What’s going on at J.P. Morgan? They’re going out of business and the government efforts aimed at propping them up is failing largely because of other government efforts to “fix” the economy:

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the second- largest U.S. lender by assets, told traders who bet on commodities for the firm’s account that their unit will be closed as the company begins to shut down all of its proprietary trading, according to a person briefed on the matter.

The bank eventually will end all proprietary trading to comply with new U.S. curbs on investment banks, said the person, who asked not to be identified because JPMorgan’s decision isn’t public. The New York-based bank will shut proprietary trading in fixed-income and equities later, the person said.

Closing the proprietary trading desk for commodities affects fewer than 20 traders, including one in the U.S. and the rest in the U.K., the person said. The unit is based in London, and traders there were given notice on Aug. 27 that their jobs may be in jeopardy as required by U.K. law, according to the person.

Congress passed restrictions on financial firms this year designed to prevent a recurrence of the 2008 credit crisis, which almost caused the banking system to collapse. Proprietary trading involves transactions made on behalf of the bank rather than its customers. The curbs are known as the Volcker rule, named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who campaigned for limits on risk-taking by lenders

Here’s the rub:

JPMorgan’s “principal activities,” which include trading and private equity investing for its own book, generated about $2 billion in revenue in the second quarter, said Christopher Whalen, a Federal Reserve Bank of New York analyst in the 1980s and co-founder of Institutional Risk Analytics in Torrance, California. He said principal activities have generated as much as $10 billion on an annual basis in profits and losses in recent years.

The limits on proprietary trading contained in the Dodd- Frank Act that was signed into law in July by President Barack Obama will cost the company about 10 percent in quarterly revenue, Whalen said.

“This revenue and the risk it carries with it now goes away,” he said. “This will put more pressure on JPM to look for growth outside the U.S. market.”

Since most bank “profits” are in reality debt they hold which may or may not ever be paid back all these little scams they run are how the big banks keep from foreclosing on your house and selling it to the highest bidder. I’m not weeping for JPMorgan, just all the people out there who are going to be waiting for the bankrupt FDIC to give them the money that doesn’t exist when JPMorgan closes.

If you’re doing business with JPMorgan put your house in order, now.