Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Chase CEO talks politics, not results
Dimon announces profit, complains about D.C. gridlock
NEW YORK — After JPMorgan Chase posted a record $7 billion quarterly profit, the last thing a contentious Jamie Dimon wanted to talk about Friday were his company’s earnings.
Instead, the CEO of the nation’s largest bank vented his irritation with politicians and what he called gridlock that’s preventing the economy from doing even better.
Dimon, a member of President Donald Trump’s business advisory council, has a reputation for speaking with little to no filter. He’s complained in the past that U.S. government policymakers spend too much time arguing rather than improving the economy.
The U.S. economy has been expanding at less than 2 percent a year since the Great Recession, which is below the typical growth after an economic downturn, historically. Dimon said growth would be higher if Washington gridlock would ease.
“It’s almost an embarrassment being an American citizen traveling around the world listening to the stupid (excrement) we have to deal with in this country,” he said in a call. “At one point we all have to get our act together or we won’t do what we’re supposed to do for the average Americans.”
As head of the nation’s biggest bank, Dimon has a big stake in how Washington operates and how the U.S. economy performs. And while Trump’s business advisory council cannot make policy decisions, it does have input on what the White House’s priorities should be for big companies like JPMorgan.
Republicans, who control both houses of Congress and the White House, have proposed cutting corporate income taxes, which would directly benefit JPMorgan’s bottom line, and infrastructure spending, which would add to U.S. gross domestic product.
Asked by a business journalist a routine question about the firm’s bond trading results following the Federal Reserve’s interest rate increase last month, Dimon called for reporters to focus less on the quarter-to-quarter changes in its business and more on bigger issues like infrastructure, the opioid epidemic, taxation and jobs.
“(Reporters) should be writing a lot more about that the stuff that is holding back and hurting average Americans. Who really cares about fixedincome trading in the last two weeks of June, I mean seriously?” he said.
While the bank overall has benefited from the Fed’s decision and has been making more loans across all its businesses, this quarter’s quiet stock and bond markets depressed the bank’s trading revenue by 17 percent. Fixedincome trading revenue was down 19 percent from last year, while stock trading was mostly flat.
Even so, the bank reported a profit of $7.03 billion, or $1.82 per share, an improvement from a profit $6.20 billion, or $1.55 a share, a year ago. The results beat analysts’ expectations, but its shares fell 85 cents, or 0.9 percent, to $92.25.
Citigroup and Wells Fargo posted results that beat Wall Street’s expectations.
Meanwhile in the broader markets, The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, Dow Jones industrial average and Russell 2000 index of smaller-company stocks each set records as the market posted its third straight day of gains.
The S&P 500 index gained 11.44 points, or 0.5 percent, to 2,459.27. The Dow rose 84.65 points, or 0.4 percent, to 21,637.74. The average has hit a record high three days in a row.
The Nasdaq composite added 38.03 points, or 0.6 percent, to 6,312.47. The Russell 2000 index picked up 3.16 points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,428.82.
The indexes all ended the week with gains and are on pace to finish higher this month.
Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.33 percent from 2.35 percent Thursday.