JPMorgan Chase CEO Says Financial Crisis Will End When We All Stop Picking on Corporations

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon shared his thoughts on curing the financial crisis today in Washington. Basically, he said, things would get better if we all would just quit picking on corporate America. Dimon offered that insight during a speech before a conference sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in which he also said banks already are heavily regulated, Bloomberg reports.

Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., said the U.S. can rescue its banking system by the end of the year if officials start cooperating and stop the “vilification” of corporate America.

“When I hear the constant vilification of corporate America, I personally don’t understand it,” Dimon said in his speech. “I would ask a lot of our folks in government to stop doing it because I think it’s hurting our country.”

Maybe I can help Dimon here.

I suspect some of the vilification comes from banks that leave behind abandoned, foreclosed homes in neighborhoods, then walk away, failing to pay property taxes or take responsibility for their upkeep.

I’d imagine some of those hard feelings toward banks stem from the fact that the entire economy is going down the tubes due to ridiculous mortgages that banks either made or sold to investors, assuring us that they’d spread the risks around and nothing could go wrong, while they piled up record profits.

As for that heavily regulated banking system, I’d note that along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, another group is holding its annual meeting in Washington – the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. In case you didn’t catch it earlier, here’s how housing and community advocates describe those supposedly onerous banking regulations:

For more than a decade, community leaders, civil rights proponents and housing groups have raised concerns about unfair, deceptive and abusive lending practices that have undermined homeownership aspirations for millions of working families. Those pleas for better regulatory policy and oversight not only went ignored, but in some cases were contradicted by regulatory policy that made predatory lending more virulent and prevalent in low- income neighborhoods and communities of color.

If Dimon was trying to say that knee-jerk populist anger against banks and their executives will get us nowhere, he’s probably right. It distracts from solving the financial system’s problems. But Dimon also overreaches. Banks don’t get to play the victim. There are too many real ones for that.