Elizabeth Warren, Jamie Dimon And The Shtick Trap

I like Elizabeth Warren. And I think you should too, where “you” means the vast majority of American voters.

Maybe you don’t like Warren as a presidential candidate, and maybe not even as someone who should exercise undue sway over tax policy. But she’s as a US lawmaker who’s earnest, informed and forthright. And she’s a Progressive who believes wholeheartedly in the notion that capitalism is worth saving if it can be reengineered to work for more people. (Note that Warren, unlike Bernie Sanders, is an avowed capitalist.)

But I have two gripes with Warren.

First (and I discussed this at length during the Democratic primaries) she’s a populist. She plays on the same anger and disaffection as Donald Trump, just from the opposite side of the political spectrum. She is, in a very real sense, a demagogue — only not the kind who might morph into an autocrat or, I don’t know, accidentally tweet America into a nuclear war on a Sunday afternoon.

Second, her Wall Street “crusader” reputation has turned into almost pure shtick over the years. That’s not to say it’s insincere. But some of it might be, if only by accident.

When it comes to Wall Street, Warren has become a caricature of herself. Some of that isn’t her fault. It’s inevitable with old age. We all become caricatures of our younger selves as we get older. But her abrasiveness has become so predictable that she elicits eye-rolls even when she’s unequivocally right which, let’s face it, is most of the time, and not necessarily because she’s an inherently “good” person, but simply because she comes into every argument over-prepared. Warren always, as a rule, brings a gun to a knife fight — figuratively speaking, of course.

I bring this up because Warren’s exchange with Jamie Dimon (video below) grabbed more than a few headlines on Wednesday.

To be sure, Dimon is no walkover. And to say he’s a veteran of congressional grilling sessions would be an understatement. But no matter how seasoned, no bank CEO is ever truly “ready” to spar with Warren. It never ends well for the executives, no matter what they say because who feels bad for a bank executive? Nobody. Warren knows that, and she leverages it for all it’s worth.

On Wednesday, she claimed JPMorgan raked in $1.5 billion in overdraft fees from customers during the pandemic. At first, Dimon disputed the figure, calling it “totally inaccurate,” but he seemed to realize pushing back might make things worse. Warren’s argument, essentially, was that the figure should be $0 (zero). So, had Dimon claimed the “real” figure was, say, $500 million once you factor in XYZ, that would have seemed ridiculously crass as a rejoinder.

Dimon attempted to delve into the nuance (a less generous interpretation might be to say he attempted to obfuscate), but Warren persisted: “How much, in fact, did JPMorgan collect in overdraft fees from their customers in 2020? Do you know the number?”

It was a trap.

“I don’t [have] the number in front of me, but…,” Dimon ventured.

Warren stopped him. “I actually have the number,” she said, raising her voice and wagging her finger. “It’s $1.463 billion,” she chided.

 

Then, she took it a step further. “Now, do you know how much JPMorgan’s profit would have been in 2020 if you had followed the recommendation of regulators and waived overdraft fees to help struggling consumers?”

Of course Dimon knew. It’s simple math. When Dimon attempted to explain that JPMorgan refunded overdraft fees “upon request,” Warren said “I appreciate that you want to duck this question,” before ultimately telling Dimon that “your profits would have been $27.6 billion.”

At that point, the battle was lost. Dimon’s defense (that customers could request the fees be waived) only drew a line under Warren’s criticism, which, at its core, was simply that JPMorgan should have preemptively waived overdraft fees for everyone.

“You and your colleagues come in today to talk about how you stepped up and took care of customers during the pandemic, and it’s a bunch of baloney,” Warren continued. “In fact, it’s about $4 billion worth of baloney.”

And she wasn’t done: “But you can fix it right now. Mr. Dimon, will you commit, right now, to refunding that $1.5 billion you took from consumers during the pandemic?”

“No,” Dimon said, meekly. “Right now!” Warren pressed. “No!” Dimon reiterated.

She then asked the other CEOs if they’d make any such commitment. They wouldn’t. “I didn’t think so,” Warren said.

And just like, America’s most powerful bankers lost another round to Warren, this time in rather dramatic fashion.

Circling back, I found the exchange somewhat distasteful or, if that’s not the right word, let’s say disingenuous, because that gets at my assessment that Warren’s crusader shtick is getting a bit… well, a bit too shtick-ish, for lack of a better way to put it.

Dimon can’t commit to a $1.5 billion across-the-board customer refund in real-time during a Senate hearing. That would be grossly negligent — an unforgivable affront to shareholders and anyone else who’s a decision-maker at the bank.

I’m not defending JPMorgan’s pandemic overdraft fees. I’m simply stating the obvious: Dimon can no more make a commitment like that live on television than the CEO of an automaker could promise to hand out $1.5 billion in bonuses to assembly line workers or the CEO of a big-box retailer could promise, in real-time and without consulting anyone, to raise wages to $30/hour. Warren’s ask was impossible, and Dimon being Dimon, he responded as you’d expect — with a flat “no.”

To be sure, Warren likely achieved precisely what she set out to achieve — namely alerting Americans to yet another manifestation of what she framed as flagrant greed on Wall Street. But the spectacle had a such a staged feel to it, that the message was probably diluted for voters who, while not necessarily inclined to be sympathetic to Dimon, aren’t particularly enamored with Warren either.

When you make a name for yourself based mostly on a single issue (in Warren’s case, it’s Wall Street), you have to be careful that the issue doesn’t come to define everything you do and say. Otherwise, it becomes a shtick. And people eventually tire of a shtick, no matter how much they may have enjoyed it previously.

The most perilous thing about shticks, though, is that obsessively cultivating them can paradoxically undermine the message by casting doubt on the earnestness of the messenger. What part is real and what part is just living up to a carefully cultivated reputation?

Have a look at the images of Joe Biden attempting to calm down Rashida Tlaib, who confronted him on a tarmac in Michigan last week during Israel’s offensive in Gaza. That’s real. Tlaib’s “act” is no “act.”

Or the images from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ad hoc fundraiser for freezing Texans earlier this year. That was real. Ocasio-Cortez’s “shtick” is no “shtick.”

Warren’s latest made-for-TV sparring match with Dimon, by contrast, was contrived. Even if she didn’t mean it to be.

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