NEW YORK – Tone is important.
And Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren wasn’t all that pleased with the tone JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was taking in the wake of a federal finding this week that his bank is still considered to be too big to fail.
“We have thousands of people working this stuff,” Dimon said in a TV interview with Yahoo News, referring to efforts to comply with federal rules.
“So I sent a note out to them this morning saying, ‘You know, while we’re disappointed, I want you all to know that you did an unbelievable job.’
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Warren didn’t like the part where Dimon seemed to be applauding his staff. “You can’t make this stuff up,” she said in a brief interview with The Boston Globe.
“The Jamie Dimon statement is a reminder that much of Wall Street still hasn’t gotten the message that they can not design their business to take all of the profits on the upside and plan to push off all the risk to taxpayers,” Warren said.
She also posted a scathing note Thursday night on Facebook.
Federal regulators concluded yesterday that five of the country’s biggest banks are still — literally — Too Big to Fail....
Posted by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Thursday, April 14, 2016
The problem is, Dimon didn’t really tell his staff they’d done an unbelievable job. In the Yahoo News interview, he seems to have mischaracterized his own note. A copy of the four paragraph e-mail, obtained by the Globe, was heavier on contrition and never used the word “unbelievable.”
Dimon described the news from the regulators as “disappointing.”
“As part of the regulators’ feedback, they detailed specific items and areas for us to address and improve upon in a resubmission later this year,” Dimon wrote. “You can be assured that we will do everything we can to meet all of their conditions and requirements.”
He did praise his employees as “a truly outstanding group of people who make me proud to come to work every day,” though it seemed more of a pep talk than a congratulatory message.
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Here’s a copy of Dimon’s e-mail -- with the name of one employee redacted.
