Power Player: Jamie Dimon

JPMorgan Chase CEO is our power player for the day for trying to regain his image as the face of what's right on Wall Street.

Published

8 months ago

Categories

Finance

Topics

United States

People

Barack Obama, Jamie Dimon

Places

United States of America, London, United Kingdom

Companies

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bear Stearns

Transcript

The power player this Wednesday is Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase. Just before releasing the bank's third-quarter earnings on Friday, Dimon set out to clear the air at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. He was once again contrite about the "London whale" derivatives trades that resulted in a multibillion-dollar loss. SOUNDBITE: JAMIE DIMON, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF JPMORGAN CHASE & CO (ENGLISH) SPEAKING: "We screwed up. By the way that quarter we made $5 billion. So, yea, that was a stupid error - but I could never - it was really intensely stupid and if I actually took you through it, it's kind of embarrassing personally, too. I should have caught it also. I didn't. You know, but it ain't gonna sink our ship." Dimon also said he might back an increase in the capital gains tax rate proposed by President Barack Obama, but called for lower corporate taxes so U.S. business can compete in a global economy. Then, he moved on to the loss on Bear Stearns. SOUNDBITE: JAMIE DIMON, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF JPMORGAN CHASE & CO (ENGLISH) SPEAKING: "I'm going to say we've lost $5 billion to $10 billion on various things related to Bear Stearns now. And yes, I put it in the unfair category." But it was in talking about financial regulation that he got really mad. SOUNDBITE: JAMIE DIMON, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF JPMORGAN CHASE & CO (ENGLISH) SPEAKING: "Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water, so the struggle is trying to find how you restrict market-making through Volcker and you almost can't (because) the law almost leaves it so vague that it's hard to determine what's proprietary, what's market making. So I just hope we write it in a way that we end up with the widest, deepest, best and most transparent capital market in the world." Dimon added though that Washington made a mistake in his opinion by not passing the Bowles-Simpson tax plan last year- that proposed among other things, reducing the tax rate for top earners. Bobbi Rebell, Reuters