From New York Magazine: Jamie Dimon, noted patriot, is not afraid of starting a war with Canada, or anyone else who wants to mess with our freedom from financial regulation, for that matter. (FDR probably cut that one for space.)
The JPMorgan boss apparently "exploded" at an IMF meeting over the weekend when Bank of Canada's Mark Carney spoke out in favor of new, more stringent capital requirements that Dimon's already on record as disliking. According to the FT, he "launched a tirade" at the closed-door meeting, in front of 30 or so other big shots.
Many of [Basel III's] rules discriminate against US banks, and I'm going to continue to use the phrase “anti-American” [which he first used in a Financial Times interview this month] because it seemed to resonate with people who might be able to modify the reforms.
Apparently Canadians aren't on the list of people with whom that phrase resonated.
Not everyone thought Dimon's negotiating tactics were so smart. Goldman Sachs's Lloyd Blankfein reportedly wrote Carney an e-mail that amounted to an apology for the incident.
But killing him with kindness didn't work either. Carney, not dazzled by the Blankfein–Dimon tag-team efforts, gave a speech that seemed like a fairly direct, uncowed response: “If some institutions feel pressure today, it is because they have done too little for too long, rather than because they are being asked to do too much, too soon." Isn't doing the minimum required sort of our national operating principle? Perhaps Dimon's right about the anti-American thing after all….
Find out more at http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/09/lloyd_blankfein_plays_the_good.html
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