JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Thursday that the Federal Reserve is still working on enclosing inflation, despite the fact that the US economy is showing signs of strength.
“I have all the respect for [Fed Chair Jerome] Powell, but the fact is we lost a little bit of control of inflation,” Dimon voiced in an interview during the “Halftime Report” with CNBC’s Jim Cramer. It’s the first episode of a two-part interview with Cramer, with the second part airing later Thursday on “Mad Money.”
Dimon passed a comment a day after the Fed issued minutes from its Jan. 31-Feb. 1 meeting, which revealed that members remain committed to combating persistent inflation.
The summary said, “Participants noted that inflation data received over the past three months showed a welcome reduction in the monthly pace of price increases but stressed that substantially more evidence of progress across a broader range of prices would be required to be confident that inflation was on a sustained downward path.”
Dimon himself said he anticipates that interest rates could “possibly” stay higher for sometime, as it may take the central bank “a while” to achieve its goal of 2% inflation.
Nonetheless, the JPMorgan CEO stated that he is not currently preparing for a recession because he is motivated by the resilience of the US economy.
“The U.S. economy right now is doing quite well. Consumers have a lot of money. They’re spending it. Jobs are plentiful,” Dimon said. “That’s today. Out in front of us, there’s some scary stuff. You and I know there’s always uncertainty. That’s a normal thing.”
Those comments differ with Dimon’s prior remarks in October. At the time, he predicted that the US economy would enter a recession in six to nine months. In December, he predicted that higher inflation would erode consumer wealth, resulting in a recession this year.
The Federal Reserve has declined to respond to the report.