A quote of JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon by John L. Dorman at Yahoo!Finance caught my eye:
JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon said that former President Donald Trump was “kind of right” about NATO and immigration and urged Democrats to “be a little more respectful” of voters who are backing the ex-president’s 2024 campaign.
During a CNBC “Squawk Box” interview conducted in Davos, the site of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, Dimon on Wednesday said that Americans who adhere to the Make America Great Again movement were fond of Trump’s policies and not necessarily backing the former president’s personal conduct as they head into ballot booths.
“When people say MAGA, they’re actually looking at people voting for Trump, and they think they’re voting — they’re basically scapegoating them, that you are like him. But I don’t think they’re voting for Trump because of his family values,” Dimon said.
“He’s kind of right about NATO. Kind of right about immigration,” the chief executive continued. “He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China.”
Trump during his presidency was highly critical of NATO; last year, Congress passed a Pentagon funding bill that effectively bars any president from unilaterally leaving the intergovernmental military alliance.
Dimon, similar to comments he made in November 2023, reiterated that he wanted to see Democrats “think a little more carefully” when they speak about MAGA and again pointed to his belief that Trump has been correct on a range of issues.
That has some resonance with this observation of Minnesota Democratic Congressman Dean Phillips:
And I’ve got to tell you guys, I went to a Donald Trump rally a couple nights ago. Never been to one. I had an event across the street. I saw the line of people waiting in the cold for hours and I thought, what the heck, you know, I’m going to be a leader who actually invites people, doesn’t condemn them, Met probably 50 Trump people waiting in line. Every single one of them, thoughtful, hospitable, friendly, all of them so frustrated that they feel nobody’s listening to them but Donald Trump. A diverse crowd. People who had never been to a Trump event before. My party is completely delusional right now, and somebody had to wake us up. And if that’s my job, so be it.
I wonder if President Biden understands the risks of the “democracy is in the balance” campaign he’s been running. There are several two of which are mentioned above—it says nothing about policy and it may alienate the very people you want to vote for you. Here’s another. When your claims are that the other guy is a fascist, a would-be dictator, and you want to preserve democracy it means you’ve got to not be a fascist or would-be dictator and you must be democratic. Nothing says “democracy” like the steps, for example, the the State of Illinois’s Democratic Party has taken to keep anyone not named “Joe Biden” off the list of Democratic candidates for president here.
Joe Biden is running against Trump and you shouldn’t vote for him because of what Illinois is doing? Phillips has as much chance of winning as Vivek or the Marianne person. Also, IIRC, it’s not that unusual for an incumbent to not face opposition in the primary.
As an aside, how did his tax reform work? GDP hardly changed and we didnt see an increase in business investment. If you mean that it made rich people a bit richer while increasing debt then I guess it worked.
Steve
Forget it, Jake, it’s Illinois.
You don’t distinguish between actively blocking opposition and “not facing opposition”?
It’s not Illinois. It’s the Illinois Democratic Party.
You’ll have to raise the question of how Trump’s tax reform worked with Mr. Dimon. It’s his argument not mine. I think that the surge in the deficit has been the work of BOTH presidents Trump and Biden.
My argument that it didn’t work is a bit different from yours. I do not believe that it resulted in an increase in capital investment.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1eFov
The right to vote for the approved candidate in power is sacred, otherwise it is a threat to the democratic order.
I jest.
On a positive note, health care spending has been close to level for the longest period of time since 1990. As a percentage of GDP it’s about the same as 2009. Remover covid spending, hard to do, and it’s probably less than 2009. Lots of years with health care spending well ahead of inflation so this is surprising and not well known or at least not well covered.
https://cepr.net/declining-healthcare-costs-the-good-economic-news-keeps-getting-better/
Steve
https://cepr.net/declining-healthcare-costs-the-good-economic-news-keeps-getting-better/
Steve
Yes, that’s good news but it’s good news for a reason other than what you’re intimating. Here is per capita health care spending:
As you can see that doesn’t say that healthcare spending is decreasing or even that its rate of increase has declined. What is happening is that THE REST of the economy is growing faster than had been predicted.
Note that is per capita. Overall healthcare spending in 2021 was about $3 trillion. It has risen sharply since then to about $4.5 trillion. Dr. Baker is selecting a statistic that supports his narrative, healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP but doesn’t show non-healthcare GDP over the period. Clearly, what is happening is what I said: the non-healthcare economy is growing faster than it was.
Shorter: there is no decline in healthcare spending.