Jamie Dimon Blasts 'Rich Is Bad' Rhetoric

NEW YORK — Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., is railing against bashing the rich.

Dimon was responding Wednesday to a question at an investor conference about the hostile political environment towards banks.

"Acting like everyone who's been successful is bad and that everyone who is rich is bad – I just don't get it," said Dimon at the conference, which was organized by Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Dimon said he's worked on Wall Street for much of his life and contributed his fair share.

"Most of us wage earners are paying 39.6 percent in taxes and add in another 12 percent in New York state and city taxes and we're paying 50 percent of our income in taxes," Dimon said in defense of his fellow Wall Street bankers.

In his presentation to investors, Dimon warned that investment banking revenue at JPMorgan Chase in the fourth quarter would be flat and that the bank's private equity unit would post a loss. That's because clients and companies have been less active in markets in the fourth quarter, a particularly volatile period because of uncertainty surrounding the European debt crisis.

Dimon said the bank hopes to pay slightly higher dividends and buy back stock next year if regulators allow it. Following the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve, which regulates banks, has to approve the largest banks' plans of raising capital, buying back shares or paying out dividends.

 

 

Comments

[Veril]

09:56 AM on 12/11/2011

Jamie does not get it. What a surprise.

[StephenJK]

08:29 AM on 12/11/2011

Jamie Dimon, the least ethical banker of the den of thieves.

[sherlockhemlock]

06:22 AM on 12/11/2011

The rich, in general, and also those who serve them here in the U. S. of A., usually suck. Especially the business-critters who do nothing but gladhand and doodle their signatures on the paperwork they shuffle while the rest of us struggle.

[Anti-Panoptic]

03:46 PM on 12/10/2011

*cough* idiot *cough*

[rontheking]

11:36 AM on 12/10/2011

I've got buyer's remorse Jamie...I want my $7 trillion back--and I want to see YOU living in a tent!

[PatrickforO]

12:36 AM on 12/10/2011

According to AFL/CIO Executive Pay Watch, Jamie Dimon 'earned' $20.8 million while the median pay for a worker at JP Morgan Chase earned just $33,840. That's 615 times the salary of his median worker. It is exactly this type of wage disparity that started the OWS movement and is causing it to grow.

[PatrickforO]

11:37 PM on 12/09/2011

OMG! You've gotta be kidding me. This guy is so out of it that it's sickening. He and his cronies caused a trillion dollar crisis we are not yet recovered from; poverty is higher than it's been in decades, millions are unemployed or have given up and left the labor force and Europe is about to collapse from the same shenanigans, and this guy says he DOESN'T UNDERSTAND! Clearly.

John Kenneth Galbraith said in the Great Crash, his study on the Great Depression, that the economy at that time was fundamentally unsound, rife with 'unhealthy corporate and banking structures, an unsound foreign trade, much economic misinformation, and the "bad distribution of income," with 5% of the population receiving about a third of all personal income. Geez, won't these guys EVER learn? Galbraith was talking 1929, and we had the EXACT SAME PROBLEM in 2008 and we're all still suffering from it.

These 1 percenters really are blind to human need. As Howard Zinn says, "a system driven by the one overriding motive of corporate profit...results in permanent depression for many of its people, and periodic crises for almost everybody else."

[optomist1]

07:52 PM on 12/09/2011

Dimon and his Wall Street cohorts are in fact fighting for their businesses, they will say anything, we must keep up the pressure......now is the time for change for reform.

Dump the large banks, credit cards and use small local banks and credit unions..they are already feeling it

[sherlockhemlock]

06:26 AM on 12/11/2011

Seconded.

[Pauline Seville]

06:32 PM on 12/09/2011

Jamie, you’re a “wage earner” who makes $6,500 an hour and you don’t get why people are angry?

It’s your inability to ”get it” than many are angry about, not the $6,500 an hour you make.

In a nutshell : Banks and Bankers no longer have the trust or confidence of Americans.
Why?

It’s simple - you accept no moral, legal or civic responsibility for your actions , which led to a global economic crisis and because you accept no responsibility for your actions - we know it can and will happen again.

A post on here said it best: Actions have Consequences.

I wonder sometimes, If you had just said sorry, followed by thanks to the American people for the gift of their hard earned money, for bailouts and 1% loans, shown some humility, “embraced” some rules …that might have been the end of it.

Instead, you continue divide and conquer tactics by raising “class warfare”. But these tactics aren’t working, think… OWS; Ohio; Missippi; Judge Radoff. People aren’t buying it any more – the TRUTH is out there and you can’t put that Genie back in the bottle.

Jamie some homework:
Judge Radoff Delivers Brutal Takedown of Both the SEC and Citigroup.
www businessinsider.com
Some of the Rich get it: www.patrioticmillionaires.org
Unequal Justice: Banker Arrests 0; Protestors Arrests 2511.
www.newdeal20.org

You face tough choices – my advice, choose wisely.

[liberalOrgonian]

04:54 PM on 12/09/2011

Rich is not bad, GREED & CRASHING THE ECONOMY FOR RICHES IS BAD.
We have been played the suckers while those like Dimon made crap bets then bet they would fail.
THAT'S WHAT IS BAD!

[Thomas Truthspeaker]

04:11 PM on 12/09/2011

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" Jesus did a little rich bashing himself.

He told the rich young man to give all his property to the poor if he wanted to obtain eternal life. Money in itself isn't bad... its what people do for it and what they are willing to do to keep it. Christ didn't consider enriching once self at the expense of others as succeeding.

Greed is not only bad... its down right evil.

God have mercy on their miserable souls.

[OneVoiceOfReason]

03:13 PM on 12/09/2011

"I just don't get it"
-- Jamie Dimon

[probo]

03:25 PM on 12/09/2011

You will J.D.

[berrycuda]

12:11 PM on 12/09/2011

memo to JD.

'Rich' is not BAD, it's USELESS. Hording money is the most useless thing any human being can possibly do.

[Jackal 99]

01:32 AM on 12/10/2011

Then give me all of yours. I'll spend it wisely, rest assured.

[sherlockhemlock]

06:27 AM on 12/11/2011

Fail.

[StephenJK]

08:28 AM on 12/11/2011

Do you know what hoarding means or do we need to spell it out in big letters for you?

[NOSOCIALNETS]

12:01 PM on 12/09/2011

Rich is not bad.

But running scams like Goldman Sachs and AIG, stealing money like Bernnie "Made off with the cash", rating sub prime CDOs as AAA "investment grade". CEOs telling Congress that he has "no idea" where the money went, well that IS bad.

[mollybeejay]

03:37 PM on 12/09/2011

Pointing it out to that idiot Jamie. Priceless.

[luv2livzen]

03:55 AM on 02/01/2012

F&F -- good post

[rontheking]

11:46 AM on 12/09/2011

Where would this guy be if we the taxpayers hadn't bailed his company out? It wouldn't exist. He's got a lot of nerve....