JP Morgan Chase lost nearly $2 billion on bad investments. Like clockwork, Washington politicians began their grandstanding, calling for additional regulations. Michigan’s very own Democrat Senator, Carl Levin is leading the charge.

The language of the Dodd-Frank law clearly intended to prohibit a bank from engaging in the kind of overly broad hedging at play in J.P. Morgan’s loss, Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, said in a conference call with reporters on Friday. Merkley and Levin wrote the provision of Dodd-Frank that implemented the Volcker Rule, aimed at stopping traditional banks from conducting proprietary trading.

A draft proposal of the Volcker rule permitting overly broad hedging bets should be tightened, they said.

Democrat Tom Harkin is going a step further, calling for the break up of JP Morgan Chase.

“Last night’s announcement is a sign that large financial institutions continue to pose significant risk to the economy,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) said in a statement to Dow Jones Newswires on Friday. “These ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks need to be broken up because of their inherent risk.”

Because destroying one bank is not enough, avowed Socialist Bernie Sanders calls for the break up of America’s six largest banks.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) also said in a statement Friday that the country’s six largest banks, including J.P. Morgan, should be broken up to prevent the need for any future taxpayer bailouts.

While politicians point and grandstand about one large loss at a major U.S. bank, our intrepid Senators are overseeing chronic losses several orders of magnitude larger than JP Morgan Chase.

If you want to know why these are market successes, consider: Medicare and Medicaid lose at least 35 times as much per year to fraud and other improper payments, and Medicare wastes even more on medical care that does nothing to make patients healthier or happier. This happens year after year after year.

Now ask yourself: when was the last time someone got fired over those losses? And yet the politicians’ first reaction to the J.P. Morgan trade was greater oversight by the political system, which tolerates much greater losses than the market system that is currently disciplining J.P. Morgan.

And even the USPS loses more in one quarter than JP Morgan Chase did in their headline grabbing loss.

JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion trading loss is top news nationwide. But over at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), such losses are business as usual. USPS reported a typical (for it) $3.2 billion loss for the most recent quarter. Try that comparison on for size.

JPMorgan Chase incurred a “whale” of a loss because, as explained by the bank’s CEO Jamie Dimon to his investors, this is an example of a “flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored” betting strategy. Despite the loss, it by no means spells doom for the bank. The bank has more than enough capital to stomach these losses, as painful as they are. JPMorgan Chase’s actions led to the loss, and JPMorgan Chase’s actions will fix it. You can bet it is already doing just that.

With their less than stellar record, Washington politicians have no business meddling in the private sector.