A report in The New York Post suggests that Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase (JPM), could be the logical replacement for current U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The paper's sources indicate that "a number of policy makers have begun mentioning Dimon as a successor to Geithner, whose standing in Washington has suffered because of the country's high unemployment rate, the weakness of the dollar, the slow pace of the recovery and the government's mounting deficit."
Meanwhile, reports the Post, Dimon has emerged as one of the heroes of the financial crisis, "having navigated JPMorgan through the recession and being a go-to guy when Uncle Sam last year needed Wall Street's help during the collapses of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual."
As evidence that such a move could be imminent, the newspaper reports that Dimon recently put a succession plan into place at JPMorgan Chase. However, the CEO has apparently told his associates that he plans to stay on at the bank for "six or seven years" longer. A spokesman for the Dow component declined to comment on the Post's speculation.
In morning trading, JPM is following the broader equities market higher. The stock was up more than 2% at last check, adding to its year-to-date advance of roughly 34.7%. Since late March, the shares have cruised higher along support from their 20-week moving average.
In response to the equity's uptrend, option traders have slowly started to gravitate toward bullish bets on the stock. During the past 10 days, speculators on the International Securities Exchange (ISE) have bought to open 1.43 calls for every put on JPM. This ratio ranks higher than 70.7% of other such readings taken during the past year, revealing that calls are being snapped up over puts at a faster pace than usual.
Elizabeth Harrow is a senior equities analyst and financial writer in the research department at Schaeffer's Investment Research. She is featured in the video series Schaeffer's Daily Q&A on SchaeffersResearch.com.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-23-2009 @ 11:58AM
william lindblad said...
I read the AP post also and what I fail to understand is why Geitner is the center of attention?
If the AP wanted to do something constructive they should have engaged in a little history lesson.
All of the current mess has it's roots back in the late 1990's when the word "derivative" was created. Unregulated and not understood it remained until the bottom fell out. There were some sounds of caution and alarm only to be squelched by Greenspan, Rubin and Summers. Libertarianism ruled supreme and the free markets were supposed to root out and remove all wrongdoers. These individuals are the perpetrators and promoters of all of the current economic mess, albeit that they did not think it possible. Since these errors are gross why is Summers still part of our government? Granted the mistake is realized, but I see no reason to have confidence that his input will be instrumental in any correction.
If you want to put this in a comparative sense than picture a land with only minimal traffic laws of stop signs and traffic lights only. Drivers would obey a "suggested/safe speed limit" and there would be no police.
You would not tailgate, you would not change lanes abruptly and all would be courteous. That sounds like fairyland, but that what was our leaderships view on economics.
Don't single out Geitner - he did not make this mess.