JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has claimed in a new interview that he told Mayor Zohran Mamdani “everything I wanted to say” when the two met face to face last week, adding that the sit-down was “pleasant.”
“He was very polite. It was very earnest. We had a very good conversation, but I said everything I wanted to say,” Dimon told Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo on Friday. “I got to talk about affordable housing and child care. Most people want it. If you do it badly, it would be a disaster … Do it right. There are studies that can tell you how to do it right. Get people who know what they’re doing and implement proper policies.”
“Good policy is free,” added Dimon, a Queens native who has led JPMorgan Chase for two decades. “I feel like telling the politicians, ‘Don’t try to raise more taxes or spend more money, sit down and fix policy.’”
The 70-year-old reminded Bartiromo that the 34-year-old Mamdani “has never had a job” like the one he now holds.
“I mean, he’s running the city with 300,000 employees now,” Dimon said ahead of the Reagan National Economic Forum in Simi Valley, California. “And I’ve seen mayors who just, they fail abysmally because they can’t administer themselves out of a paper bag, or ideology blinds them to practical, realistic, real-world policy. And so we’ll see. And, you know, if I can help them do the good stuff, I’d be happy to do that.”
Mamdani met separately May 18 with Dimon and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon to try to smooth over controversy over the mayor’s far-left policy plans, including for a so-called pied-a-terre tax on second homes valued at $1 million or more.
Hizzoner was widely criticized for filming a video promoting the new tax outside a penthouse owned by hedge fund titan Ken Griffin — who responded by calling the stunt “creepy,” announcing an expansion of his Citadel fund’s operations in Florida rather than New York, and even suggesting the company might scrap a $6 billion Park Avenue development.
“My guess is he probably regrets that,” Dimon said Friday of Mamdani’s video, “but you got to ask him that.”