Last year, JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE: JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon predicted that a “hurricane” was coming. He later said he saw storm clouds forming. On Wednesday, he said the storm clouds are still looming, but that doesn’t mean to worry.
The economy is in good shape, Dimon said Wednesday afternoon on CNBC’s “Power Lunch.”
“America is resilient, unbelievable … very strong consumer, low unemployment, we’re growing as a country, there’s still innovation, the consumer still has more money in their checking accounts than they had pre-COVID,” he said.
Even if we enter a recession, the consumer will be heading into it from a position of strength, and businesses are in good shape, he said. The storm clouds are still there, but that doesn’t mean you should worry, Dimon said: America has proven to be resilient.
“But there are two things out there that give me heightened concern,” Dimon said.
“One is the fiscal spending and the quantitative tightening. We’ve never had quantitative tightening and I do think that might bite at one point … and the second is Ukraine.”
The humanitarian crisis in Ukraine is extraordinary. It’s impacting oil and gas markets, food and migration. Nuclear proliferation could expand, he said, adding we haven’t faced anything like this since World War II.
“I don’t know if we are going to have a soft landing, a medium landing or a hard landing. I’m actually much more concerned about this geopolitical stuff,” Dimon said.
Although the JPMorgan CEO said the government appropriately handled the COVID crisis, spending and quantitative easing went on for too long. The Federal Reserve did a good job in the beginning, but they took too long to raise rates, he said. Now that the Fed has caught up, we’ll just have to see what happens, he added.
“We’re paying the price for that and hopefully, it won’t be too big of a price,” Dimon said.
JPMorgan shares are up more than 15% since the start of the year.
JPM shares were down 1.21% at $155.26 at the time of writing, according to Zenger News Pro.
Produced in association with Benzinga
Edited by Jason Reed and Newsdesk Manager
