“The government’s legal pursuit of JPMorgan Chase strikes many people on Wall Street as unfair.

“The Justice Department, other regulators and the bank are trying to negotiate a settlement over allegations of mortgage abuses. To put the cases behind it, JPMorgan might end up paying more than $11 billion in fines and relief to homeowners, according to people briefed on the negotiations.

“’There’s a lot of value to regulators and officials to show they’re really punishing people,’ Alan D. Schwartz, who was chief executive of Bear Stearns when JPMorgan took the firm over in 2008, said in an interview on CNBC on Friday. ‘And I think it’s overdone,’ he added.

“The portrayal of JPMorgan as the victim goes back to the days of the financial crisis, when the bank bought Bear Stearns and the remains of Washington Mutual, a large savings and loan that was crippled with mortgage problems.”

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