There are a few skeptics out there who agree with your "surely it can't be this easy". I don't think JPM is dead - they will just operate their silver suppression in another way. Tyler Durden in Zero Hedge today:
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/31/2010 14:01 -0500
So JPMorgan fires 20 people in its commodity prop book. What about Sempra Energy, which Dimon purchased recently? Is that getting spun off too? Or are all the 20 whopping newly unemployed advised to seek employment at Sempra? One wonders why JP Morgan named a new global head of commodity strategy today. But yes, let's wave the white flag in the face of the dumb public and pretend we are complying with Volcker. But first, let's have the corpulent Frank in charge of the finreg abortion lisp something on TV about what a great success his capture by Wall Street is proving to be.