Ricardo@Ric_RTP
JPMorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon just said a financial crisis is coming.
Bond yields just hit historic levels in the US, UK, Germany, and Japan simultaneously.
The last time this happened was right before the 2008 financial crisis.
And Dimon just confirmed that $5 to $6 TRILLION in leveraged loans are sitting out there right now and the companies holding that debt are going to have a very hard time refinancing at current rates.
The equity values of those companies would be "considerably less" and a lot of those borrowers didn't hedge for higher rates.
Then he said he personally would NOT buy credit spreads at these levels.
The CEO of the largest bank in America just told you he thinks corporate debt is mispriced and he would not touch it with his own money.
Then the interviewer asked about AI and everyone forgot he said it.
Jamie Dimon warns about a recession every single year but this is the first year where the numbers are actually proving him RIGHT:
3 days ago the 30-year Treasury yield hit 5.2%, the highest since 2007. The 10-year is sitting at 4.62%.
The US government has $31 trillion in public debt and the average interest rate on that debt is 3.5%.
They cannot refinance a single dollar of it at a lower rate than what they are currently paying. And they have $9.7 trillion in securities maturing THIS YEAR that needs to be rolled over.
Meanwhile the new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh was just sworn in on Friday. Traders are now betting there will be ZERO rate cuts for the rest of 2026 and the probability of a rate HIKE is rising.
The Iran war has pushed oil to four-year highs. Inflation reaccelerated in April to the highest annual rate in three years. And private credit defaults just hit a record high with a 9.2% default rate in their US private credit portfolio.
Dimon laid out exactly how this plays out:
He said sentiment can flip overnight and specifically named the crashes of 1973, 1982, 1994, and 2000 and said the setup before each one looked exactly like this.
Everyone confident, everyone buying, liquidity everywhere. Then something shifts and people want cash. And when people want cash they sell risky assets at precisely the wrong time.
Liquidity disappears at the exact moment everyone needs it.
And he also told you where the money is going:
JPMorgan had 35,000 employees in New York when he took over. Now it has 26,000.
Texas went from 12,000 to 33,000.
He said in the 1970s, New York had 120 Fortune 500 companies. 60 of them left in a single decade because of taxes and crime.
And when the interviewer asked about the new NYC mayor raising taxes on the wealthy, Dimon basically told him to his face that the erosion has already started. The capital is already leaving.
So let's put this together:
- Bond yields at 19-year highs
- $9.7 trillion in government debt to refinance this year
- $5-6 trillion in leveraged corporate loans that cannot refinance at these rates
- Private credit defaults at record levels
- Inflation reaccelerating
- No rate cuts coming
- A Fed chairman who hasn't even settled into the chair yet
- The CEO of America's biggest bank saying he would not buy corporate debt at current prices
- And the same CEO quietly moving his bank out of New York
Every single one of these signals was present before the crashes Dimon himself named.