With the heat intensifying on Tim Geithner at Treasury speculation is growing as to who his replacement might be. Jamie Dimon is a long time Democrat who knew President Obama while both were in Chicago (Dimon was head of Bank One) and is now CEO of JP Morgan. Dimon has remained a trusted advisor to the President to this day. Dimon is the most highly regarded financial executive in the USA today.
Today -
Sources tell The Post that a number of policy makers have begun mentioning Dimon as a successor to Geithner, whose standing in Washington has suffered because of the country's high unemployment rate, the weakness of the dollar, the slow pace of the recovery and the government's mounting deficit.
http://www.nypost.com/...
Dimon wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post advocating that Too-Big-To-Fail banks be subject to regulatatory wind-down and failure.
Creating the structures to allow for the orderly failure of a large financial institution starts with giving regulators the authority to facilitate failures when they occur. Under such a system, a failed bank's shareholders should lose their value; unsecured creditors should be at risk and, if necessary, wiped out. A regulator should be able to terminate management and boards and liquidate assets. Those who benefited from mismanaging risks or taking on inappropriate risk should feel the pain. We can learn here from how the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. closes banks. As with the FDIC process, as long as shareholders and creditors are losing their value, the industry should pay its fair share.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
That is very bold and in keeping with the financial overhaul we need. It is also a huge task.
Dimon has also frozen executive salaries and bonuses at Morgan.
Some background on Dimon -
Dimon has long been a big Democratic supporter, and his ties with Obama go back to when he ran Chicago-based Bank One. In addition, White House visitor logs show Dimon has been a repeated guest there. He also was a point man during the previous administration, rescuing Bear and WaMu.
This isn't the first time Dimon's name has been floated for Treasury secretary. He was considered a candidate last year and is still viewed as an executive who could be instrumental as Washington looks to overhaul the financial regulatory infrastructure.
(first link above)
You're going to hear a lot more about Dimon as the calls for Geithner's resignation intensify.