The man President Barack Obama calls “one of the smartest bankers we’ve got,” is actually a professional X-Games skateboarder, according to some people.
Two-thirds of Americans apparently can't even guess who JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is, despite making headlines the world over after his bank’s initial $2 billion London Whale trading loss in May, according to a Vanity Fair/60 Minutes poll. Of those who did venture a guess as to Dimon’s identity, seven percent said they thought he was an X-Games Skateboarder and four percent pegged him as a Daredevil motorcyclist.
One might expect Dimon to have a slightly higher profile considering the amount of time he’s spent in the news recently, but the heaviest hitters in the world of finance aren't exactly household names, even for those focusing on economic injustice. Only 38 percent of Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park could identify Ben Bernanke as the chairman of the Federal Reserve while 64 percent had no idea who Elizabeth Warren is, according to a New York Magazine poll from October 2011.
There's no shortage of Dimon-related news out there for those ignorant of the bank chief to read in order to learn more about him, though. Most recently, Dimon made headlines after reshuffling top-level management at JPMorgan Chase, creating greater delineation between the investment, consumer and money managing sectors at the bank. Some are wondering whether the move means a breakup of the bank is looming, after former Citibank CEO Sandy Weill -- who many credit with spearheading banks' too-big-to-fail style growth since 1999 -- said that the time had come for banks to be smaller.