank's risk management controls and hedging strategies.

During the testimony, Sen. Tim Johnson, the committee's chairman and top Democrat, asked Dimon, who months ago dismissed controversy over the trades as a tempest in a teapot, what the bank's motives were.

How can a bank take on 'far too much risk' if the point of the trades was to reduce risk in the first place? Johnson asked. Or was the goal really to make money? he added, according to CNNMoney.

Dimon, as a response, offered up a trading strategy within the firm's chief investment office that was not carefully analyzed, as one of the thing that the company believes went wrong.

The JPMorgan Chase CEO also threw traders under the bus, saying that they did not have the requisite understanding of the risks they took.

According to Dimon, as trading losses started to accumulate in March and early April, the traders saw the losses as result of temporary market movements, rather than a flawed strategy all together.

Dimon's testimony to lawmakers continued to suggest that a trickledown effect occurred where risk managers were generally ineffective in challenging the judgment of CIO's trading personnel.

CIO, particularly the synthetic credit portfolio, should have gotten more scrutiny from both senior management and the firmwide risk control function, Dimon said.

Since Dimon first announced the losing trades on May 10, JPMorgan has lost roughly $30 billion of its market value. Shares of JPMorgan have dropped nearly 20 percent during that same time period.

Dimon's testimony will continue on Capitol Hill next week when he will field questions from members of the House of Representatives.

It is assumed that security will be a little tighter the next time around.