Jamie Dimon isn’t a fan of bitcoin, but he plans to start offering it to clients of JPMorgan Chase nonetheless.
“We are going to allow you to buy it,” Dimon said at the bank’s annual presentation for investors on Monday. “We’re not going to custody it. We’re going to put it in statements for clients.”
“I don’t think you should smoke. But I defend your right to smoke,” he said in explaining his position.
The bitcoin comments came as the JPMorgan CEO, often considered Wall Street’s elder statesman, took the stage to answer questions from investors and research analysts. In the roughly 40-minute session, he touched on a range of topics, from the economy to what he expects from Trump’s regulators.
Dimon sounded a dour note on the economy, saying he thinks the risk of stagflation is “two times” higher than many think, and making dire predictions on credit as an investment class.
“I think the worst one for a bank and for most companies is stagflation,” he continued, warning: “I think the odds of that are probably two times what the market thinks.”
He also said the bank had lost some commercial opportunities as a result of Trump’s trade war. “We’ve lost business because of that,” he said in response to an analyst’s question.
He sounded upbeat, however, when it came to the president’s regulatory agenda.
“I think that the Secretary of Treasury, the president of the United States, the new head of the OCC, the new head of the CFPB, Michelle Bowman at Federal Reserve, and the SEC have all made it clear that they want to fix some of the things they think are broken,” he said. “I think they’ll accomplish some of that. Some will take longer than others, but they all want to do it.”
He called on regulators to consider lightening regulations for publicly traded companies, which he said have been halved since the 1990s, from 8,000 to 4,000.
“We’re driving companies out of the public marketplace because of expensive reporting, litigation, cookie-cutter approaches to boards, compensation, and litigation,” he said.
“I would love to be a private company,” he added.
Dimon also raised questions about the rapid expansion of investments in credit, including through funds raised to make nonbank loans, or private credit.
“I don’t like making forecasts,” Dimon said, “but I am not a buyer of credit today. I think credit today is a bad risk,” he said, adding, “I think that people who haven’t been through major downturns are missing the point about what can happen in credit.”
As interest rates rise and economic conditions soften, the risk of credit defaults rises, sometimes leaving borrowers strapped for cash and lenders struggling to recoup capital.
Earlier in the day, Marianne Lake, JPMorgan’s CEO of consumer and community banking, said the firm was “closely monitoring the whole ecosystem” of lending but not giving up in spite of warning signs.
“The environment is very challenging for home lending and auto,” she said, adding, “but we remain committed.”
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