By VICTORIA MCGRANE And JESSICA HOLZER

WASHINGTON—James Dimon may have some explaining to do on Capitol Hill.

On Tuesday, Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska, a Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said he wants the J.P. Morgan Chase

& Co. chief executive to expound on the bank’s $2 billion-plus trading loss.

Other lawmakers said they didn’t necessarily need Mr. Dimon in person but sought more details to clear up what happened at the largest U.S. bank by assets.

“We need to get the facts out,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), also a member of the banking committee, echoing calls for a hearing on the bank’s trading loss. On Monday, the panel’s Democratic chairman, Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota, announced hearings on financial regulation at which the J.P. Morgan trading loss is “expected to be discussed,” but not a specific inquiry into the soured bets.

Five days after disclosure of the trading loss, some government officials struggled to determine whether the trading loss would have violated the “Volcker rule” provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law. The Volcker rule prohibits banks from trading with their own funds.

The trading loss puts Democrats in an awkward spot because many pushed for Wall Street rules, some of which still aren’t in place four years after the financial crisis. It puts Republicans in a tough place because they have pushed for less regulation. Some Republicans pointed out that the loss wasn’t too large to be absorbed by J.P. Morgan and that banks often face losses, no matter how they are regulated.

At a fiscal conference Tuesday in Washington, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the J.P. Morgan loss made “a very powerful case” for the tougher financial rules the Obama administration put into law.

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R., Texas), chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said lawmakers need a “a clear picture of what happened at J.P. Morgan so that we can determine whether the actions that caused this loss pose risks to our financial markets and our economy as a whole.”

House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R., Ala.) said Tuesday his panel would hold a hearing on the trading loss. It was unclear if Mr. Dimon would be called to testify.

Republican lawmakers on Tuesday tabled a set of bills that would curtail the Dodd-Frank law’s rules on derivatives so they could “ensure there are no unintended consequences of the legislation,” said Frank Lucas (R., Okla.), chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture. Mr. Lucas said the legislation wouldn’t have made a difference in regard to J.P. Morgan’s trading loss.

“As always, Washington has a tendency to overreact,” he said.

—Victoria McGrane,

Jessica Holzer, Jamila Trindle

and Kristina Peterson

contributed to this article.

Write to Victoria McGrane at victoria.mcgrane@wsj.com and Jessica Holzer at jessica.holzer@dowjones.com

A version of this article appeared May 16, 2012, on page C2 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Lawmakers Seek an Accounting.

If money and credit are the lifeblood of the economy, then finance is its cardiovascular system. When that system fails, as it did following the collapse of Lehman Brothers last September, the results can be catastrophic.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal assembled roughly 100 of the brightest minds in finance to discuss not just how to restart the global financial system, but how to reconstruct it, so both the spectacular excesses and catastrophic failures of the past decade can be avoided.

The group included financiers such as George Soros and Blackstone Group co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, prominent academics such as Nobel Prize winners Myron Scholes and Robert Engle, and former government leaders including ex-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker. Using a deliberative process devised by The Journal, the group debated dozens of principles on which a new financial system might be constructed, and in the end adopted 20 of them, which are published in this report.

Participants were encouraged to keep their focus on the Future of Finance, but the current crisis was impossible to avoid. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spoke to the group on the same day that he unveiled his plan for a new Public-Private Investment Program to buy toxic assets from the banks. There was considerable skepticism among members of the group about whether that plan would work, but also an eagerness to suggest ways of improving its odds of success.

The group also was urged to consider the problem in all its global ramifications. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who addressed the group on its opening night, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who addressed many of the participants in New York after the close, both emphasized the importance of coming up with new institutions that can manage a world with multiple, interrelated financial centers.

 

The Future of Finance Conference Opens

2:04

WSJ’s Heidi Moore and Annelena Lobb report from The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Finance Initiative, where U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is the keynote speaker. More than a hundred CEOs, investors and academics will meet to discuss the credit crisis.

• 
  
  The Rhetoric Against Wall Street
  
  
• 
  
  Perspectives from Future of Finance
  
  

The participants were challenged to set aside, as much as possible, their self-interest, and consider changes that were good for the financial system and society overall. But inevitably, self-interest reared its head. When the results of the deliberations were presented to Lawrence Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, and to Prime Minister Brown, they were offered in that spirit: While they reflect the enormous knowledge and expertise of the participants, they also, to some degree, reflect their financial stakes as well.

One underlying theme of the discussions was that, in the end, Wall Street and Main Street are in this together. The people on Main Street can’t survive without a functioning finance system. And those on Wall Street can’t hope to prosper until they’ve repaired the social rift that has been graphically demonstrated by, among other things, the outburst of public anger over the bonuses paid to executives of AIG.

As several speakers pointed out, the world today faces not only a financial and economic crisis, but also a political and social crisis. To be successful, solutions must address all aspects.

— Alan Murray

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page R1

By JOSH BARBANEL

The national luxury-home builder Toll Brothers

is moving to alter two small, pre-Civil War houses that survive amid the tall co-ops of Park Avenue, despite lobbying efforts by neighbors to save them.

A group of neighbors, concerned that they could ultimately lose their views along with a piece of history, are asking the Landmarks Preservation Commission to schedule an emergency meeting to take up the issue.

“If prompt action is not taken by the Commission, these treasures will be lost,” a group of neighbors wrote in a letter to the commission on Monday.

Toll Brothers has filed an application to remove cornices and replace existing windows on two façades that Park Avenue preservationists want to save. A box labeled “partial demolition” is checked on its filing.

Battles over Manhattan views and light and preservation are among the oldest stories in New York real estate. But it may be a new chapter for Toll Brothers, which by purchasing sites assembled by others has typically avoided neighborhood controversy in the borough.

In March, Toll Brothers paid a total of $29.5 million for the two adjacent houses situated between East 89th and 90th streets. The three- and four-story houses that date to 1856 have been altered over the years, but are considered to be among the oldest surviving buildings on Upper Park Avenue.

A few weeks after completing the purchases, Toll Brothers installed a sidewalk shed and scaffolding, usually a first step in the demolition process. The company has asked the retail tenants to move out, but at least one is resisting.

Last Friday, Toll Brothers submitted its application even as opponents plotted to find ways to stop the project, hiring lawyers and gathering signatures. The application was approved on Monday, but a permit necessary for actual demolition work to begin on the site has not been issued.

“You just don’t demolish history and stuff it into textbooks,” said Alice Scovell Coleman, a children’s book author whose ninth-floor windows are directly on the edge of the Toll Brothers site’s property line.

Todd Dumaresq, a marketing manager for Toll Brothers City Living, the company unit overseeing the project, declined to provide any details of its building plans or to comment on opposition in the neighborhood.

Kira Sterling, chief marketing officer for Toll Brothers, said in an email that the company didn’t have a comment at this time.

The issue is a pressing one for owners in the two brick co-op buildings on either side of the houses purchased by Toll Brothers. One of the co-ops, at 1112 Park Ave., is on an L-shaped property, with a wing on Park Avenue and a wing that extends along the property line behind the two houses.

In all, neighbors say that the views and light caught by as many as 175 windows could be affected in the two buildings if Toll Brothers chooses to build a new condo of 15 stories or more on the site of the houses.

From her 14th-floor living-room windows, Lucinda Ballard can see brick-and-stone buildings, wooden water towers, flowering cherry trees and open sky. But her living room and dining room windows were built on the lot lines and her views could be threatened.

“We get incredible light in the morning,” she said, standing at her window. A former filmmaker, she usually spends her days as a volunteer tour guide at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but now she is busy organizing meetings and gathering signatures.

Burt Wallack, the president of Wallack Management, who manages 1100 Park Ave., on the other side of the Toll Brothers site, said his co-op board “is extremely active” on the issue, but he declined to provide details.

Charlie Akwa, the owner of the Silver Peacock, a home décor center in one of the Toll Brothers buildings, said she has hired a lawyer and is “fighting to stay.”

When the two houses were built before the Civil War, Park Avenue was known as Fourth Avenue and a railroad spewed steam and sparks ran down the center of the street.

During the 1910s and 1920s, after the railroad was sunk below grade and covered over, owners of the two houses were among a small number of holdouts who didn’t sell out to developers.

Now the neighbors group wants the Landmarks Preservation Commission to preserve a glimpse of the avenue before it became synonymous with luxury and affluence, one of New York’s most famous streets.

At first, the neighbors stepped up efforts to extend the existing Carnegie Hill Historic District to include all buildings on Park Avenue between 86th and 96th streets. The proposal was submitted several years ago.

Now they are pressing for a separate landmarking designation for the two buildings, one of which for many years had been the studio and home of Judith Rothschild, an artist who died in 1993. Until a few years ago, it was owned by a foundation she set up.

So far the commission staff has reacted coolly to proposals to expand the historic district. “We are not in the business of protecting views,” said Elizabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the commission. “It is our job to protect the historic character and integrity of a neighborhood.”

She said that while nearby sections of Park Avenue may be eligible for historic designation, the staff wouldn’t recommend it now “because of other priorities.”

This has provoked anger and frustration on Park Avenue, said Ronald D. Spencer, who lives next door to the old houses and is the chairman of the Fund for Park Avenue, which maintains the Park Avenue malls. “We put up 150,000 tulips up and down Park Avenue and raised over $1 million a year for the city,” he said. “The commission could at least do us a favor by doing their job.”

Toll Brothers has a strong track record in Manhattan. It sold 21 of 22 apartments at the Touraine, a new condo on East 65th Street, since they went on the market last fall. It said it expects to sell out at an average of $5 million per apartment.

Write to Josh Barbanel at josh.barbanel@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared May 15, 2012, on page A22 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Fearing the Worst on Park Avenue.

By DIANA RANSOM

Many small businesses got lean over the last few months. They scrapped fruitless projects, renegotiated costly contracts, introduced more efficient policies and laid off workers. But after the latest employment report revealed that job losses moderated in July, some owners may be thinking about hiring.

“Thanks to layoffs, there are some real talented people out there,” says Ken Esch, a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers’ private company services practice in Chicago. “A lot of small-to-medium-sized businesses see this as an opportunity to trade up and make additional investments to help the business move forward.”

And although many business owners are deferring their hiring plans — aiming to squeeze more productivity out of their existing staffs — aggressive companies attempting to position themselves for future success are bolstering their work forces now, Esch says.

The decision to add staff should be weighed seriously because overall economic activity is expected to continue to decline, albeit modestly, for next several months, says Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, an economic forecasting and advisory firm in St. Louis.

Here’s how to calculate whether or not you can afford to add workers:

Estimate future sales

Before thinking about hiring more workers, estimate your company’s future sales. Sit down with customers and ask them how much they plan to buy from your company, says Chris Carey, a small-business pricing consultant in New York. The longer the time period you can project, the better, he says. “Most companies know month by month how much they’ll need for the next 12 months.” If you’re counting on reeling in new customers or you have several promising projects on deck, estimate how much those activities will return.

Pinpoint jobs to add

Identify which jobs to fill based on your company’s needs, says Gregg Landers, the director of growth management at the accounting firm CBIZ MHM in San Diego. This can be relatively easy. For example, if your firm recently experienced a surge in product orders, you may consider adding manufacturing personnel. However, if you’re trying to drive demand, brining on more salespeople may be the way to go, Landers says.

Project added revenues

Estimate how much those workers will contribute to the company, Carey says. If they’re helping build products or performing services, estimate how many products they can build or services they can perform in a given period. For an easier way to gauge their contribution, think in terms of units per hour, Carey says. If one worker can build five units per hour and you can sell a single unit for $40, that worker will add about $52,000 of revenue a year.

Add up expenses

Add up the costs associated with those new workers. Factor in their salaries, recruiting and training costs, as well as the cost of providing benefits, Esch says. In addition, estimate how much added employees impact your company’s variable and direct costs, Carey says. If you need to purchase more manufacturing materials or computer equipment to accommodate added workers, factor in those costs as well, he says.

Figure your profits

Based on your firm’s projected cash flow, determine whether your profit margins can support hiring more employees, Landers says. Let’s say it costs $40,000 a year to employ that worker who can build five $40 units an hour. Because your company estimates that it’s able to generate $52,000 in sales as a result of that person’s work, you can dust off your help-wanted sign confidently.

On the other hand, if you’re looking to add sales staff, the equation is a bit foggier, Esch says. In this case, estimate at what point your investment in these workers likely will return a profit. “Many businesses these days are going to want an immediate, one- to two-year payback on this investment,” he says. So, if it costs you roughly $65,000 to add a salesperson, you should plan to be able to recoup your investment in a year or two, Esch says.

Get temp help

If your company’s projected profit margins don’t leave you enough wiggle room to hire more full-time workers, you’ll have to find another way to meet demand, Landers says. He recommends looking into temporary workers or outsourcing certain tasks. This way, “you can avoid laying someone off if the work ends up disappearing in the next few months,” he says. “But if you keep those temporary employees around for two to three months, working more than three days a week, you should seriously consider hiring full time.” (For our story on outsourcing business tasks cheaply, click here.)

Write to Diana Ransom at dransom@smartmoney.com

By LEE LAWRENCE

Gainesville, Fla.

With the opening of the 26,000-square-foot David A. Cofrin Asian Art Wing, the University of Florida’s Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art is adding a conservation laboratory for Asian art and devoting almost 7,000 square feet—about one-sixth of its total exhibition space—to works from China, Japan, Korea and South and Southeast Asia. Designed by Kha Le-Huu & Partners of Orlando, the wing retains the Harn’s characteristic openness, including floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto a new rock-and-water garden. But the new galleries feel different. Here, mahogany floors, ceilings and columns impart a warmth well-suited to the works on display.

These include selections that came to the Harn at its founding in 1990—most notably Korean paintings and ceramics from Gen. James Van Fleet (who commanded the U.S. Eighth Army and United Nations forces from 1951 to 1953) and a variety of Indian paintings and sculpture collected by Roy C. Craven (whose 1975 “Concise History of Indian Art” still features regularly on many Asian-art syllabi).

Asia was thus a primary focus from the start, a commitment the Harn has now deepened at a cost of $20 million. Original funders and consistent contributors to the museum, David A. and Mary Ann Harn Cofrin gave $10 million that the state of Florida was to match under its Major Gift Challenge Grant Program. When budgetary constraints forced Florida legislators to suspend the program, the university forged ahead anyway, taking out loans it hopes the state will eventually reimburse. “The goal is to make students citizens of the world,” museum director Rebecca Nagy explains, “and the arts are central to that mission.” Given Asia’s prominence, she adds, “the better students understand it, the better prepared they will be.”

With nearly 2,000 Asian works in its permanent collection, the museum can now display some 680—almost four times as many as before. For its inaugural installation, curator Jason Steuber stops mid-20th century (more recent works are included in the contemporary-art wing). Most visitors, he discovered, associate Asia with ceramics, which is one of the Harn’s strengths. So, starting in a gallery of the main building renovated to match the new wing, he surrounds us with bowls, ewers, vases, dishes and the occasional figurines, tiles and plaques, arranged by country and displayed in tall mahogany units.

A wall text alerts us to the role trade routes played in disseminating materials and designs. Thus primed, we notice, for example, that blue pigments achieved with cobalt pop up in Syria, China, Vietnam and Japan; that the green and orange glaze of 15th- and 16th-century Chinese Ming figurines echoes that of a 12th- to 13th-century platter from Afghanistan; that ancient Chinese forms recur at different points in China’s history when ruling dynasties looked to the past.

From here we move seamlessly into the new wing, where there is enough space for us to absorb, undistracted, the Buddha figures and undulating pagoda rooflines carved on a sandstone pillar from 11th- to 12th-century China; the dynamic gestures and multiple symbols in a 10th-century relief of the Hindu goddess Durga as she simultaneously spears a buffalo and strangles the demon emerging from its mouth; or the elaborate headdress on a late sixth-century Bodhisattva’s head from China.

“The Harn Museum has deepened its commitment to Asian works at a cost of $20 million.”

What makes the installation work so beautifully is that it alternates from this kind of sparse configuration to dense clusterings. Surrounding the airy central space, intimate alcoves showcase masks and Tibetan Buddhist objects while display cases variously teem with carved Chinese jades or a smorgasbord of Indian reliefs, statuary and ritual objects from the third to the 20th centuries. This open-storage format proves highly effective. With more objects on view, we see connections and shifts in technique and design, and movable shelves create cubbyholes perfect for small bronzes and reliefs.

Overall, wall texts frame rather than explain displays, occasional didactic materials help decipher a sculpture’s gestures or symbols, and information on the labels is kept to a minimum. This has the advantage of keeping our attention on the objects, but at times the information is frustratingly sparse. Finding the right balance is tricky, and success will depend on how plans proceed to develop the means to allow visitors to access supplemental information through tablets or other media.

Sometimes, though, the balance is just right. Text in the north gallery invites us to explore how artists negotiated the tensions between tradition and modernity. Discrete groupings then focus on women painters in 17th- to 19th-century China, prints made in postwar occupied Japan, and works by Jamini Roy, an artist in newly independent India who is prominently represented in the Harn collection. In the Korean gallery, a 17th-century Bodhisattva showcases not just its own compelling beauty, but the science that reveals some of its story. Across from the seated figure, displayed with scriptures that were once housed in the sculpture’s abdomen, CAT scans and X-rays show that the artist carved the body from a single piece of wood, using a protruding branch for the right arm. A practical choice—but also a spiritually resonant one, since the statue thereby preserves the flow of the tree’s energy. The scans also show that the artist hid more scriptures in the statue’s head.

We will probably never see these—just as the general public will never see the conservation laboratory and other hidden working areas of the new Asia wing. It will, however, benefit from the research, conservation and continuing acquisition programs taking place behind the scenes.

Ms. Lawrence is a writer based in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The David A. Cofrin Asian Art Wing

Harn Museum of Art

www.harn.ufl.edu/asianartwing

A version of this article appeared April 5, 2012, on page D4 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Asian Expansion in Florida.

By TODDI GUTNER

Q:
I am 55 and was laid off from a 28-year corporate communications career a little over a year ago. Since then I’ve answered ads for more than 400 open positions in my field, attended networking meetings, job fairs, and in general, done what I can to find a new position. I’m even willing to relocate. I’ve only been invited for face-to-face interviews six times. Most openings I see seek employees with only three to five years of experience, occasionally seven to 10 years, and few with 10-plus years. With my experience, employers do the math and figure I’m too old or expensive. What do you suggest I do?

A: As you well know, you’re not alone. The market is flooded with senior professionals just like yourself. But there are ways you can stand out and increase your odds of success.

First, you need to develop a strategic plan for your job search. It doesn’t sound like you’ve got one at this point. Indiscriminately sending out resumes, like the 400 ads you answered, means you’re likely going after a lot of low-level positions.

Start by identifying employers that value your particular background and skills, advises Sheryl Spanier, an executive career management consultant at Spanier & Co. in New York City. “You need to be clear about what you have to offer and who might be interested,” she says.

Think broadly. “Instead of seeking to replace your lost position, consider seeking work that can be project related, outside your industry or an adaptation of your expertise to an allied field,” says Ms. Spanier.

Next, search for networking connections who can recommend your candidacy before you send your resume to the firms you’re targeting, says Doug Matthews, president and chief operating officer of Right Management, an outplacement firm based in Philadelphia. If you suspect that your age may be hurting your chances, trim the length of your resume, suggests Alane Baranello, managing director of Eileen Finn & Associates Inc., an executive recruiter in New York. “Make sure it only highlights the last 15 years of experience,” she says. “There is no need to advertise 28 years of experience, as employers don’t require it.”

But don’t make too many drastic changes. While you may be desperate for a job, you don’t want to put yourself in a position where you’ll be miserable. It may be helpful to trim your resume for a short-term assignment, but keep it longer for the job that you really want.

Another strategy is to recast your resume to illustrate how you’ve developed and mentored people over your tenure. “Many companies may see your talents as an opportunity to create a transition position to help develop less-experienced people,” says John Heins, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Spherion Corp., a staffing firm based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Consider marketing yourself as someone skilled in nurturing young talent if this is the case.

As for the perception that you’re too expensive, you may need to re-examine what you’re worth. Right now, companies across several industries are resorting to salary reductions instead of layoffs, says Spanier. Talk to people in your field and find out what the going salary is for someone at your experience level. It could be up to 20% below what you were making two years ago.

Meanwhile, do an assessment of what happened in those six interviews. Many professionals don’t know how to effectively interview for a new position and that hurts their chances far more than age, compensation or experience, says Mr. Matthews. For example, a common mistake is for laid-off workers is to give the impression that they’ve been victimized by their former employers. Others err by asking about compensation and benefits too early in the interview process. To find out what you might be doing wrong, ask a friend at your experience level or above to conduct mock interviews with you, says Mr. Matthews. And be sure to request honest feedback.

Write to Ms. Gutner at cjeditor@dowjones.com. If you have a question for the careers columnists, be sure to put Career Q&A in your subject line.