WASHINGTON – JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon argued that America’s $22 trillion national debt is “not a critical issue today.”
Dimon was asked if he thinks the growing deficit and national debt are a threat to economic growth in the U.S.
“I would say the most important thing for the federal government to do is infrastructure, work skills initiatives, innovation and reducing stifling mind-numbing bureaucracy for small business because maximizing growth is the most important thing you can do for future deficits,” Dimon said in response to a question from PJM on a recent conference call with the Business Roundtable where the group announced the results of its CEO Economic Outlook Survey.
“Having said that, and I don’t believe in this MMT theory [Modern Monetary Theory] — net debt is 80 percent of GDP, OK? In Japan, it’s 260 percent so it is not a critical issue today. It’s not the thing that’s going to cause a complete disaster,” he added.
Dimon, chairman of the Business Roundtable, said the national debt is going to continue growing over time and it will have to be addressed eventually.
“It’s going to grow from 80 to 90 to 100 to 130 [percent of GDP] over the next 30 years, mostly driven by entitlement programs, so any rational group of people would say, ‘it’s an issue, lets deal with it before it becomes an issue’ because it will deal with itself at one point,” Dimon said. “I’m in favor of dealing with it but I’m not in favor of not doing other things first because we’ll just make it harder and slow down growth and do things that are not competitive.”
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