Finance

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook raised some concerns regarding the progress on inflation, saying recent lower readings could reverse after tariffs work their way through the economy.
President Donald Trump’s trade policy could take a toll on the labor market, she said, even though she suspects the economy is in relatively good shape now.
Cook did not specify when she thinks the Federal Reserve can ease rates again.

Lisa Cook, governor of the Federal Reserve, speaks during a Fed Listens event in Washington, D.C., on March 22, 2024.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook expressed concern Tuesday with the progress on inflation, saying recent lower readings could reverse after tariffs work their way through the economy.
In addition, Cook said she expects President Donald Trump’s moves on trade policy could take a toll on the labor market, though she noted that the economy for now is in relatively good shape.

“I do not express views on the Administration’s policies. But I do study the economic implications, which appear to be increasing the likelihood of both higher inflation and labor-market cooling,” the policymaker said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
On inflation, Cook noted that progress has been made, with core inflation at 2.5% and headline at 2.1% in April, according to a report last week that uses the Fed’s preferred measure.
However, economists largely expect the tariffs to push costs higher. Fed officials generally view tariffs as one-off occurrences for prices, but the broad range of the Trump levies could change the equation.
“Price increases tied to changes in trade policy may make it difficult to achieve further progress in the near term,” Cook said. “The recent post-pandemic experience with high inflation could make firms more willing to raise prices and consumers more likely to expect high inflation to persist.”
Indeed, a survey-based measure of inflation points to a significant spike over the next year. Market-based measures, however, indicate more muted expectations further out.

Cook’s comments come two weeks ahead of the Fed’s next policy meeting on June 17-18. Market expectations overwhelmingly indicate the central bank will be on hold again regarding interest rates, and most statements from policymakers since the last meeting back that up. Traders expect the next Fed cut to come in September.
Cook did not specify when she thinks the Fed can ease again, saying current policy is set in a place where she and her colleagues can respond to threats on either side of the Fed’s mandate for full employment and low inflation.
“I see the U.S. economy as still being in a solid position, but heightened uncertainty poses risks to both price stability and unemployment,” she said. “When making decisions, I think it has been valuable to remain a student of economic history. Our recent past has provided some useful lessons for decision-making during periods of high uncertainty and elevated risks to our dual-mandate goals.”
Earlier in the day, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said he expects just one rate cut this year as “most of the [inflation] measures are still flashing red.”
However, in a speech over the weekend, Fed Governor Christopher Waller said he expects tariffs to be on the lower end of expectations, with impacts in the second half of the year that nonetheless could allow the Fed to enact “good news” rate cuts before the end of 2025.

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Klarna is piloting a debit card called Klarna Card in the U.S.
The card will also launch in Europe later this year.
The Swedish fintech has been trying to shift its image from “buy now, pay later” poster child to a more all-encompassing banking player.

Klarna is synonymous with the “buy now, pay later” trend of making a purchase and deferring payment until the end of the month or paying over interest-free monthly installments.
Nikolas Kokovlis | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Swedish fintech Klarna — primarily known for its popular “buy now, pay later” services — is launching its own Visa debit card, as it looks to diversify its business beyond short-term credit products.
The company on Tuesday announced that it’s piloting the product, dubbed Klarna Card, with some customers in the U.S. ahead of a planned countrywide rollout. Klarna Card will launch in Europe later this year, the firm added.

The move highlights an ongoing effort from Klarna ahead of a highly anticipated initial public offering to shift its image away from the poster child of the buy now, pay later (BNPL) trend and be viewed as more of an all-encompassing banking player. BNPL products are interest-free loans that allow people to pay off the full price of an item over a series of monthly installments.
“We want Americans to start to associate us with not only buy now, pay later, but [with] the PayPal wallet type of experience that we have, and also the neobank offering that we offer,” Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told CNBC’s “The Exchange” last month. “We are basically a neobank to a large degree, but people associate us still strongly with buy now, pay later.”

Klarna’s newly announced card comes with an account that can hold Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation (FDIC)-insured deposits and facilitate withdrawals — similar to checking accounts offered by mainstream banks.
Notably, Klarna Card is powered by Visa Flexible Credential, a service from the American card network that lets users access multiple funding sources — like debit, credit and BNPL — from a single payment card. It’s a debit card by default, but users can also toggle to one of Klarna’s “pay later” products, including “Pay in 4” and “Pay in 30 Days.”
Klarna is pushing deeper into a fiercely competitive consumer banking market. The U.S. banking industry is dominated by heavyweights such as JPMorgan Chase & Co and Bank of America, while fintech challengers like Chime have also attracted millions of customers.

While Klarna has a full banking license in the European Union, it does not have its own U.S. bank license. However, the firm says it’s able to offer FDIC-insured accounts through a partnership with WebBank, a small financial institution based in Salt Lake City, Utah.
WATCH: CNBC’s full interview with Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski More

Legislation passed by Republicans in the House and now being considered in the Senate would increase the U.S. debt by more than $3 trillion after interest and economic effects, according to estimates.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” is a “debt bomb ticking,” one GOP lawmaker said.
The debt can have a big impact on household finances, by raising the cost of borrowing and reducing the value of investors’ bond holdings, according to economists.

Annabelle Gordon/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The massive package of tax cuts House Republicans passed in May is expected to increase the U.S. debt by trillions of dollars — a sum that threatens to torpedo the legislation as the Senate starts to consider it this week.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the bill, as written, would add about $3.1 trillion to the national debt over a decade with interest, to a total $53 trillion. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates a higher tally: $3.8 trillion, including interest and economic effects.

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was one of two Republicans to vote against the House measure, calling it a “debt bomb ticking” and noting that it “dramatically increases deficits in the near term.”
“Congress can do funny math — fantasy math — if it wants,” Massie said on the House floor on May 22. “But bond investors don’t.”
A handful of Republican Senators have also voiced concern about the bill’s potential addition to the U.S. debt load and other aspects of the legislation.
“The math doesn’t really add up,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, said Sunday on CBS.
The legislation comes as interest payments on U.S. debt have surpassed national spending on defense and represent the second-largest outlay behind Social Security. Federal debt as a percentage of gross domestic product, a measure of U.S. economic output, is already at an all-time high.

The notion of rising national debt may seem unimportant for the average person, but it can have a significant impact on household finances, economists said.
“I don’t think most consumers think about it at all,” said Tim Quinlan, senior economist at Wells Fargo Economics. “They think, ‘It doesn’t really impact me.’ But I think the truth is, it absolutely does.”

Consumer loans would be ‘a lot more’ expensive

A much higher U.S. debt burden would likely cause consumers to “pay a lot more” to finance homes, cars and other common purchases, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s.
“That’s the key link back to us as consumers, businesspeople and investors: The prospect that all this borrowing, the rising debt load, mean higher interest rates,” he said.

The House legislation cuts taxes for households by about $4 trillion, most of which accrue for the wealthy. The bill offsets some of those tax cuts by slashing spending for safety-net programs like Medicaid and food assistance for lower earners.
Some Republicans and White House officials argue President Trump’s tariff policies would offset a big chunk of the tax cuts.
But economists say tariffs are an unreliable revenue generator — because a future president can undo them, and courts may take them off the books.

How rising debt impacts Treasury yields

U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) speaks to the media after the House narrowly passed a bill forwarding President Donald Trump’s agenda at the U.S. Capitol on May 22, 2025.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Ultimately, higher interest rates for consumers ties to perceptions of U.S. debt loads and their effect on U.S. Treasury bonds.
Common forms of consumer borrowing like mortgages and auto loans are priced based on yields for U.S. Treasury bonds, particularly the 10-year Treasury.
Yields (i.e., interest rates) for long-term Treasury bonds are largely dictated by market forces. They rise and fall based on supply and demand from investors.
The U.S. relies on Treasury bonds to fund its operations. The government must borrow, since it doesn’t take in enough annual tax revenue to pay its bills, what’s known as an annual “budget deficit.” It pays back Treasury investors with interest.
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If the Republican bill — called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — were to raise the U.S. debt and deficit by trillions of dollars, it would likely spook investors and Treasury demand may fall, economists said.
Investors would likely demand a higher interest rate to compensate for the additional risk that the U.S. government may not pay its debt obligations in a timely way down the road, economists said.
Interest rates priced to the 10-year Treasury “also have to go up because of the higher risk being taken,” said Philip Chao, chief investment officer and certified financial planner at Experiential Wealth based in Cabin John, Maryland.
Moody’s cut the U.S.’ sovereign credit rating in May, citing the increasing burden of the federal budget deficit and signaling a bigger credit risk for investors. Bond yields spiked on the news.

How debt may impact consumer borrowing

Zandi cited a general rule of thumb to illustrate what a higher debt burden could mean for consumers: The 10-year Treasury yield rises about 0.02 percentage points for each 1-point increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio, he said.
For example, if the ratio were to rise from 100% (roughly where it is now) to 130%, the 10-year Treasury yield would increase about 0.6 percentage points, Zandi said. That would push the yield to more than 5% relative to current levels of around 4.5%, he said.
“It’s a big deal,” Zandi said.

A fixed 30-year mortgage would rise from almost 7% to roughly 7.6%, all else equal — likely putting homeownership further “out of reach,” especially for many potential first-time buyers, he said.
The debt-to-GDP ratio would swell from about 101% at the end of 2025 to an estimated 148% through 2034 under the as-written House legislation, said Kent Smetters, an economist and faculty director for the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

Bond investors get hit, too

It’s not just consumer borrowers: Certain investors would also stand to lose, experts said.
When Treasury yields rise, prices fall for current bondholders. Their current Treasury bonds become less valuable, weighing on investment portfolios.
“If the market interest rate has gone up, your bond has depreciated,” Chao said. “Your net worth has gone down.”
The market for long-term Treasury bonds has been more volatile amid investor jitters, leading some experts to recommend shorter-term bonds.
On the flip side, those buying new bonds may be happy because they can earn a higher rate, he said.

‘Pouring gasoline on the fire’

The cost of consumer financing has already roughly doubled in recent years, said Quinlan of Wells Fargo.
The average 10-year Treasury yield was about 2.1% from 2012 to 2022; it has been about 4.1% from 2023 to the present, he said.
Of course, the U.S. debt burden is just one of many things that influence Treasury investors and yields, Quinlan said. For example, Treasury investors sent yields sharply higher as they rushed for the exits after Trump announced a spate of country-specific tariffs in April, as they questioned the safe-haven status of U.S. assets.

“But it’s not going out on too much of a limb to suggest financial markets the last couple years have grown increasingly concerned about debt levels,” Quinlan said.
Absent action, the U.S. debt burden would still rise, economists said. The debt-to-GDP ratio would swell to 138% even if Republicans don’t pass any legislation, Smetters said.
But the House legislation would be “pouring gasoline on the fire,” said Chao.
“It’s adding to the problems we already have,” Chao said. “And this is why the bond market is not happy with it,” he added. More

Fixed-income investors are steering clear of longer-term Treasuries amid volatility in bond yields and prices.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is reported to now own 5% of the short-term T-bill market.
Ultra-short bond ETFs have been among the most popular exchange-traded funds with investors in 2025.

Investors always pay close attention to bonds, and what the latest movement in prices and yields is saying about the economy. Right now, the action is telling investors to stick to the shorter-end of the fixed-income market with their maturities.
“There’s lots of concern and volatility, but on the short and middle end, we’re seeing less volatility and stable yields,” Joanna Gallegos, CEO and founder of bond ETF company BondBloxx, said on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”

The 3-month T-Bill right now is paying above 4.3%, annualized. The two-year is paying 3.9% while the 10-year is offering about 4.4%. 
ETF flows in 2025 show that it’s the ultrashort opportunity that is attracting the most investors. The iShares 0-3 Month Treasury Bond ETF (SGOV) and SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 T-Bill ETF (BIL) are both among the top 10 ETFs in investor flows this year, taking in over $25 billion in assets. Only Vanguard Group’s S&P 500 ETF (VOO) has taken in more new money from investors this year than SGOV, according to ETFAction.com data. Vanguard’s Short Term Bond ETF (BSV) is not far behind, with over $4 billion in flows this year, placing within the top 20 among all ETFs in year-to-date flows.
“Long duration just doesn’t work right now” said Todd Sohn, senior ETF and technical strategist at Strategas Securities, on “ETF Edge.”
It would seem that Warren Buffett agrees, with Berkshire Hathaway doubling its ownership of T-bills and now owning 5% of all short-term Treasuries, according to a recent JPMorgan report. 

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Investors including Warren Buffett have been piling into short term Treasuries.

“The volatility has been on the long end,” Gallegos said. “The 20-year has gone from negative to positive five times so far this year,” she added.

The bond volatility comes nine months after the Fed began cutting rates, a campaign it has since paused amid concerns about the potential for resurgent inflation due to tariffs. Broader market concerns about government spending and deficit levels, especially with a major tax cut bill on the horizon, have added to bond market jitters. 
Long-term treasuries and long-term corporate bonds have posted negative performance since September, which is very rare, according to Sohn. “The only other time that’s happened in modern times was during the Financial Crisis,” he said. “It is hard to argue against short-term duration bonds right now,” he added. 
Sohn is advising clients to steer clear of anything with a duration of longer than seven years, which has a yield in the 4.1% range right now.
Gallegos says she is concerned that amid the bond market volatility, investors aren’t paying enough attention to fixed income as part of their portfolio mix. “My fear is investors are not diversifying their portfolios with bonds today, and investors still have an equity addiction to concentrated broad-based indexes that are overweight certain tech names. They get used to these double-digit returns,” she said. 
Volatility in the stock market has been high this year as well. The S&P 500 rose to record levels in February, before falling 20%, hitting a low in April, and then making back all of those losses more recently. While bonds are an important component of long-term investing to shield a portfolio from stock corrections, Sohn said now is also a time for investors to look beyond the United States within their equity positions. 
“International equities are contributing to portfolios like they haven’t done in a decade” he said. “Last year was Japanese equities, this year it is European equities. Investors don’t have to be loaded up on U.S. large cap growth right now,” he said.
The S&P 500 posted 20 percent-plus returns in both 2023 and 2024.
The iShares MSCI Eurozone ETF (EZU) is up 25% so far this year.  The iShares MSCI Japan ETF (EWJ) posted performance above 25% in the two-year period prior to 2025, and is up over 10% this year. 

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Overseas assets have become more popular. More

On May 31st the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+) said that it would pump 411,000 more barrels per day (b/d) of crude in July. The statement marked the third such rise in as many months. OPEC+’s increased production is equivalent to 1.2% of global demand, and represents a drastic acceleration from plans drawn up last year, when the group said that it would raise output by 122,000 b/d a month. More

Sarah Kapnick started her career in 2004 as an investment banking analyst, but was struck by how little climate change was being factored into financial decision making.
She later became the chief science officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Last year, JPMorgan hired Kapnick back into banking, where she’s advising clients on how to invest in climate change.

Sarah Kapnick started her career in 2004 as an investment banking analyst for Goldman Sachs. She was struck almost immediately by the overlap of financial growth and climate change, and the lack of client advisory around that theme.
Integrating the two, she thought, would help investors understand both the risks and opportunities, and would help them use climate information in finance and business operations. With a degree in theoretical mathematics and geophysical fluid dynamics, Kapnick saw herself as uniquely positioned to take on that challenge.

But first, she had to get deeper into the science.
That led her to more study and then to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the nation’s scientific and regulatory agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce. Its defined mission is to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans and coasts and to share that knowledge and information with others.
In 2022, Kapnick was appointed NOAA’s chief scientist. Two years later, JPMorgan Chase hired her away, but not as chief sustainability officer, a role common at most large investment banks around the world and a position already filled at JPMorgan.
Rather, Kapnick is JPMorgan’s global head of climate advisory, a unique job she envisioned back in 2004.
Just days before the official start of the North American hurricane season, CNBC spoke with Kapnick from her office at JPMorgan in New York about her current role at the bank and how she’s advising and warning clients.

Here’s the Q&A: 
(This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.) 
Diana Olick, CNBC: Why does JPMorgan need you?
Sarah Kapnick, JPMorgan global head of climate advisory: JPMorgan and banks need climate expertise because there is client demand for understanding climate change, understanding how it affects businesses, and understanding how to plan. Clients want to understand how to create frameworks for thinking about climate change, how to think about it strategically, how to think about it in terms of their operations, how to think about it in terms of their diversification and their long-term business plans.
Everybody’s got a chief sustainability officer. You are not that. What is the difference?
The difference is, I come with a deep background in climate science, but also how that climate science translates into business, into the economy. Working at NOAA for most of my career, NOAA is a science agency, but it’s science agency under the Department of Commerce. And so my job was to understand the future due to physics, but then be able to translate into what does that mean for the economy? What does that mean for economic development? What does that mean for economic output, and how do you use that science to be able to support the future of commerce? So I have this deep thinking that combines all that science, all of that commerce thinking, that economy, how it translates into national security. And so it wraps up all these different issues that people are facing right now and the systematic issues, so that they can understand, how do you navigate through that complexity, and then how do you move forward with all that information at hand?
Give us an example, on a ground level, of what some of that expertise does for investors.
There’s a client that’s concerned about the future of wildfire risk, and so they’re asking, How is wildfire risk unfolding? Why is it not in building codes? How might building codes change in the future? What happens for that? What type of modeling is used for that, what type of observations are used for that? So I can explain to them the whole flow of where is the data? How is the data used in decisions, where do regulations come from. How are they evolving? How might they evolve in the future? So we can look through the various uncertainties of different scenarios of what the world looks like, to make decisions about what to do right now, to be able to prepare for that, or to be able to shift in that preparation over time as uncertainty comes down and more information is known
So are they making investment decisions based on your information?
Yes, they’re making investment decisions. And they’re making decisions of when to invest because sometimes they have a knowledge of something as it’s starting to evolve. They want to act either early or they want to act as more information is known, but they want to know kind of the whole sphere of what the possibilities are and when information will be known or could be known, and what are the conditions that they will know more information, so they can figure out when they want to act, when that threshold of information is that they need to act.
How does that then inform their judgment on their investment, specifically on wildfire?
Because wildfire risk is growing, there’ve been a few events like the Los Angeles wildfires that were recently seen. The questions that I’m getting are could this happen in my location? When will it happen? Will I have advanced notice? How should I change and invest in my infrastructure? How should I think about differences in my infrastructure, my infrastructure construction? Should I be thinking about insurance, different types of insurance? How should I be accessing the capital markets to do this type of work? It’s questions across a range of trying to figure out how to reduce vulnerability, how to reduce financial exposure, but then also, if there are going to be risks in this one location, maybe there are more opportunities in these other locations that are safer, and I should be thinking of them as well. It’s holistically across risk management and thinking through risk and what to do about it, but then also thinking about what opportunities might be emerging as a result of this change in physical conditions in the world.
But you’re not an economist. Do you work with others at JPMorgan to augment that?
Yes, my work is very collaborative. I work across various teams with subject matter experts from different sectors, different industries, different parts of capital, and so I come with my expertise of science and technology and policy and security, and then work with them in whatever sphere that they’re in to be able to deliver the most to the bank that we can for our clients.
With the cuts by the Trump administration to NOAA, to FEMA, to all of the information gathering sources — we’re not seeing some of the things that we normally see in data. How is that affecting your work?
I am looking to what is available for what we need, for whatever issue. I will say that if data is no longer available, we will translate and move into other data sets, use other data sets, and I’m starting to see the development out in certain parts of the private sector to pull in those types of data that used to be available elsewhere. I think that we’re going to see this adjustment period where people search out whatever data it is they need to answer the questions that they have. And there will be opportunities. There’s a ton of startups that are starting to develop in that area, as well as more substantial companies that have some of those data sets. They’re starting to make them available, but there’s going to be this adjustment period as people figure out where they’re going to get the information that they need, because many market decisions or financial decisions are based on certain data sets that people thought would always be there.
But the government data was considered the top, irrefutable, best data there was. Now, how do we know, when going to the private sector, that this data is going to be as credible as government data?
There’s going to be an adjustment period as people figure out what data sets to trust and what not to trust, and what they want to be using. This is a point in time where there is going to be adjustment because something that everyone got used to working with, they now won’t have that. And that is a question that I’m getting from a lot of clients, of what data set should I be looking for? How should I be assessing this problem? Do I build in-house teams now to be able to assess this information that I didn’t have before? And I’m starting to see that occurring across different sectors, where people are increasingly having their own meteorologist, their own climatologist, to be able to help guide them through some of these decisions.
Final thoughts?
Climate change isn’t something that is going to happen in the future and impact finance in the future. It’s something that is a future risk that is now actually finding us in the bottom line today. More

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has regularly warned that the U.S. economy faces perils, but even as he sounds the alarm, his bank is doing better than ever.
A review of 20 years of Dimon’s annual investor letters and his public statements show a distinct evolution: His warnings about economic calamities became more frequent even as his bank’s performance began lapping rivals.
Maybe the best explanation for Dimon’s dour outlook is that, no matter how big and powerful JPMorgan is, financial companies can be fragile: The history of finance is one of the rise and fall of institutions.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, testifies during the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing titled Annual Oversight of Wall Street Firms, in the Hart Building on Dec. 6, 2023.
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

The more Jamie Dimon worries, the better his bank seems to do.
As JPMorgan Chase has grown larger, more profitable and increasingly more crucial to the U.S. economy in recent years, its star CEO has grown more vocal about what could go wrong — all while things keep going right for his bank.

In the best of times and in the worst of times, Dimon’s public outlook is grim.
Whether it’s his 2022 forecast for a “hurricane” hitting the U.S. economy, his concerns over the fraying post-World War II world order or his caution about America getting hit by a one-two punch of recession and inflation, Dimon seems to lace every earnings report, TV appearance and investor event with another dire warning.
“His track record of leading the bank is incredible,” said Ben Mackovak, a board member of four banks and investor through his firm Strategic Value Bank Partner. “His track record of making economic-calamity predictions, not as good.”
Over his two decades running JPMorgan, Dimon, 69, has helped build a financial institution unlike any the world has seen.
A sprawling giant in both Main Street banking and Wall Street high finance, Dimon’s bank is, in his own words, an end-game winner when it comes to money. It has more branches, deposits and online users than any peer and is a leading credit card and small business franchise. It has a top market share in both trading and investment banking, and more than $10 trillion moves over its global payment rails daily.

‘Warning shot’

A review of 20 years of Dimon’s annual investor letters and his public statements show a distinct evolution. He became CEO in 2006, and his first decade at the helm of JPMorgan was consumed by the U.S. housing bubble, the 2008 financial crisis and its long aftermath, including the acquisition of two failed rivals, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual.
By the time he began his second decade leading JPMorgan, however, just as the legal hangover from the mortgage crisis began to fade, Dimon began seeing new storm clouds on the horizon.
“There will be another crisis,” he wrote in his April 2015 CEO letter, musing on potential triggers and pointing out that recent gyrations in U.S. debt were a “warning shot” for markets.
That passage marked the start of more frequent financial warnings from Dimon, including worries of a recession — which didn’t happen until the 2020 pandemic triggered a two-month contraction — as well as concerns around market meltdowns and the ballooning U.S. deficit.
But it also marked a decade in which JPMorgan’s performance began lapping rivals.
After leveling out at roughly $20 billion in annual profit for a few years, the sprawling machine that Dimon oversaw began to truly hit its stride. JPMorgan generated seven record annual profits from 2015 to 2024, over twice as many as in Dimon’s first decade as CEO.

In that time, investors began aggressively bidding up JPMorgan’s shares, buying into the idea that it was a growth company in an otherwise boring sector. JPMorgan is now the world’s most valuable publicly traded financial firm and is spending $18 billion annually on technology, including artificial intelligence, to stay that way.
While Dimon seems perpetually worried about the economy and rising geopolitical turmoil, the U.S. keeps chugging along. That means unemployment and consumer spending has been more resilient than expected, allowing JPMorgan to churn out record profits.
In 2022, Dimon told a roomful of professional investors to prepare for an economic storm: “Right now, it’s kind of sunny, things are doing fine, everyone thinks the Fed can handle this,” Dimon said, referring to the Federal Reserve managing the post-pandemic economy.
“That hurricane is right out there, down the road, coming our way,” he said.
“This may be the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades,” Dimon said the following year in an earnings release.
But investors who listened to Dimon and made their portfolios more conservative would have missed out on the best two-year run for the S&P 500 in decades.

‘You look stupid’

“It’s an interesting contradiction, no doubt,” Mackovak said about Dimon’s downbeat remarks and his bank’s performance.
“Part of it could just be the brand-building of Jamie Dimon,” the investor said. “Or having a win-win narrative where if something goes bad, you can say, ‘Oh, I called it,’ and if doesn’t, well your bank’s still chugging along.”
According to the former president of a top five U.S. financial institution, bankers know that it’s wiser to broadcast caution than optimism. Former Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince, for example, is best known for his ill-fated 2007 comment about the mortgage business that “as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.”
“One learns that there’s a lot more downside to your reputation if you are overly optimistic and things go wrong,” said the former president, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss Dimon. “It’s damaging to your bank, and you look stupid, whereas the other way around, you just look like you’re being a very cautious, thoughtful banker.”

Banking is ultimately a business of calculated risks, and its CEOs have to be attuned to the downside, to the possibility that they don’t get repaid on their loans, said banking analyst Mike Mayo of Wells Fargo.
“It’s the old cliche that a good banker carries an umbrella when the sun is shining; they’re always looking around the corner, always aware of what could go wrong,” Mayo said.
But other longtime Dimon watchers see something else.
Dimon has an “ulterior motive” for his public comments, according to Portales Partners analyst Charles Peabody.
“I think this rhetoric is to keep his management team focused on future risks, whether they happen or not,” Peabody said. “With a high-performing, high-growth franchise, he’s trying to prevent them from becoming complacent, so I think he’s ingrained in their culture a constant war room-type atmosphere.”
Dimon has no shortage of things to worry about these days, despite the fact that his bank generated a record $58.5 billion in profit last year. Conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza rage on, the U.S. national debt grows, and President Donald Trump’s trade policies continue to jolt adversaries and allies alike.

Graveyard of bank logos

“It’s fair to observe that he’s not omniscient and not everything he says comes true,” said Truist bank analyst Brian Foran. “He comes at it more from a perspective that you need to be prepared for X, as opposed to we’re convinced X is going to happen.”
JPMorgan was better positioned for higher interest rates than most of its peers were in 2023, when rates surged and punished those who held low-yielding long-term bonds, Foran noted.
“For many years, he said, ‘Be prepared for the 10-year at 5%, and we all thought he was crazy, because it was like 1% at the time,” Foran said. “Turns out that being prepared was not a bad thing.”
Perhaps the best explanation for Dimon’s dour outlook is that, no matter how big and powerful JPMorgan is, financial companies can be fragile. The history of finance is one of the rise and fall of institutions, sometimes when managers become complacent or greedy.
In fact, the graveyard of bank logos that are no longer used includes three — Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual and First Republic — that have been subsumed by JPMorgan.
During his bank’s investor day meeting this month, Dimon pointed out that, in the past decade, JPMorgan has been one of the only firms to earn annual returns of more than 17%.
“If you go back to the 10 years before that, OK, a lot of people earned over 17%,” Dimon said. “Almost every single one went bankrupt. Hear what I just said?”
“Almost every single major financial company in the world almost didn’t make it,” he said. “It’s a rough world out there.” More

U.S.-China trade talks “are a bit stalled,” requiring the two countries’ leaders to speak directly, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News.
After a rapid escalation in trade tensions last month, Bessent helped U.S. and China reach a breakthrough agreement in Switzerland on May 12.
The U.S. has pushed ahead with tech restrictions on China, while China has yet to significantly ease restrictions on rare earths.

The U.S. and Chinese flags are seen on the day of a bilateral meeting between the U.S. and China, in Geneva, Switzerland, May 10, 2025.
Keystone/eda/martial Trezzini | Via Reuters

BEIJING — U.S.-China trade talks “are a bit stalled,” requiring the two countries’ leaders to speak directly, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News.
“I believe that we will be having more talks with them in the next few weeks,” he said in the interview around 6 p.m. ET Thursday, adding that there may be a call between the two countries’ leaders “at some point.”

After a rapid escalation in trade tensions last month, Bessent helped the world’s two largest economies reach a breakthrough agreement in Switzerland on May 12. The countries agreed to roll back recent tariff increases of more than 100% for 90 days, or until mid-August. Diplomatic officials from both sides had a call late last week.
Still, the U.S. has pushed ahead with tech restrictions on Beijing, drawing its ire, while China has yet to significantly ease restrictions on rare earths, contrary to Washington’s expectations.
“I think that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going to require both leaders to weigh in with each other,” Bessent said. “They have a very good relationship and I am confident that the Chinese will come to the table when President [Donald] Trump makes his [preferences] known.”
Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping last spoke in January, just before the U.S. president was sworn in for his second term. While Trump has in recent weeks said he would like to speak with Xi, analysts expect China to agree to that only if there’s certainty there will be no surprises from the U.S. during the call.

China has maintained communication with the U.S. since the agreement in Switzerland, Chinese Ministry of Commerce Spokesperson He Yongqian told reporters at a regular briefing Thursday.

But regarding chip export controls, she said that “China again urges the U.S. to immediately correct its wrong practices … and together safeguard the consensus reached at high-level talks in Geneva.”
That’s according to a CNBC translation of her Mandarin-language remarks.
When asked whether China would suspend rare earths’ export controls announced in early April, He did not respond directly. Restrictions on items that could be used for both military and civilian use reflect international practice, as well as China’s position of “upholding world peace and regional stability,” she said.

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This week, the Trump administration also announced it would start revoking visas for Chinese students.
“The U.S. decision to revoke Chinese student visas is fully unjustified,” China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said Thursday, according to an official English transcript. “It uses ideology and national security as pretext.” More