JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Wall Street bankers are “dancing in the street” over President-elect Donald Trump’s win.
After years of stringent regulations, they are looking forward to deregulation under Trump, regardless of who they voted for, Dimon said at the APEC CEO Summit in Peru Thursday, as a Bloomberg video shows.
“A lot of bankers, they’re, like, dancing in the street because they’ve had successive years and years of regulations, a lot of which stymied credit,” Dimon said.
“You could have kept the banks equally safe, but had them do more credit,” Dimon continued, noting that average U.S. bank used to hold $100 in deposits for every $100 loaned. Regulations have clawed that back to $65 in loans for every $100 in deposits.
“If that’s what you want, if for some reason the regulators think they’re geniuses and that’s the best way to run the banking system, so be it,” said Dimon, who has been CEO of JPMorgan Chase since 2006.
Deregulation across many different industries will spur business, he maintained.
“You could talk to any industry, and they’ll give you examples of regulation that could be reduced to make it easier for them to do business while keeping the country safe.”
In a nod to Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Dimon said he congratulates “any government that says, ‘I’m going to make government more efficient.’”
On Tuesday, Trump named SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to head up DOGE.
Nevertheless, Dimon warned that Trump is entering office at the “most complicated geopolitical, military, and geoeconomic situation that the world has faced since World War II.”
The U.S. is still in an “inflationary environment,” Dimon added.