JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon shot down one of Wall Street’s favorite talking points: the idea that the market would crash if Gary Cohn left the Trump administration.
“It would not be a disaster,” Dimon said in an interview at the Delivering Alpha investing conference Tuesday.
Cohn’s fate has become an obsession on Wall Street. Many financiers look at Cohn, who was the second highest ranking executive at Goldman Sachs before joining the administration, as their guy inside the White House. He’s viewed as a center of globalist and pro-Wall Street politics inside the populist, economic nationalist Trump administration.
Earlier Tuesday, hedge fund manager Ray Dalio said “it would be terrible” for markets if Cohn left.
Dimon is not an enemy of Cohn’s. He offered praise for Cohn. “The president needs strong people around him and Cohn is one of them,” he said.
Dimon also shot down speculation that Cohn could be the next leader of his bank as “fantasyland.”
“The successor at JP Morgan is inside of JP Morgan,” Dimon said.