Skip to content Skip to footer

Elizabeth Warren Slams Jamie Dimon Over Overdraft Fees Amid Pandemic

In a heated Senate hearing, Warren called out the JPMorgan Chase CEO as the “star of the overdraft show.”

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon takes his seat to testify before the House Financial Services Commitee on April 10, 2019, in Washington, D.C.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., grilled JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Tuesday, calling claims that the bank helped customers during the pandemic “a bunch of baloney.”

“No matter how you try to spin it,” Warren declared, “this past year has shown that corporate profits are more important to your bank than offering just a little help to struggling families even when we’re in the middle of a worldwide crisis.”

Back in December, CNBC reported that, for the year of 2020, banks would rake in $30 billion total in overdraft fees, charges made to account holders when the amount they are withdrawing exceeds their balance. Federal regulators last March called for banks to systematically waive these fees due to the added financial burden of the pandemic.

During the Tuesday hearing, Warren took specific aim at how much money JPMorgan collected in these fees, pressing Dimon for an exact figure. “Do you know the number?” she asked.

“I don’t have the number in front of me…,” Dimon responded as Warren cut him off.

“Well I actually have the number in front me,” Warren shot back. “It’s $1.463 billion. Now do you know how much JPMorgan would have been in 2020 if you had followed the recommendation of the regulators and waived overdraft fees to help struggling consumers?”

Dimon claimed that the bank waived fees if customers said they were under Covid-related financial stress, neglecting the fact that the bank still made money on collecting them.

“I appreciate that you want to duck this question,” Warren jabbed, then asking him how much the bank’s profits would have been if it waived the fees. “The answer is your profits would have been $27.6 billion,” she answered.

“So here’s the thing. You and your colleagues come in today to talk about how you stepped up and took care of customers during the pandemic,” Warren said. “And it’s a bunch of baloney. In fact, it’s about $4 billion worth of baloney, but you could fix that right now.”

During the pandemic, the Fed instituted a policy that lowered the reserve requirement for banks, freeing up capital with which to lend to customers in order to keep the economy afloat. The policy, however, ended this year on March 31. “Over the past year,” Warren noted, “you could have passed on the breaks you got from the Fed to your customers, but you didn’t do it.”

“Mr. Dimon,” she asked. “Will you commit, right now, to refund $1.5 billion you took from consumers during the pandemic?”

“No,” Dimon responded.

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.

Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.

You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.