(Bloomberg) — Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., said that whether the Federal Reserve cuts rates by 25 or 50 basis points, the move “won’t be earth-shattering.”
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“They have to do it,” Dimon said at a conference on Tuesday. But “it is of secondary importance if the Fed raises and lowers interest rates, because underneath that lies a real economy.”
Fed officials are expected to cut rates this week for the first time in more than four years. Ahead of the decision, bond traders were split on whether the Fed will cut by a quarter point or a half point as the central bank continues to pursue a soft landing.
Dimon said last month that he “don’t think it matters as much as other people think,” citing continued economic uncertainty and inflationary pressures. He has warned for more than a year that inflation could be more persistent than investors expect, writing in his annual letter to shareholders in April that his company is prepared for interest rates ranging from 2% to 8% or more.
On Tuesday, he said again at the Georgetown Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy’s annual Financial Markets Quality conference that geopolitical issues — including wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as the U.S. relationship with China — are his top concern. It “diminishes everyone I’ve had since I’ve been working,” he said.
“People focus too much on, ‘Are we going to have a soft landing, a hard landing?’” Dimon said. “Honestly, most of us have been through all those things, it doesn’t really matter.”
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