If someone says to you "I don't get it.  J.P. Morgan lost their own money what's the big deal"?  The big deal is that if they lose 2B it's their money, if they lose 200B it's our money.  Perversely, the current system encourages big banks to take tremendous risk.  Either they win big or they get bailed out and all's good.

In this case J.P. Morgan went looking for a risky proposition, European debt, and then they looked to hedge the position.  Lo and behold the hedge didn't work and they got bit.  They took a speculative position, a la M.F. Global, and couldn't cover their position.  We're OK with M.F. Global (at least as OK as we can be with a firm that played fast and loose with investor money) b/c they were small and their failure didn't reverberate through the markets.  We shouldn't be OK with J.P. Morgan b/c they're too big and b/c the current environment encourages them to seek out tremendous amounts of risk.  The bigger the bet the less chance they have of losing.