JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon won’t say how many people will lose their jobs at Bear Stearns, no matter how many times you ask or how you ask. He says he just doesn’t know.

Here’s an excerpt from a brief conversation with Dimon, who was attending a lunch meeting at the Korea Investment Forum 2008 in New York.

Reporter: “A quick question about Bear Stearns…”

Jamie Dimon: “I may not answer your question, but go ahead.”

“What’s your outlook for the number of job cuts?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“People in your company…?”

“You can ask me a thousand times. I don’t care what they say, I don’t know. They don’t know either.”

“But that number that’s out there, 50 percent, is that wrong?” 

“I don’t know. You can ask me a hundred different ways. I will tell you the same thing. There are going to be job cuts. We’re going now group by group. So until we finish it we’re not going to know,” he said. “We didn’t do this acquisition the normal way. We acquired the company, now we are spending a couple of weeks figuring out what we are going to do.”

“And some of the job cuts will be at JP Morgan.” 

(Photo credit: Reuters)