The Great Debate UK
from Reuters Investigates:
Jamie Dimon: Good banker? Bad banker?
The U.S. mortgage business is a “mess” in need of overhaul, JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon reckons.
(See our special report on Dimon today: "Jamie Dimon wants some R-E-S-P-E-C-T")
Of course, his own bank is the third-largest U.S. mortgage lender. And JPMorgan is sitting on billions in not just prime mortgages, but risky home-equity loans too.
But Dimon has made a career out of being the one Wall Street banker who likes to stand up, stick up for his views and tell it as he sees it. He can talk in a way that resonates with the mood of the country. He can cross the divide between Wall Street and Washington D.C. And while his peers might talk about doing God’s work, Dimon will admit making mistakes.
The thing is, when you scratch the surface at JPMorgan, the bank doesn’t seem so different from its peers, with large consumer loan exposure and sometimes questionable business decisions. So what do you think? Does Dimon deserve your R-E-S-P-E-C-T?
from The Great Debate:
Even UK guarantee can’t stop housing crash
-- James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --
Britain needs to reflate its mortgage markets to save its economy and its banks. Problem is, few want to borrow and there is precious little money to lend.
British property prices are down about 15 percent in a year and mortgage approvals are down 52 percent. Given the freeze in the securitization market and the scarcity of savings in Britain, new net mortgage lending may even fall below zero in 2009, according to James Crosby, former head of UK mortgage bank HBOS, who authored a government report on the mortgage market.
