Does Status Quo Joe Want Jamie Dimon As His Treasury Secretary? Bernie Doesn't

Jamie Dimon is the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, America’s biggest bank. His net worth is over a billion dollars. Th U.S. Treasury gave JPMorgan $25 billion in taxpayer money to keep the bak afloat in 2008 after Dimon had gambled in speculative mortgages. Many in the Obama administration urged him to appoint Dimon Treasury Secretary but he picked Timothy Geithner instead. Dimon had instant access to the Obama adminstration and he was their favorite bankster. But by 2012 he was describing himself as “barely a Democrat,” and certainly not a Bernie Sanders kind of Democrat. “I’ve gotten disturbed at some of the Democrats anti-business behavior, the attacks on work ethic and successful people. I think it’s very counterproductive… [I]t doesn't mean I don't have their values. I want jobs. I want a more equitable society. I don't mind paying higher taxes… I do think we're our brother's keeper. But I think that… attacking that which creates all things, is not the right way to go about it.”

That which creates all things isn’t likely to be the way Bernie would describe banksters, Dimon or Wall Street and today he responded to an attack on him by Dimon is a tweet. “Jamie Dimon is the billionaire CEO of a Wall Street bank that was fined $13 billion for mortgage fraud, paid a settlement for bribing foreign officials and received a $416 billion taxpayer bailout. Jamie,” he wrote, “Thanks so much for your advice.”

On Friday, Dimon had done a broadcast interview with Yahoo Finance Editor Andy Serwer, punching out at Bernie, Elizabeth Warren and AOC. “Just because it resonates, doesn’t make it right,” Dimon said, when asked about criticism of him and Wall Street by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie and Senator Elizabeth Warren.”

The comments came just before Warren on Friday sent a letter to Dimon raising concerns about the reinstatement of the company’s forced arbitration policy for credit card holders, which disallows customers from holding the bank accountable in court for potential wrongdoing.




At a hearing on Capitol Hill in April, Ocasio-Cortez sat alongside lawmakers who targeted the tens of millions in compensation received by top bank executives, including Dimon, who received $31 million in compensation last year. The ratio between CEO pay and entry-level wages at JPMorgan Chase stands at 381:1, ranking it second highest among the large banks, after Citigroup.

But juxtaposition of CEO and entry-level pay is “comparing apples and oranges,” Dimon tells Yahoo Finance Editor-in-chief Andy Serwer, calling the calculation “a complete waste of time.”

“People don't think clearly about stuff like that,” he adds. “We treat our people well, we educate our people, we give them a huge opportunity— and that's what we should do.”

The minimum starting wage at JPMorgan Chase is $16.50 per hour, though it can start at $18 for workers in high-cost regions. Meanwhile, Bank of America announced in April that its hourly pay will rise to $17 in May and increase to $20 by 2021.

Dimon pointed to the benefits package the company offers entry-level employees, recounting how the company improved its health-care coverage when he found out some employees couldn’t afford the deductibles.

“The second we found out for our lower paid folks making under $60,000 a year, we cut the deductible to the extent that if they do the wellness programs it's effectively zero,” he says.

Dimon also pointed to the competitive pressure that compels him to pay enough to hire and retain effective workers.

“To act like somehow I can steal from them and do a good job at my company is a little bit crazy,” he says.

…According to Dimon, populist critics misrepresent the actions of wealthy people and big banks. Still, he acknowledged these critics tap into genuine discontent held by people struggling to gain access to services like quality education and health care.

“We should acknowledge the problems in society that are causing the anger,” he says.

“But those problems are we can't build infrastructure,” he adds. “Those problems are the inner-city schools are not graduating our kids. Our litigation system is capricious. Health care is huge— we should get all health care to the 40 million people who don't have it.”

Leading progressives Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have attacked Dimon in recent months.

In March, Dimon criticized the potential negative economic consequences of Green New Deal legislation proposed by Ocasio-Cortez. The next day, the freshman New York Congresswoman responded, pointing to Dimon’s participation in a $13 billion settlement over allegations that JPMorgan Chase fraudulently misrepresented the mortgages it was selling to investors ahead of the 2008 recession. She also criticized the bank’s financing of fossil fuel pipelines.

“So maybe they aren’t the best authority on prioritizing economic wellbeing of everyday people & the planet,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

Earlier this month, Dimon condemned socialism, saying it “means that the government owns and controls companies” for “political purposes, for jobs and votes.”

Sanders objected to the comments, saying he “didn't hear Jamie Dimon criticizing socialism when Wall Street begged for the largest federal bailout in American history— some $700 billion from the Treasury and even more from the Fed.”

In the interview with Serwer, Dimon said he and JPMorgan Chase grasp the issues facing low-level employees and have sought to improve their lives.

“We understand,” he says. “We have a heart.”

Kalamazoo area state Rep Jon Hoadley is contesting the 6th congressional district in southwest Michigan, a swing seat currently occupied by serial Trump-Enabler Fred Upton. This morning, Hadley noted that "The absurd difference between CEO pay and average worker pay is indicative of a tax code that prioritizes wealthy people over working people. Basically the opposite of what happened under the Trump tax scam, our tax code should be investing in working people while encouraging investments to do more work."

Kara Eastman is the progressive Democrat running for the GOP-held seat in Omaha. She’snot the Wall Street candidate and not the Cheri Bustos candidate; she’s the grassroots candidate, a mother and a community activist. “The time has come for us,” she told me last night, “to acknowledge the overwhelming power and influence that millionaires and billionaires have in our country. Their voice has been the loudest— resulting in government handouts to corporations while regular working people are continuously held back. It used to be that if you worked hard in the United States, you could support a family— you could get ahead. This is no longer the case. But there are people running to change the system and candidates like me who will never stop fighting for working people.”

Democratic socialist Shaniyat Chowdhury is running for a southeast Queens congressional seat held by corrupt New Dem Gregory Meeks— the Queens County machine boss. Chowdhury has strong beliefs he’ll be bringing with him to Washington. “With all that money,” he told me this morning, “you would think Mr. Dimon would know that socialism actually empowers the people who do the labor. The means of production and profit belong to the people, not billionaires who believe being poor is on a moral compass.”