Q: What’s $2.6B? A: Morgan’s current tab for settling up on failure to file suspicious activity reports on Madoff scheme

Currently looks like J.P. Morgan will be wiring out $2.6B in the next few days to settle charges of having an insufficient anti-money laundering program and not filing suspicious activity reports on the Madoff fraud.

The Wall Street Journal’s tabulation as J.P. Morgan Settles Its Madoff Tab:

• $1.7B – paid to the recovery fund – JPM also renounces any claim against the recovery fund and agrees it will not take a tax deduction for the $1.7B according to the DPA.
• $350M – paid to OCC in separate settlement
• $461M – fine assessed by Treasury Department unit that monitors money laundering programs but waived in light of other fines paid by Morgan
• $543M – Separate settlement with bankruptcy trustee
• $2.592B – total fines, excluding $461M waived by money laundering unit

With the waiver from the money laundering unit, the total didn’t hit $3B, like I thought it would yesterday.

I can’t quite get my head around preparing a wire transfer request for $1,700,000,000 or having accounts sitting around from which you could send out 2 1/2 billion in the next few days, but then my frame of reference is based on working in a bank holding company with a mere $300M in total consolidated assets.