• Overheard
  • By

Snapchat reportedly turned down a $3 billion buyout. Whatsapp got snapped-up for $19 billion.

Eventually those eye-popping valuations were bound to start to rub some folks the wrong way. Especially people on Wall Street. They probably can’t help feeling a bit envious when the financial rewards for a life-time building a financial empire fall short of those for guys who let you send ephemeral photographs to your buddies. It just doesn’t seem fair.

The latest evidence of Wall Street envying Silicon Valley comes from J.P. Morgan Chase chief James Dimon’s annual letter to shareholders, released Wednesday. “Finally, one of the great aspects of the American system is that it is okay to fail and to try again. But even that seems to be diminishing as failure, other than in Silicon Valley, is severely punished,” Mr. Dimon writes.

While Mr. Dimon is probably still smarting from the beating his bank took following its “London Whale” trading debacle, it’s not as if the banking industry hasn’t recently been given the chance to fail and try again. How quickly bailout memories fade.