Jamie Dimon

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    Jamie Dimon thinks Trump was ‘kind of right’ about a lot of things. What? | Robert Reich

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    On Wednesday, speaking from the World Economic Forum’s confab in Davos, Switzerland, Jamie Dimon – chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest and most profitable bank in the United States, and one of the most influential CEOs in the world – heaped praise on Donald Trump’s policies while president.“Take a step back, be honest,” Dimon said. Trump “was kind of right about Nato, kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China. He wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues.”What?Mr Dimon, take a step back, be honest.Kind of right about Nato? Trump wanted the US to withdraw from Nato – and may get his way if he becomes president again. This would open Europe further to Putin’s aggression.Kind of right on immigration? Even the conservative Cato Institute found that Trump reduced legal immigration but not illegal immigration. Trump refused to grant legal status to children of immigrants born in the United States or who grew up in the US. He banned Muslims from the US, and when the Muslim ban was found to be unconstitutional, banned people from Muslim countries. He fueled the flames of nativism by describing poorer nations as “shitholes” and has used terms redolent of Nazism to describe foreigners as “poisoning the blood” of Americans.Grew the economy quite well? In fact, under Trump the economy lost 2.9m jobs. Even before the pandemic, job growth was slower than it has been under Biden. The unemployment rate increased by 1.6 percentage points to 6.3%. The international trade deficit that Trump promised to reduce went up. The US trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008 and increased 40.5% from 2016. The number of Americans lacking health insurance rose by 3 million. The federal debt held by the public went up, from $14.4tn to $21.6tn.Tax reform worked? Trump’s tax cut conferred most of its benefits on big corporations and the rich, while enlarging the budget deficit. Giant banks and financial services companies got huge gains based on the new, lower corporate rate (21%), as well as the more preferable tax treatment of pass-through companies.If not for the Trump cuts – along with the Bush tax cuts and their extensions – federal revenues would keep pace with federal spending indefinitely, and the ratio of the debt to the national economy would be declining.Instead, these tax cuts have added $10tn to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57% of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90% of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to Covid-19 and the Great Recession are excluded. Eventually, the tax cuts are projected to grow to more than 100% of the increase.Right about China? As the Brookings Institution found, Trump’s China policy only made China less restrained in pursuit of its ambitions. Confrontation has intensified, areas of cooperation have vanished, and the capacity of both countries to solve problems or manage competing interests has atrophied.Oh, and then there are the pesky matters of Trump’s seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election, facing 91 criminal indictments, causing the US to be more divided than at any time since the Civil War, lying every time he opens his mouth, and planning to use the justice department for “vengeance” against his political enemies if elected again.Why is Jamie Dimon – the most influential CEO in America – spouting these talking points in favor of Trump?Because he thinks Trump has a good chance of becoming president, and Dimon wants to be in his good graces.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAsked which candidate would be better for his business, Dimon said: “I have to be prepared for both. I will be prepared for both. We will deal with both.”Dimon knows that his support for Nikki Haley irked Trump.“Highly overrated Globalist Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMORGAN, is quietly pushing another non-MAGA person, Nikki Haley, for President,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social in late November. “I’ve never been a big Jamie Dimon fan, but had to live with this guy when he came begging to the White House. I guess I don’t have to live with him anymore, and that’s a really good thing.”So now, Dimon – like Republican lawmakers across the US, like too many other leaders of American institutions – feels it necessary to cave into the integrity-crushing intimidation of a Trump administration, and lick Trump’s backside.And when Dimon does this, you can bet many other CEOs and financial leaders will now follow his example.At a time in American history when the most influential leaders of the US need to stand up loudly and clearly for the rule of law, for democracy, for decency, and against Donald Trump, Dimon is leading the charge in the opposite direction.This is how fascism takes root and spreads.
    Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      JP Morgan chief says US should not be ‘playing games’ with debt ceiling

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      JP Morgan chief says US should not be ‘playing games’ with debt ceilingJamie Dimon warns that US creditworthiness should be ‘sacrosanct’ as country’s debt races toward $31.4tn limit The US should not be “playing games” with the debt ceiling, the JP Morgan chief executive, Jamie Dimon, warned warring US political factions on Thursday as a heated row over the federal borrowing limit reached a crisis point.“We should never question the creditworthiness of the US government. That is sacrosanct and it should never happen,” Dimon said on Thursday in an interview on CNBC. “This is not something we should be playing games with at all.”​Dimon’s comments came as the US treasury department announced later Thursday it would take steps to keep paying the federal government’s bills as the US hit its $31.4tn debt limit as expected.In a letter addressed to the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said the department will suspend new investments in the civil service retirement and disability fund, as well as the postal service retiree health benefits fund until June.Yellen warned that moves were subject to “considerable uncertainty” if Congress does not pass a bill to increase the borrowing limit. Last week, she had sought to head off an impasse over the US’s borrowing that if breached could begin to seize up debt repayments and send shock waves throughout the US and global economies.What is the US debt ceiling and what happens if it isn’t raised?Read more“Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the US economy, the livelihoods of all Americans and global financial stability,” Yellen told Congress.She said that the Biden administration would try to keep the country under that debt cap and able to finance its operations as long as possible by using “extraordinary measures” that involves shifting money and suspending investments in savings plans for government workers.In theory that could give lawmakers until June to come up with a solution, but Yellen also warned that the US treasury “is not currently able to provide an estimate of how long extraordinary measures will enable us to continue to pay the government’s obligations”.Political wrangling over US treasury debt, which has doubled in a decade, is a traditional battlefield for political parties. Since 1960, politicians have moved to raise, extend or revise the debt limit 78 times.The White House maintains that the ceiling should be increased without conditions and will not negotiate on the issue. Republicans are urging a “debt prioritization” plan that would seek to avert default.“We’re not going to default on the debt. We have the ability to manage servicing and paying our interest. But we similarly should not blindly increase the debt ceiling,” Representative Chip Roy, a leading conservative Republican, told Reuters.But Dimon, regarded as America’s most powerful and most forthright banker, warned against playing political football with the issue.“Of course Democrats will blame the Republicans and Republicans will blame the Democrats,” Dimon told CNBC. “I don’t care who blames who. Even questioning it is the wrong thing to do … That is just a part of the financial structure of the world. This is not something you should be playing games with at all.”TopicsUS economyJamie DimonEconomicsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More