“I have known Jamie a long time and for his entire career he’s made predictions like this. Fortunately, none of them have come true.”
That was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on CBS Sunday shrugging off Jamie Dimon’s increasingly dire warnings that the bond market might crack under the strain of ballooning national debt and mounting budget deficits.
Wall Street’s longest-serving and most outspoken CEO does indeed have a long list of prognostications — 24 years of shareholder letters will do that — but his record is better than Bessent is giving him credit for. Where he’s been wrong over the years, he’s mostly been too gloomy, though his conservatism may help explain why JPMorgan has weathered successive financial crises better than any other bank.
The one thing he is near-perfect on: his personal purchases of JPMorgan stock.
