By GREGG MONTGOMERY
WISH-TV | wishtv.com
Editor’s note: The Reporter’s newsgathering partners at WISH-TV were given this exclusive interview with Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase.
In a News 8 exclusive, one of the most influential people in the world talks to WISH-TV.
Jamie Dimon is the chair and chief executive officer of the world’s largest bank: JPMorgan Chase. On Tuesday, he visited Indianapolis, and Daybreak anchor Scott Sander was the only local broadcaster Dimon agreed to sit down with.
Dimon said he believes changes to the tax code could help fix income inequality in America.
“I think it would help the American dream. I think it would help this fraying economy. I think it would reduce polarization,” Dimon said.
A lot of Americans don’t feel the economy has been fair to them. Some people think they could never come to a bank and ask for a home loan because they have given up even thinking about it.
Does reality reflect the feeling?
“You have to be careful about overstatements,” Dimon said. “I think 100 million own homes; 40 million don’t have mortgages. We’re making mortgages every day to new people.
“I think it goes to, again, there’s a group of people who don’t feel comfortable going to a bank. The next thing I’m doing after this, I’m going to a town hall, but after that I’m going to a community branch, which we put in low-income neighborhoods. They’re built or reconstructed by minority groups. We hire locally. The art is local. The food is local. The maintain is local.
“At a community branch, the community manager gets to know all the local religious institutions, not-for-profits, small business, and we have what we call financial education and financial health.
“Come in, and we’ll teach you how you get a mortgage, how you get a home, how you improve your credit score, and this works.”
Dimon added that the government can do more to help with loans.
“So, it’s one thing for us to do it, but the government has made mortgages so much more expensive than they need to be with, I think, overburdened rules and regulations on origination.
“Any one of your folks out there who got a mortgage recently, you sign your 40 documents. It raises the cost of a mortgage. We don’t have a securitization market. The problem with that is it raises the cost of a small mortgage by maybe 100 basis points.
“Therefore, if you’re going to take a $150,000 mortgage, that 100 basis points might be the difference in whether you can afford it or not, and that’s terrible.”
He added that most people have found the best way to build wealth started with buying a home.
“And those small mortgages would help minorities and low-income people more than anybody else,” Dimon said.
This story was originally published by WISH-TV at wishtv.com/news/business/jamie-dimon/wish-tv-exclusive-jpmorgan-chase-ceo-thinks-tax-code-changes-would-help-fix-income-inequality.