The JP Morgan Chase CEO said the collapse of a major bank like Lehman Brothers in 2008 would not happen again.
Jamie Dimon says that President Donald Trump should get some credit for the economy.
“When President Trump was elected, confidence skyrocketed,” the JPMorgan Chase CEO told ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis in an interview that aired on Sunday’s ” This Week .” “Pro-business, pro-competitive taxes, pro- some regulatory reform, and that has helped the economy. It’s impossible for me to tease out how much, but it has helped the economy.”
“He should take some credit for that.” Dimon added.
Jarvis asked what grade Dimon would give the president on economic policy.
“I’d say pretty good,” he said. Jarvis pushed him: “B+? A-?
“Yeah, something like that,” Dimon said.
Dimon spoke with Jarvis privately after a panel at JPMorgan Chase’s New York headquarters that was the center of a controversy last week.
During the public event, Dimon said he “could beat Trump” in a presidential election.”I’m as tough as he is, I’m smarter than he is. I would be fine.”
He later said in a statement that he should not have made the remarks “I’m not running for President,” he said.
But that didn’t stop the president from firing off an angry tweet directed at Dimon: “[H]e doesn’t have the aptitude or ‘smarts’ & is a poor public speaker & nervous mess – otherwise he is wonderful,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning. “I’ve made a lot of bankers, and others, look much smarter than they are with my great economic policy!”
In addition to his assessment of President Trump’s impact, Dimon also said the next time the economy goes south, it won’t be the fault of banks.
“The banking system is very, very healthy,” he said.
His comments come just over 10 years to the day after investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy .
Dimon said regulators deserve to take a victory lap for the protections that have been put in place since the collapse.
“There will be a recession one day,” he said. “But it won’t be the banking system” that causes it. “It’ll probably be something else.”
Dimon said he recognized people were hurt by the recession and angry with banks for engaging in the risky mortgage lending practices that triggered the economic meltdown.
“Some [banks] caused the problem and I understand that the American public looks at it and it’s unfair, and it was,” Dimon said.
And many of those banks were then aided by the US government.
“Banks got help. I mean I think the government did the right thing, I want to give full credit,” Dimon said. “But not all the banks needed that. And all those banks, including JPMorgan, continued to lend money every day to all their clients nonstop around the world.”
Dimon was asked how he, as the head of one of the world’s largest banks, could help ease that anger.
“I can’t,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do. All I can do is serve my client everywhere around the world, do good things.”
