May 14, 2012 1:53PM # J.P. Morgan and Yahoo: Market Successes By [Michael F. Cannon](https://www.cato.org/people/michael-f-cannon) --- SHARE Investment giant J.P. Morgan made a bad trade that cost its owners $2 billion. The responsible parties are [losing their jobs](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-13/jpmorgan-executives-said-to-depart-this-week-after-trading-loss.html). Yahoo’s CEO evidently misled people about his qualifications. As a result, [he lost his job](http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/13/technology/yahoo-ceo-out/). If you want to know why these are market successes, consider: Medicare and Medicaid lose [at least 35 times as much per year](https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/entitlement-bandits-how-ryan-plan-would-curb-medicare-medicaid-fraud) to fraud and other improper payments, and Medicare wastes [even more](http://gonzo.dartmouth.edu/) on medical care that does nothing to make patients healthier or happier. This happens year after year after year. Now ask yourself: when was the last time someone got fired over those losses? And yet the politicians’ first [reaction](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304192704577404111691612268.html) to the J.P. Morgan trade was greater oversight by the political system, which tolerates much greater losses than the market system that is currently disciplining J.P. Morgan. Here’s hoping the Yahoo incident inspires some politician to crack down on people who embellish their resumes. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).