JPMorgan earnings this morning were a bit disappointing, with investment banking revenue down 30% y/o/y in what may be a bad sign for the rest of the industry, but the Jamie & Doug In The Morning Show remains finance’s top-rated program in its time slot and it did not disappoint today. This is in part because the callers have learned how to play to the hosts’ strengths; my favorite part of the call went something like this (paraphrasing slightly):
Jamie Dimon: Ooh I hates me some regulators. Next question?
Analyst: Wow. After Jamie’s speech about regulators, my question is going to sound really mundane. [Asks mundane question]
Braunstein: [Gives mundane answer]
Analyst: So, Jamie, do you want to say anything more about regulators?
Dimon: Sure! [Does]
But Dimon’s statement that “basically there’s no one in charge of the global financial system” was more or less unprovoked. It was also the main theme of his remarks, particularly about Europe, where “regulatory policy is completely contradictory to government objectives” as the ECB throws gobs of money at banks to encourage them to lend and keep their governments afloat, at the same time that regulators tighten capital standards, reducing lending, and crack down on holdings of dicey peripheral government bonds. For himself, he’s a big fan of the ECB’s work on liquidity, less keen on Basel et al.’s work on capital requirements. There is no book-talking whatsoever here.*
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According to Bloomberg, a search and rescue team has located $658.8 million of MF Global customer funds that went missing earlier this week. According to JPMorgan, however, while it is indeed “holding MF money,” it’s not “the missing money” you’re looking for. Go talk to Goldman, maybe they’ve seen it.
…despite a cold, relentless November rain Wednesday night, several hundred people marched to the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Seattle, where Dimon was a keynote speaker at an awards ceremony for the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. Sixth Avenue in front of the hotel was closed to traffic for less than an hour as protesters tried to block hotel entrances by locking arms. Police used pepper spray to clear a side entrance near the corner of Pike Street and Seventh Avenue so hotel patrons could enter or leave. The protest began at 6 p.m. and lasted 3 ½ hours. They stood outside and chanted slogans, while people inside sipped cocktails and looked down from a reception area with curiosity. The number of protesters dwindled after about an hour because of rain, but more than 100 stayed on to stake out the hotel. They left at 9:30 p.m. after learning that Dimon had reportedly left about 9 p.m. [Seattle Times]
What do top financial services employees think of the month-long protests headquartered in Zucotti Park, which took over Times Square over the weekend? So far the most vocal people have expressed support for the movement, like Jim Chanos, who said, “New York is so finance-centric that people here underappreciate the reaction of the rest of the country” and that OWS shouldn’t be underestimated; Larry Fink, who told reporters, “I believe we should not turn our backs on these protests…Maybe we will get some balance”; Jamie Dimon, who told those listening to the JPM conference on Thursday, “I do vaguely remember the First Amendment that it is legal to demonstrate and it is completely fine. You should listen and not just have a knee-jerk reaction”; and Vikram Pandit, who in addition to saying that “trust has been broken between financial institutions and the citizens of the US,” told protesters he’d love to chat over the phone. With the exception of John Paulson, however, who last week issued a statement telling protesters to 1) beat it and 2) thank their lucky stars that as the founder of a ‘most successful business‘, he chose to set up shop in New York, most financiers with less then charitable feelings have kept their feelings to themselves, fearing retribution from the anti-Wall Street group. Until now. Continue reading »
On today’s enjoyable-as-always earnings call, Jamie Dimon was not ashamed to confess that the Volcker Rule has not yet made its way to his pile of bedside reading material. Understandable! Also, he thinks it’s anti-American. Unsurprising!
Dimon may not be sweating the Volcker details because he thinks that everyone will eventually wake up and figure out the whole anti-American thing and the Volcker Rule will never actually be implemented as proposed. And he’ll do what he can to make that happen. In response to a question from Jason Goldberg at BarCap asking him to quantify the effects of the Volcker Rule on JPMorgan, he said that it’s early going on the rule and “let’s let it work through the process.” That process could include some Dimon-directed lobbying, as he told the analysts on the call that they’d better get their shit together to send in anti-Volcker-Rule comments by the January deadline: “I hope you understand how important this is not just for your own business but for the United States.”
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Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase launched a tirade at Mark Carney, Bank of Canada governor, in a closed-door meeting in front of more than two dozen bankers and finance officials, underscoring mounting tensions between bankers and officials over financial regulation. The JPMorgan chief executive’s remarks to Mr Carney, who is touted as a potential next head of the Financial Stability Forum, the international group of regulators, were focused on a capital surcharge for the largest banks, according to several people who attended the meeting of about 30 bank chiefs…Mr Dimon told Mr Carney that many of the rules discriminated against US banks and he was going to continue to use the phrase “anti-American” because it seemed to resonate with people who might be able to modify the reforms. The atmosphere was so bad after the meeting that Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs and head of the Financial Services Forum bankers’ group which arranged the session, emailed the central banker to try to smooth relations, people familiar with the matter said. [FT via BI]
Over the years, Jamie Dimon has had a little bit of mild unpleasantness with banking regulators. But he’s always been bullish on America, which has formulated a secret sauce made out of “the best universities, best military, best rule of law, most innovation, the hardest working ethic of all.” Most important, America has this little thing called “freedom,” specifically Jamie Dimon’s freedom to run his bank for his shareholders, not for regulators.
That’s why it pains Dimon so much to have to tell us that our freedoms are slipping away into the clutches of some Swiss commies:
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James S. Dimon. That’s who. Continue reading »
Got that?
1. Brian Moynihan told Bruce Berkowitz this afternoon, “I’m comfortable we can get to 1% return on assets based on a 1.25%-1.5% Fed funds rate and a normal business cycle.” Moving to 1.5%-area short term rates would apparently add about $3 billion to BofA’s net revenue.
2. Jamie Dimon chatted with Melissa Francis this morning and told her:
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Confidence is like a secret sauce. It is hard to measure…so here’s what I would say to the American people in total. When you go to sleep at night think about the following before you get depressed and you see the market down 500 points: This nation is still the greatest nation on the planet. It was the first democracy on the planet. We have the best military. God bless all our veterans all around the world. Those who have served and those who are serving today. We have the best universities, best military, best rule of law, most innovation, the hardest working ethic of all. Those thing will be here for decades. They aren’t going away. The strength in the system will blow your socks off when it gets out of this malaise we’re in. [CNBC]
Jamie Dimon > Any Banker In The NY Metro Area, Says Mayor Bloomberg
By Bess LevinTags: Jamie Dimon, Jamie Dimon Is A Saint!, Jamie Dimon pays his taxes, JPMorgan, Lloyd/Vickles/Gorman- comment?