The last blog on The Orderly Market got a boost from JPM. They are quoted in Thursday’s Post telling Congress and their private banking clients different things.

Lawrence Eagles, global head of commodity research at the bank (JPM), testified before a Senate subcommittee (Tuesday) that “we believe that high energy prices are fundamentally the result of supply and demand.” Written testimony submitted by Blythe Masters, a managing director at the bank’s global commodities group, said “we fundamentally believe that high energy prices are a result of supply and demand, not excessive speculation.”

But…J.P. Morgan’s “private banking” arm got a different view in an e-mail sent by the unit’s chief investment officer, Michael Cembalest (the same day). He said “there was an enormous amount of speculation pent up in energy markets . . . and it wasn’t just the supply-demand equation.”

An angry Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.)…sent a letter to J.P. Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon. “I am troubled,” he wrote. “Please explain why J.P. Morgan testified before Congress that the high oil prices are only due to supply and demand when your experts clearly acknowledge privately that it was speculation, not market fundamentals, that sent oil prices skyrocketing.”

J.P. Morgan spokesman Joseph Evangelisti said that nothing was amiss. “These two people are in completely separate, firewalled groups,” he said, “and we are careful to preserve the independence of our client research.”

I believe the spokesman said that yes, JPM told Congress something directly opposed to what it’s telling its clients. But not to worry, that’s just the quality of independence within the company’s organizational model.

Nearly as good as Hank Greenberg telling Charlie Rose he couldn’t understand the need for a federal takeover of AIG. It’s a very profitable company that simply needed an $85 billion bridge loan. I had to sit down after that one.