The most powerful banker in America walked into his quarterly earnings call on Tuesday with a message he knew would resonate from the trading floors of Manhattan to the corridors of the White House: leave the Federal Reserve alone. Jamie Dimon, the 69-year-old chief executive of JPMorgan Chase and de-facto leader of Wall Street's establishment, had grown weary of watching his nation's political leaders threaten the independence of the institution that underwrites economic stability itself. And he was not about to remain silent any longer.
'Anything that chips away at the Fed's independence is probably not a good idea,' Dimon told reporters gathered after announcing his bank's fourth-quarter earnings. His language was measured, but the message was unmistakable. What began as veiled warnings had evolved into something far more direct. Dimon was essentially telling President Trump that his assault on the Federal Reserve would achieve the precise opposite of what the president claimed to want.
