
Q&A with Jamie Dimon on the Future of Finance - aburan28
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-jamie-dimon-interview/
======
paganel
And what would a guy like Jamie Dimon know about the future of finance? Honest
question. If anyone would have said back in October 2008: "hey, guys, in about
7 or 8 years 20% of the world economy is going to be run on negative interest
rates" that guy would have been escorted right out of the building, or worse.
Guys like Jamie Dimon were (and still are) completely out of the loop, they
are in their current position only because the whole show does not run on
economics principles anymore, it's all politics and power games.

In retrospect, comparing the "dramatic" times of back then (anyone remembering
about Hank Paulson crawling and begging in front of a room full of bankers?)
to what's happening now I would say that our situation has gotten a thousand
times worst (fortunately for common sense there's no Janet Yellen or the
current Treasure Secretary crawling in front of a room full of pension fund
managers).

I mean, I remember that the financial press was going berserk around October
2008 or so because the money market funds had started "to break the buck", as
they say, that was unprecedented.
([http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2013/10/twenty-...](http://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2013/10/twenty-
eight-money-market-funds-that-could-have-broken-the-buck-new-data-on-losses-
during-the-2008-c.html#.VtarJYX3xsA)) . But just the other day I was reading
an article in a recent issue of The Economist (too lazy to search for the
link) where, very non-nonchalantly I would say, the author was informing us
that the life insurance industry (and I would add the private pensions
industry as well as the mutual funds) is in a sort of an existential crisis,
as in it cannot guarantee the returns it promised to its policyholders
anymore. Crazy enough, the numbers from the article were in fact making sense,
and yes, indeed, it seems like the numbers just don't add up anymore for the
the life insurance industry (to which I would add the private pensions
industry and the mutual funds industry). Problem is, the entire Western
capitalistic system is depending on these industries. If they go the way of
the dodo (meaning no more guaranteed 4% annual return, at least) then... I
don't know what will happen then, I think no-one knows.

But, yeah, maybe Jamie Dimon has indeed the answers to one of the biggest (and
I would say the most interesting) crisis in the history of capitalism. Trouble
is he's as clueless as we are.

~~~
camperman
Couldn't agree more. Dimon is no fool which means the blatant untruths he
spews in this puff piece are willful. He doesn't mention the $55bn of
taxpayers' money that was given to JP Morgan to buy the crap Bear Stearns was
hiding in its balance sheet, nor his role in the naked shorting that helped
Bear go down originally. He doesn't mention that his institution is still
insolvent because of all of the CDS instruments carried off balance sheet. Oh,
and the Whale incident carries stiff penalties. Well it would if Sarbanes-
Oxley was actually enforced or the SEC did anything but look at porn all day.

Bloomberg should be ashamed of this piece.

------
kafkaesq
In case you're wondering -- deep down inside, here's what Jamie Dimon really
thinks about that pesky regulation stuff:

 _In a new afterword for the release of the paperback version of her book A
Fighting Chance, Warren recalls that the tenor of the conversation between the
two policy adversaries soured when Dimon complained about financial
regulations that she has supported:_

 _When the conversation turned to financial regulation and Dimon began
complaining about all the burdensome rules his bank had to follow, I finally
interrupted. I was polite, but definite. No, I didn’t think the biggest banks
were overregulated. In fact, I couldn’t believe he was complaining about
regulatory constraints less than a year after his bank had lost billions in
the infamous London Whale high-risk trading episode. I said I thought the
banks were still taking on too much risk and that they seemed to believe the
taxpayers would bail them out -- again -- if something went wrong._

 _Our exchange heated up quickly. By the time we got to the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, we weren’t quite shouting, but we were definitely raising
our voices. At this point -- early in 2013 -- Rich Cordray was still serving
as director of the consumer agency under a recess appointment; he hadn’t yet
been confirmed by the Senate, which meant that the agency was vulnerable to
legal challenges over its work. Dimon told me what he thought it would take to
get Congress to confirm a director, terms that included gutting the agency’s
power to regulate banks like his. By this point I was furious. Dodd-Frank had
created default provisions that would automatically go into effect if there
was no confirmed director, and his bank was almost certainly not in compliance
with the those rules. I told him that if that happened, “I think you guys are
breaking the law.”_

 _Suddenly Dimon got quiet. He leaned back and slowly smiled. “So hit me with
a fine. We can afford it.”_

"Guess What Happened When JPMorgan's CEO Visited Elizabeth Warren's Office"

Huffington Post, 3/31/2015, [http://huff.to/1CHlXIy](http://huff.to/1CHlXIy)

~~~
snowwrestler
According to Elizabeth Warren...

~~~
kafkaesq
I highly doubt she's lying, if that's what you're saying.

------
crdoconnor
More about Jamie Dimon:

[http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/jamie-dimon-the-
lance...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/jamie-dimon-the-lance-
armstrong-of-finance.html)

