Wall Street CEO Says ‘Consumers Have Money to Spend’
Jamie Dimon weighs in on all things state of the world — and his words are not at all surprising
At a time of unprecedented inequality, I’m continually surprised by the constant media puff pieces where they interview one of the kings of the universe — although, at this point, I shouldn’t be. Forty years of neoliberal economic policy have recreated levels of lopsided wealth distribution that rival feudal times.
Capitalism has gotten so out of control that it is pre-dating itself, bringing back lords who own everything and serfs who toil all day to barely scrape out a living. And our billionaire-owned ‘free press’ constantly bows before the lords to ask about the state of the world and how to ‘make things better.’
If I see another freaking podcast that talks about the habits of billionaires, I’m going to find the creators’ emails and send them a few very passive-aggressive paragraphs — that’ll show ‘em.
Jamie Dimon is one of those CEOs that is constantly being interviewed and asked about how he sees the world and trends in the global economy. As the head of the largest financial institution in the Western world, JP Morgan Chase, he’s obviously a clever guy and a smooth operator.
And I’m not saying he can’t add any value to the discussion, particularly macroeconomics. He’s the CEO of a bank with over three freaking trillion dollars in assets; he obviously knows a thing or two. And like a politician, he knows how to answer a question well, not poke anybody directly, and water down his responses so that soccer moms, used car salesmen, and business undergrads nod along in agreement.
Dimon does quite a bit of media, speaking at conferences, doing panels, and fielding one-on-one interviews with friendly news outlets.
I recently read two pieces, one with El País in Spain and another conference call breakdown by Yahoo, and while he is intelligent, I’m puzzled as to why they keep asking for his opinion.
He’s a billionaire Wall Street CEO, whose ideology is leaping out of his $10,000 suit, $34,500,000 a year salary, and fleet of luxury JP Morgan jets he cruises on.
You can predict most of his answers before the question is even asked.
But I guess it is nice to get his thoughts on record because a lot of what he says is so freaking disconnected and typical that it is worth dissecting.
Capitalism has gotten so out of control that it is pre-dating itself, bringing back lords who own everything and serfs who toil all day to barely scrape out a living.
Jamie Dimon gets a lot of praise for being the only executive to ‘survive’ the ’08 crisis. He had become CEO a few years earlier and the bank went from being the third largest in the nation to número uno after absorbing Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, earning a reputation as being ‘the white knight of Wall Street.’
El País makes sure to say that JP Morgan Chase ‘reluctantly’ accepted a bailout and that Dimon said they could have managed without it. That could be true, but I’m sure he would have never turned down the cool $25 billion they received or the hundred million plus they spent shortly after on two new private jets and a hangar renovation.
But what should be brought up anytime Jamie Dimon or any CEO is interviewed is their wonderfully long and opaque records of breaking the law and simply paying their way out of trouble.
Missing from any interview I’ve seen with Dimon over the last years are questions about the $13 billion fine JP Morgan Chase paid in November of 2013, at the time the largest in history.
In September of 2013, Dimon and his lawyers were shown a draft of a civil complaint by the U.S. district attorney in the Eastern District of California that they were ready to file in federal court.
The draft was based on hundreds of thousands of subpoenaed JP Morgan Chase documents, and the bank allegedly wanted to keep it out of the public eye. But through a Freedom of Information Act request, a redacted version was released around four years later.
At the time, William D. Cohan reported for Vanity Fair that the draft read:
“By this action, the United States seeks to recover civil penalties” against JPMorgan Chase and its investment banking arm “for a fraudulent and deceptive scheme to package and sell residential mortgage-backed securities” that the bank “knew contained a material amount of materially defective loans.” As the unfiled complaint continued, “JPMorgan knowingly securitized and sold billions of dollars of mortgage loans that were originated in material violation of underwriting guidelines and law.”
How massive was the fraud that the bank was made to pay $13,000,000,000? What did Jamie Dimon know and when? And why did nobody go to jail?
Those are the question anyone with a mic and Jamie Dimon’s time should be asking, not what he thinks about NFTs or what his favorite bedtime snack is.
That’s how it should be with any CEO at the helm of a corporate behemoth with a criminal history. There are Americans doing years behind bars for non-violent small quantity drug offenses, and these white-collar criminals are routinely busted operating multi-billion dollar frauds and don’t even get in trouble. The institution pays fines, and they still get million-dollar bonuses.
There’s a two-tiered justice system, and American CEOs never even have to answer those difficult questions let alone spend any time behind bars.
But the media Dimon usually interacts with is incredibly friendly and owned by fellow billionaires — like all mainstream press — so it’s always praise and cupcakes.
Missing from any interview I’ve seen with Dimon over the last years are questions about the $13 billion fine JP Morgan Chase paid in November of 2013, at the time the largest in history.
He is savvy and knows how to play to an audience. He’s chairman of the Business Roundtable, a collection of the largest corporations in the US, and they released a statement in 2019 that claimed to maximize shareholder value should no longer be the sole aim of companies.
They even got cute and redefined the purpose of a corporation, saying they should strive to ‘promote an economy that serves all Americans.’
A freaking hilarious line when you look at the list of companies that are part of the Business Roundtable.
Amazon, McDonald’s, and Walmart are all there. If they’re trying to ‘promote an economy that serves all Americans,’ they could probably start with giving living wages and healthcare to their millions of employees.
Funny that I missed Jamie Dimon using his position to pressure fellow Business Roundtable Board members on any of those issues since he cares so much.
Did he pop up at any ‘Fight for Fifteen’ rallies or support the growing union movements across the nation or push for some common sense healthcare reform or maybe some maternity leave? Those would surely help serve all American families and their children.
Obviously, he’s not doing that. He’s a ruthless CEO that plays an impartial politician when in the public eye.
He knows where the country is at, and he knows he needs to say certain things at certain times but actually trying to help Americans is not in his ideology.
They even got cute and redefined the purpose of a corporation, saying they should strive to ‘promote an economy that serves all Americans’…A freaking hilarious line when you look at the list of companies that are part of the Business Roundtable.
In the El País interview, when asked about his pessimistic forecast for the economy, he replied that in the US, ‘the situation is relatively good. The job market is very strong and consumers have money to spend.’
I don’t know what metrics he’s using, but I do know that half of the American families are struggling to put food on the table and food banks are seeing record numbers of visitors. I think those figures would factor into a response on the state of the US economy or before one said something like ‘consumers have money to spend.’ They can hardly afford food, Jamie.
When asked about stimulating growth while getting inflation under control, he replies, “Reducing regulations that hinder good growth. Think, for example, of infrastructure. Sometimes permits take too long. In the US, for example, the government should allow more immigration. That would cool down the rise in wages a bit.”
We could have all predicted that answer: to slay the beast of inflation we need to reduce regulation and wages! Not his $34 million salary but those overpaid baristas and janitors out there are buying too many properties and overheating the market, right?
Let’s ignore corporate price gouging, monopoly power, supply chain mayhem, and sanctions that cause energy prices to go through the roof, and instead cut regulations and lower wages for American workers. That’ll do the trick.
He does pay lip service to the minimum wage being too low toward the end of the interview but doesn’t say what it should be and would never actually pressure his buddies to pay their peasant labor more. It was more of a passing comment after he had already said wages should be reduced.
It was a little flip-flop in an interview full of economic platitudes about leverage, growth, and how sick JP Morgan Chase is.
We could have all predicted that answer: to slay the beast of inflation we need to reduce regulation and wages!
These are the ‘thought leaders’ our ‘news outlets’ turn to for answers. It’s no wonder life for American workers has been getting progressively worse and inequality has skyrocketed as $50 trillion has been siphoned to the top over the last fifty years.
Can we please stop putting these guys on the cover of magazines? The world does not need another podcast dedicated to their favorite breakfast foods and goal-setting techniques.
Let’s hear from Chris Smalls who successfully beat Amazon in an incredibly important union battle or Jane McAlevey, whose been organizing and fighting the good fight for five decades, or Ralph Nader, who warned of the corporate takeover of America sixty years ago and continues to offer a salient critique and clear vision on how to fight back.
Those are voices all Americans, on the left and the right, need to hear.
Billionaires ‘solutions’ to every and any problem are more of what we’ve been doing for forty years. Neoliberal economics is a cruel joke.
Jamie Dimon might have a clear picture of macroeconomic trends and a good strategy for protecting your $100,000,000 portfolio through the rocky recession we’re barreling toward, but let’s please stop asking him for solutions to our problems; he’s part of the class that created them.