As inflation remains high and the Federal Reserve continues to hike interest rates, the CEO of the largest bank in America, Jamie Dimon, has predicted that the U.S. is just months away from a recession.
Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, told CNBC News on Monday that Europe is already in a recession and the U.S. is likely to go down that same path in 2023.
“These are very, very serious things which I think are likely to push the U.S. and the world — I mean, Europe is already in recession — and they’re likely to put the U.S. in some kind of recession six to nine months from now,” Dimon told CNBC’s reporter at the JPM Techstars conference in London.
While Dimon said that the U.S. economy is “actually still doing well” for the moment, he warned that the Fed’s measures to fight inflation, coupled with international issues stemming from the Ukraine-Russia war, could make for a rocky new year.
“But you can’t talk about the economy without talking about stuff in the future — and this is serious stuff,” Dimon said.
Trending:
Dimon particularly criticized the Fed’s policies as it has tried to control the inflation crisis with repeated interest-rate increases.
He noted that the American central bank is “clearly catching up” after it “waited too long and did too little” to address the issue of inflation that hit record highs over the summer.
In June, U.S. inflation hit 9.06 percent. By the end of August it had fallen only slightly, to 8.26 percent, YCharts recorded.
For several months, the Fed introduced interest rate hikes. In September, it raised the rates yet another three-quarters of a percentage point, CNBC News reported.
Are you making preparations for the looming recession?
The Fed has also indicated that it will keep hiking the rates, CNBC reported.
While Dimon predicted an upcoming recession, he said he could not predict how long it might last, CNBC reported.
“It can go from very mild to quite hard and a lot will be reliant on what happens with this war. So, I think to guess is hard — be prepared,” Dimon said.
Dimon said that on JPMorgan Chase’s part, the bank is already preparing for a recession and it is signaling investors to do the same.
In June, Dimon told investors he was preparing for an economic “hurricane, CNBC reported. “JPMorgan is bracing ourselves and we’re going to be very conservative with our balance sheet,” Dimon said at that time.
Meanwhile, other leading global economies are already showing signs of recession, Morgan Stanley’s chief Asia and emerging market strategist Jonathan Garner told Bloomberg on Sunday.
Garner said that China has been in a recession for some time, Europe is entering one, and the U.S. is already on the path to recession.
“This debate to some extent is over. We are in some kind of a global recession as of the third quarter,” Garner said.
“The question is, how do we get out of it through the course of next year?” he added.
