“Home equity will lag because home equity, by its nature, we find lags the underlying prime and the underlying real estate and lags more than most other things,” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon explained in an earnings call last week. “We try to account for that in our reserving.”
There’s been plenty of speculation regarding potential costs of the foreclosure crisis for big banks. Potential litigation from state attorneys general, homeowners and investors – along with buyback requests from purchasers of mortgage securities – has left room for optimists to shrug off the potential costs as immaterial pessimists to predict doomsday scenarios.