What Jamie Dimon Learned From Alan Greenspan
Sometimes a little hyperbole is appropriate. The JPMorgan chief is right to hoist the warning flag as the global picture darkens.
Hurricane’s a’ comin.’
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Look past the fracas about Jamie Dimon’s shifting prognosis for the US economy — from cautious optimism a week ago to warning of an imminent “hurricane.” What matters is that a titan of American finance is prepared to say what too few have over recent decades: Domestic conditions can look pretty good, until they’re quickly undercut by adverse events abroad. (And this isn’t the first time Russia has been a major player.)
Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., warned investors Wednesday to brace for an economic shock that’s “coming our way.”
His remarks surprised observers, in part because they painted an outlook much bleaker than the one he described a week earlier. Dimon cited Russia's invasion of Ukraine, inflation and higher interest rates. To that string of negatives, let’s add a pronounced deceleration in world growth forecasts and a Chinese performance so anemic that it could lag behind the US for the first time in almost two generations.