Another profile critical of Jamie Dimon

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We noted recently that the media have shifted its tone on JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. No longer the saint, he's now being written about for some perceived sins, fairly or not. The charges by Irving Picard, the trustee hunting down assets on behalf of Bernard Madoff's victims, against the bank seemed to open the spigots a bit.

Reuters has weighed in with a lengthy piece that fits this new interpretation of the man. It notes legacy is important to Dimon and suggests he perhaps isn't a cut above his peers, as many once thought.

"There's another side to the popular narrative about Dimon the Good and how he outperformed his peers by steering clear of things like subprime-backed mortgage securities. In reality, the main reason JPMorgan didn't load up on subprime debt as much as other banks was because it was slow to enter the market, critics say. Critics point out that JPMorgan, even if it wasn't a leader in churning out collateralized debt obligations, provided some of the building blocks for these toxic securities through all the home loans and second mortgages it sold. And despite his good-guy image, Dimon is just as aggressive as any banker when it comes to looking for ways to generate fees from credit cards and other staple consumer banking products."

The PR staff is no doubt hip to this trend. It's a truism in the industry that all good press is followed by negative press of equal magnitude.

For more:
- here's the article

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