JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon told investors Wednesday to brace for an economic “hurricane,” pointing to the Fed and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Driving the news: “You know, I said there’s storm clouds, but I’m going to change it … it’s a hurricane,” Dimon said at a financial conference.
- “That hurricane is right out there down the road coming our way,” he added. “We just don’t know if it’s a minor one or Superstorm Sandy. You have to brace yourself.”
Flashback: The banker said on a conference call in April that the U.S. was facing “storm clouds on the horizon.”
- “I hope those things disappear and go away, we have a soft landing and the war is resolved,” he told analysts at the time. “I just wouldn’t bet on all of that.”
The big picture: Dimon cited two main factors while speaking at the Strategic Decisions Conference in New York:
- The Fed’s decision to shrink its holdings of securities acquired under its quantitative easing program by up to $95 billion a month.
- Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its impact on the global economy. Dimon said in his annual letter to JPMorgan’s shareholders that the “war in Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia, at a minimum, will slow the global economy — and it could easily get worse.”