Jeenah Moon/Reuters
- JPMorgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, in an interview with CBS, doubled down on his retort against Elizabeth Warren.
- “I think you should vilify Nazis, but you shouldn’t vilify people who worked hard to accomplish things,” Dimon said.
- Dimon, who is worth about $1.6 billion, was also quizzed on his $31 million salary, saying it wasn’t up to him.
- View Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
JPMorgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, in an interview with CBS doubled down on his retort against Elizabeth Warren.
Dimon, who is worth $1.6 billion according to Forbes, spoke with CBS’s Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes”, where he touched on the causes of the 2008 financial crash, the American economy and cancer survival.
Stahl asked Dimon: “So Elizabeth Warren said in Iowa the other day, ‘Our democracy has been hijacked by the rich and powerful,’ and you jumped in and said this week about her that she was ‘vilifying successful people and having harsh words for Wall Street bankers.'”
Dimon responded: “Most people are good, not all of ’em,” adding, “I think you should vilify Nazis, but you shouldn’t vilify people who worked hard to accomplish things. And so my comment is, I think it’s American society – we’re just attacking each other all the time.”
Dimon, who has been at the helm of America’s biggest bank since 2005, has publicly spatted with Warren about the topic of billionaires, with the CEO saying in the past: “She uses some pretty harsh words — some would say vilifies successful people. We should applaud successful people.”
Watch the CBS “60 Minutes” interview with Jamie Dimon here.
In the “60 Minutes” interview, which aired on Sunday, Dimon also criticized Trump’s tax cuts — despite the policy boosting JPMorgan profits $3.7 billion. JPMorgan has crushed earnings targets this year, with the last quarter results boasting a record level of revenue.
“I would not have cut the tax on the rich. I would’ve extended the Earned Income Tax Credit instead – which is like a negative income tax credit for lower-paid people,” said Dimon in the interview.
He added: “We probably should change the minimum wage, which I don’t think has been changed for like 10 or 15 years. There are solutions to these problems. The problems are real. It does not mean Free Enterprise is bad.”
Dimon was also quizzed on his pay by Stahl in the heated exchange below:
Lesley Stahl: “Let’s talk about the wage gap in this country between the rich and almost everybody else. How much of a problem do you see that?”
Jamie Dimon: “I think it’s a huge problem and I think the wealthy have been getting wealthier too much, in many ways. So middle-class incomes have been kinda flat for maybe 15 years or so. And that’s not particularly good in America. But in particular, at the low end, 40% of Americans make $15 an hour or less. They’ve particularly been left behind.”
Lesley Stahl: “You’re talking about people who earn very little money. Listen to this statistic. Compensation for executives, CEOs, grew 940%, 940%, in the last 40 years. Your average worker, so middle class, middle class, grew 12%.”
Jamie Dimon: “We haven’t done a good job growing our economy. And that would fix a lot of that problem.”
Lesley Stahl: “Executive pay: Last year you were paid $31 million. Too high?”
Jamie Dimon: “The board sets mine. I have nothing to do with it.”
Lesley Stahl: “Well, you could return some of it.”
Jamie Dimon: “I could. Is that gonna solve any of those problems?”
Lesley Stahl: “I don’t know.”
Jamie Dimon: “Is it going to solve any of those problems?”
Lesley Stahl: “No but you could set an example and say, “I’m not going to take all that money. I don’t need it.”
Jamie Dimon: “I could. I’m going to leave it to the board to set my comp. Not you, not the press–“
Lesley Stahl: “You’ve answered every one of my questions but this one you’re fobbing off.’
Jamie Dimon: “Yeah, the board has to do it.”
See More:‘Let everybody else waste money’ — 17 of Jamie Dimon’s most brilliant quotes.
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