Politics

Elizabeth Warren Met With Longtime Wall Street Foe Jamie Dimon

REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

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Jack Crowe Political Reporter
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Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts met with Jamie Dimon this summer after repeatedly targeting the J.P. Morgan CEO in recent years as part of her crusade against the perceived excesses of Wall Street.

Warren met privately with Dimon in Washington, D.C., early this summer and attended a Democratic fundraiser held at the summer home of a former UBS executive in July, according to The New York Times.

While the purpose of Warren’s meeting with Dimon remains unclear, her recent engagement with Wall Street represents a surprising departure from the oppositional stance she has long maintained toward financial executives generally, and Dimon specifically.

Robert Wolf, the former UBS executive who hosted Warren at his Martha’s Vineyard home implied the disconnect between Warren’s recent Wall Street engagement and her public rhetoric was the result of political posturing.

“I think Senator Warren’s views are more pragmatic; I think she is very different in a conversation than when she’s on the stump,” told NYT.

Warren’s long crusade against Dimon began in 2012 when she called for him to resign from the New York Federal Reserve board of directors after a particularly costly trading loss.

Warren said Dimon’s resignation would send a message to Americans that “Wall Street bankers get it” and would demonstrate  “that they understand the need for responsibility and accountability.”

Warren again explicitly condemned Dimon in April 2016, for what she perceived to be a cavalier response to news that government regulators determined J.P. Morgan was “still too big to fail.”

Dimon has attributed Warren’s calls for increased financial regulation and her condemnation of large U.S. banks, in part, to an insufficient financial acumen.

“I don’t know if she fully understands the global banking system,” Dimon said at an event for the Executives’ Club of Chicago in 2015.

Warren, a former bankruptcy attorney,  responded by accusing Dimon of “mansplaining” to her and said bankers recognized that her knowledge of the banking system qualified her as a threat.

“The problem is not that I don’t understand the global banking system. The problem for these guys is that I fully understand the system and I understand how they make their money. And that’s what they don’t like about me,” Warren said on Huffington Post’s “So That Happened” podcast soon after Dimon’s comments.

Warren’s office told the Daily Caller News Foundation that she met with Dimon at his request and explained that she was up front regarding their points of disagreement.

“Senator Warren met with Jamie Dimon at his request on June 22nd.  Like in Senator Warren’s past meetings with him – including when she has flatly accused JPMorgan of breaking the law – she was candid about their areas of disagreement,” Warren’s office told TheDCNF.

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